<< Text Pages >> Foa Island Petroglyphs - Rock Art in Pacific Islands

Submitted by Andy B on Friday, 27 February 2009  Page Views: 16834

Rock ArtSite Name: Foa Island Petroglyphs Alternative Name: Tonga Petroglyphs
Country: Pacific Islands
NOTE: This site is 484.995 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Rock Art

Latitude: 19.744722S  Longitude: 174.301389W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 1
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Rock Art in Foa Island, Tonga. Ancient rock carvings may offer clues to voyagers. Discovery of over 50 ancient rock engravings in Tonga, may shed some light on the pre-Polynesian Lapita peoples who voyaged across the Pacific.

The petroglyphs, including stylised images of people and animals, were found emerging from beach sand at the northern end of Foa island, late last year, the Matangi Tonga newspaper reported.

Artist Shane Egan called in archaeologist Professor David Burley, from the Simon Fraser University in Canada, to investigate and document the site.

"The site on Foa Island is an amazing piece of artwork, with over 50 engraved images. Having an average height of 20 to 30cm (some much larger) there are very nicely stylised images of men and women, turtles, dogs, a bird, a lizard, as well as footprints and some weird exotic combinations," said Egan.

He thought the images were close in form to some found in ancient Hawaii and dated to between 1200 and 1500AD.

If similar dating was found for the latest carvings, it would raise a question about direct long distance voyages between Tonga and Hawaii in that era.

The Foa rock engravings are on two large slabs of fixed beach-rock that were apparently exposed by erosion.

The rock engravings were first sighted by visiting friends Richard Whelan and Janelle Johnston from Melbourne. Tonga's previously reported rock art has been limited to simple geometric engravings, though there is also a single engraved outline of a foot on a stone at a royal tomb.

Petroglyphs have been found throughout eastern Polynesia, especially in the Marquesas, Tahiti and Hawaii.

Source: NZPA

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Foa Island - Tonga
Foa Island - Tonga
Foa Island - Tonga
Foa Island - Tonga
Foa Island - Tonga
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"Foa Island Petroglyphs" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Tonga petroglyphs hint at Isle link by Andy B on Monday, 30 March 2009
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Tonga petroglyphs hint at Isle link

Beach erosion on a remote island in Tonga has revealed a trove of petroglyphs that archaeologists say are similar to those found in Hawai'i, hinting at the possibility of early travel between the two archipelagos.

More than 50 petroglyphs were found late last year on several slabs of beach rock at the northern end of Foa Island, in Ha'apai. The rocks apparently were buried for centuries under several feet of sand until heavy seas exposed them.

The carvings were spotted by two Australian visitors who notified Tonga artist and amateur archaeologist Shane Egan, who in turn contacted archaeologist and ethnohistorian David Burley, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Burley has conducted a number of field surveys and excavations in Tonga, which is about 3,000 miles southwest of Hawai'i.

"Initially I was a bit stunned, knowing the distance and difficulty of travel between the two groups of islands," Burley said in an e-mail to The Advertiser. "The evidence, however, is visual and difficult to ignore or explain in ways other than direct contact."

Burley and Egan mapped the petroglyphs in December. The carvings, averaging 8 to 12 inches, appear on two major panels and a number of smaller ones. Burley said the outlines of feet and male and female stick figures are the most abundant forms. Other images include cup shapes, dogs, turtles, a lizard and a turtlelike man and a fish with arms.

Burley said the designs "are pretty much identical" to those catalogued in Hawai'i. "Notably, while aspects of form or features can be found in several of the images elsewhere in east Polynesian rock art, the Tongan and Hawaiian ones are clearly of the same ilk and a considerable degree different from the rest," he said.

The stick figures have open body forms, but one has a closed triangular body not identified anywhere outside of Hawai'i, according to Burley. One human form appears with a headdress that is also similar to a Hawaiian form.

Another image resembles a kapu stick, a tapa-covered ball on a stick carried as a sign of approaching royalty, indicating it was created by someone knowledgeable in Hawaiian cultural protocols, he said.

Because the Tonga images are carved in beach rock within a tidal zone, any sheen typical of rock art is gone, making it impossible to radiocarbon-date the petroglyphs, Burley said.

However, the style corresponds to Hawaiian petroglyphs dating from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1500. Burley said that if the Tonga carvings also originate from that period, they would correspond with two adjacent archaeological sites, a prehistoric village and a mound used for the chiefly sport of pigeon snaring.

Tianlong Jiao, head of the Anthropology Department at Bishop Museum, called the Tonga rock carvings "a very intriguing discovery." Although they appear "very similar" to images on Hawaiian petroglyphs, Jiao said he wouldn't necessarily "jump to the conclusion" that Hawaiians visited Foa Island, especially since the age of the carvings is unknown.

"Without a chronological context, it's very hard to argue that there was direct population contact between the two archipelagos," Jiao said.

More than 150 petroglyph sites have been identified in Hawai'i. Jiao said rock carvings are a part of Polynesian culture and it should be no surprise to find them on the islands of the South Pacific.

Petroglyphs are more common in eastern Polynesia, especially in the Marquesas, Tahiti and Hawai'i, and less so in Samoa and Tonga, in western Polynesia. Previously reported rock art in Tonga has been limited to simple geometric engravings at royal burial structures.

The outline of a foot on a stone at a royal tomb on 'Uiha was recorded in 1991 by Burley. There has since been evidence the stone may have been quarried from Foa Island, near the site of the newly discovered carvings.

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Rock art find highlights ancient east-west Polynesia links by Andy B on Friday, 27 February 2009
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The discovery of more than 50 ancient rock engravings in Tonga has excited archaeologists, who say they demonstrate the links between the Pacific island and Hawaii before Europeans arrived.

"The site is a truly significant discovery in illustrating the remarkable Polynesian voyaging capacity," archaeologist David Burley, a specialist in Tongan history, told AFP.

"In the pre-European era, whether Tongans went to Hawaii, Hawaiians to Tonga or some other possibility, it illustrates a connectedness of west and east Polynesia in later pre-history that is under-appreciated."

Tonga, where Burley has previously documented a fishing village established 2,900 years ago as the first settlement in Polynesia, is 5,060 kilometres (3,144 miles) from Hawaii.

The rock drawings, or petroglyphs, include images of humans and animals and are on two slabs of beach-rock that were exposed by erosion on Tonga's Foa island.

They are in the style of the earliest stick figure forms in Hawaii, which would place them between the years 1250 and 1550.

Burley said the dates correlated closely with two adjacent archaeological sites on Foa, a village and a pigeon-snaring mound, that had been placed in the period 1450 to 1650.

"In short, I am fully convinced that the site is pre-Captain Cook," he said referring to the English explorer who stayed in Tonga for three months in 1777.

Tongan resident artist Shane Egan, who was alerted to the drawings by two Australian tourists late last year, called in Burley from Simon Fraser University in Canada to investigate and document the site with him.

"Having an average height of 20 to 30 centimetres (8-12 inches), some much larger, there are very nicely stylised images of men and women, turtles, dogs, a bird, a lizard, as well as footprints and some weird exotic combinations," Egan told the Matangi Tonga website.

Burley, in an email interview with AFP, said that, stylistically, the images were clearly Hawaiian and nothing remotely close had been documented elsewhere in west Polynesia.

"Not only are the petroglyphs executed in Hawaiian style but there is one image suggesting the person was knowledgeable of their cultural protocols and meaning. In particular, there appears to be a 'kapu stick' image which marks, in Hawaii, a sacred place."

Tonga's previously reported rock art has been limited to simple geometric engravings, though there is also a single engraved outline of a foot on a stone at a royal tomb.

Burley said the petroglyphic foot was so rare he had assumed it was intentionally carved in a symbolic fashion, but the latest find meant he was not so sure.

He said it may have been on a stone that was quarried for the tomb. The Foa site was recently found to have been a quarry for blocks used in tomb construction.

Egan, who has a keen interest in archaeology and the early history of Tonga, said that now the images had been exposed they were within the tidal range and were constantly being eroded.

"The grooves are now shallow and in the broad light of day one would be excused for passing them by unnoticed," he said.

"At night, with torch lighting from the side the 'glyphs immediately take form and in greater detail jump up at you, revealing a myriad of images dancing about the rock."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090204/lf_afp/tongahistoryarchaeology_20090204052134
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