Editing Rongorongo (section)

===Writing instruments {{anchor|writing instruments}}===
[[Image:Rongorongo Gv4 (section).jpg|thumb|right|Most of '''Gv4''' was carved with a shark tooth. However, the two parts of the glyph second from right ({{Roro|070|20}} and [[Image:RR 062V.png|x20px|Bulb on line]]) are connected by a faint bent hair-line that may have been inscribed with obsidian. (The chevrons {{Roro|003|20}} are also linked by such a line, too faint to be seen here, which connects them to the hand of the human figure.)]]
According to oral tradition, scribes used [[Obsidian#Prehistoric and historical use|obsidian flakes]] or small [[shark tooth#Tool use by humans|shark teeth]], presumably the [[hilt|hafted]] tools still used to carve wood in Polynesia, to flute and polish the tablets and then to incise the glyphs.<ref>Métraux 1940:404</ref> The glyphs are most commonly composed of deep smooth cuts, though superficial hair-line cuts are also found. In the closeup image at right, a glyph is composed of two parts connected by a hair-line cut; this is a typical convention for this shape. Several researchers, including Barthel, believe that these superficial cuts were made by obsidian, and that the texts were carved in a two-stage process, first sketched with obsidian and then deepened and finished with a worn shark tooth.<ref>Horley 2009</ref> The remaining hair-line cuts were then either errors, design conventions (as at right), or decorative embellishments.{{refn|Barthel tested this experimentally, and Dederen (1993) reproduced several tablets in this fashion. Fischer comments,<ref>Fischer 1997:389–390</ref>

<blockquote>On the Large St. Petersburg ([P]r3) [...] the original tracing with an obsidian flake describes a bird's bill identical to a foregoing one; but when incising, the scribe reduced this bill to a much more bulbous shape [...] since he now was working with the different medium of a shark's tooth. There are many such scribal quirks on the "Large St. Petersburg" [tablet '''P'''].

The rongorongo script is a "contour script" (Barthel 1955:360) [...] with various internal or external lines, circles, dashes or dots added [...] Often such features exist only in the hair-line pre-etching effected by obsidian flakes and not incised with a shark's tooth. This is particularly evident on the "Small Vienna" [tablet '''N'''].</blockquote>
|group="note"}} Vertical strings of chevrons or lozenges, for example, are typically connected with hair-line cuts, as can be seen repeatedly in the closeup of one end of tablet '''B''' below. However, Barthel was told that the last literate Rapanui king, [[Nga{{saltillo}}ara]], sketched out the glyphs in soot applied with a fish bone and then engraved them with a shark tooth.<ref>Barthel 1959:164</ref>

[[Rongorongo text N|Tablet '''N''']], on the other hand, shows no sign of shark teeth. Haberlandt noticed that the glyphs of this text appear to have been incised with a sharpened bone, as evidenced by the shallowness and width of the grooves.<ref>Haberlandt 1886:102</ref> '''N''' also "displays secondary working with obsidian flakes to elaborate details within the finished contour lines. No other ''rongo-rongo'' inscription reveals such graphic extravagance".<ref>Fischer 1997:501</ref>

Other tablets appear to have been cut with a steel blade, often rather crudely. Although steel knives were available after the arrival of the Spanish, this does cast suspicion on the authenticity of these tablets.{{refn|For example, Métraux said of [[Rongorongo text V|tablet '''V''']] in 1938, "its authenticity is doubtful. The signs appear to have been incised with a steel implement, and do not show the regularity and beauty of outline which characterise the original tablets."<ref>Métraux 1938</ref> Imitation tablets were made for the tourist trade as early as the 1880s.|group="note"|name="steel"}}