The main quarry for Easter Island's statues, this volcanic
crater is a virtual moai graveyard. The stone-faced giants lie
in various states of production. Some are half carved, many
are broken, and many seem to have been abandoned in
mid-transport. Most remarkably, at the base of the quarry,
moai stand half buried in the slope—up to their chins
and noses—from years of erosion. To some observers the
quarry looks like a graveyard of stone giants. It's as if the
production of moai was abruptly abandoned, leaving us a frozen
snapshot in time so we can look closely at exactly how the
moai were carved out of the available rock. This quarry and
the nearby transport road is the staging area on which many
speculators base their theories on how the moai were
transported. Archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg suggests that
the moai production in Rano Raraku quarry probably started and
stopped often over the years, possibly due to periodic
resource shortages or to political disagreements.