By Daily Press staff
Easter comes in March at Santa Monica College.
SMC will present a free lecture exploring the Easter Island statues, given by a UCLA archaeologist whose work has been featured on national television programs.
“Among Stone Giants: The Easter Island Statues,” by Dr. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, will be presented at 11:15 a.m. on March 16 in Science Lecture Hall 140, 1900 Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica — the second in SMC’s spring “Distinguished Scientists Lecture Series.”
Van Tilburg, who holds a Ph.D. in archaeology from UCLA, is the director of the Easter Island Statue Project and the world’s leading expert on Easter Island statues, according to school officials. She also is the author of the book “Among Stone Giants: The Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island.”
Convinced that the harmonious and ordered symmetry of the statues would reveal the secrets of their past, Van Tilburg has spent two decades documenting every detail of the stone giants’ placement in the island landscape. Her work advanced the understanding of the structure of the Easter Island chiefdom and integrated the symbolism of the great statues into Easter Island’s history and ecology, according to officials.
Winner of the 2001 Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation, she has been featured on numerous educational programs and documentaries created for BBC, PBS’ Nova, The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel and History Channel.
The lecture series is sponsored by the SMC Associates, a private organization that funds speakers and special events on campus.
For more information, call (310) 434-4003.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 3, 2004. Read the original PDF.