This popular science book by archaeologist, writer and BBC broadcaster Mike Pitts aims to tell forgotten stories about Rapa Nui, the small, remote Pacific Island with monumental statues—known to most of the world as Easter Island. With more than four decades of engagement in Rapa Nui archaeology, two decades of involvement in education and Samoan archaeology, and as a researcher and curator working with Thor Heyerdahl at the former Kon-Tiki Museum Research Department, I initially thought: here is another book among the myriad publications about Rapa Nui written by another ‘palagi’, westerner (myself included), who has never conducted archaeological research on Rapa Nui or elsewhere in Polynesia. Pitts, however, has clearly undertaken thorough research and visited the island, and he presents a perspective different from the usual academic narratives. He has scrutinised a vast number of important scientific publications and ethnohistorical sources with a reasonably critical eye. The result is an interesting and accessible popular science narrative aimed primarily at an Anglo-Saxon readership.

Across 345 pages, three parts and 13 chapters, Pitts presents well-researched stories beginning with the first written record of the encounter between the Rapanui people and European explorers in 1722. He then follows the history of slave raiding, colonisation, global capitalism, the transformation of the island into a sheep farm and the development and impact of archaeological research. All these stories are known but Pitts incorporates less-familiar ethnohistorical and historical sources and facts from archaeological research.

A major focus is the new information of the rediscovered archives of British anthropologist Katherine Routledge who, together with her husband, William Scoresby Routledge, conducted research on Rapa Nui in 1914–1915. Pitts also discusses archaeological research from Heyerdahl’s expedition in 1955–1956 to the present, including recent DNA research on ancient and current populations. In telling the story of Rapa Nui and the Rapanui, Pitts also tells a story about the academic world: how research is produced, presented and received, and how recognition is influenced by factors such as researcher gender, funding, networks, institutional support, politics and the prevailing values and structures of particular academic contexts (there’s nothing new under the sun!).

I particularly applaud two aspects of the book. First, Pitts highlights the so-called ‘blackbirding’—the slave raids and trade carried out around the mid-nineteenth century. These events remain relatively unknown to the wider public. Together with colonialism and missionary activities, they had devastating consequences for the island and its people, arguably far more severe than the loss of the palm trees caused by deforestation. Palm-root imprints and burned stumps have been found in almost all of mine and other excavations on Rapa Nui and that is evidence of a process known as ‘Neolithisation’. This process often accompanies the development of more complex social organisation and monumental architecture. I have long been concerned that some scientists and environmental movements have used Rapa Nui to tell a cautionary story about what happens when people destroy their environment. Pitts has done his research well; he adopts a nuanced interpretation: that the Rapanui actively farmed and adapted their environment to survive. However, this is not a forgotten story but a well-established fact that there was once a dense palm-tree forest in combination with other trees and bushes that flourished on the island before humans arrived. This forest was eventually cut down by humans, which radically changed the ecology of the island, as all neolithisation processes across the world have done, but the Rapanui, at the edge of the world, adapted and developed new farming techniques and survived. This gives us hope!

The second aspect I particularly value is Pitts’s discussion of Routledge, her research in Rapa Nui and East Polynesia, and what happened to her and her archives within the male-dominated academic world of early twentieth-century England. I appreciate that Pitts does not portray the Routledges in an overly sympathetic way, but recognises them as ‘children of their time’, whose views appear racist and patronising from a contemporary perspective. His discussion also made me reflect on my own archives and the importance of making them accessible to future researchers. Archives should not be treated simply as private property when they contain knowledge of value to Rapa Nui and the wider scientific community. Routledge worked hard to publish her research and ensure that her archives remained safe and accessible, but opposition from male researchers and her failing mental health, very likely contributed to the tragic fate of her work, which was dispersed and lost to research for decades, but Pitts gives us hope to find more of her archives to re-evaluate her work.

The sections covering the period from Heyerdahl’s expedition to current DNA research are interesting, although some details are not fully up to date. For example, the book does not include recent research on early plant residues found on obsidian tools from Anakena that indicate use of Polynesian and Native American plants, the redefinition of the development of monuments and evidence suggesting greater external interaction in Early Rapa Nui society. Pitts also dismisses the possibility that Native South Americans ever visited the Island, which is not yet a solid fact and I would have preferred the word platform instead of plinth, for the description of the base of the monumental platforms, as they are important features themselves. The Epilogue centres on issues about the Hoa haka Nanai’a statue at the British Museum and reflects on potential repatriations to contemporary Rapa Nui. What I miss in the book are discussions of Rapanui myths, legends and the broader Indigenous perspective in tandem with Rapanui scholarly work. External researchers have a responsibility to work together with Pasifika scholars since I believe the latter should be custodians of, and conduct research on, their own histories. Pitts creates an entangled popular narrative that accommodates both western and Rapanui voices, although the balance remains weighted towards a western gaze.

Nevertheless, Pitts has written an engaging, and well-researched book that raises important questions about Rapa Nui, archaeology, colonialism, academic knowledge and who has the authority to tell the history of the island. In my opinion, it is a book well worth reading.