Collections Online

An obsidian tool-weapon called a Mata'a. Such tools were described as spears in some early accounts but some were also used to cut vegetable matter. Matā’a, an obsidian (volcanic glass) blade, is by far the most common archaeological trace of the Rapa Nui culture. Most elders have a collection of these in their homes and big quantities are scattered at museums all over the world. The matā’a exist in several types and sizes.

There is some debate about their function - for cutting fibres (for clothing, house building, mats, ropes, bananas), carving wooden sculptures or rongo-rongo, as well as for spear heads. George Forster who accompanied Captain Cook on his visit to Easter Island in 1774, noted that ‘some…had lances or spears made of thin ill-shaped sticks and pointed with a sharp triangular piece of black glassy lava’.