Back of A'a with the panel removed

This figure, known as A'a, was made on the island of Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands, in Polynesia. Its features are formed of thirty small figures which spring forth from its body and suggest fertility and the power to create life. A’a was carved with a hollow head and torso covered by a panel at the back and was probably designed to hold the skull and bones of an important ancestor. When A'a was surrendered to European missionaries in 1821, they recorded that the figure was named A'a after the ancestor who first settled on Rurutu.