Quarried away: Thinking about landscapes of megalithic construction on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Monuments have featured strongly within “interpretative” approaches to landscape archaeology (e.g., Richards 1996; Thomas 1992; Tilley 1994, 2004). Within these studies, the “monument” is assumed to be architecturally unproblematic and is experienced as a completed entity. In this chapter, we approach landscapes as contexts of construction, whereby the monument is constantly enmeshed within an ongoing process of alteration and transformation.