Resumen de AMS 14C age determinations of Rapanui (Easter Island) wood sculpture: moai kavakava ET 48.63 from Brussels

F. Forment, Dirk Huyge, H. Valladas

• Direct dating, using the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C method, of a wooden moai kavakava (anthropomorphic woodcarving) in the collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels has given a date of about cal AD 1390–1480. As there are reasons to believe that this age not only regards the raw material but also the carving itself, preserved examples of Easter Island wood sculpture may be much older than previously assumed and possibly contemporaneous with the giant monolithic sculpture of the first half of the 2nd millennium AD.