Fans for watercraft ethnography would do well to visit Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Artefacts on display from many peoples reflect not only a variety of watercraft types and applications, but also a diversity of the ways in which watercraft are culturally significant to their users.
We'll start out with artefacts from the Canadian Artic before moving on to items from Oceania.
Kayak from Clyde Inlet, Baffin Island, Canada, collected in 1946. |
Bow-end view of Baffin Island kayak. |
Cockpit coaming and internal structure of Baffin Island kayak. |
A section of skin pieced into the deck of the Baffin Island kayak. |
Dugout canoe collected in 1914 from the Utakwa River in West Papua (Irian Jaya) New Guinea. |
Carved detail on New Guinea dugout canoe. |
Decorated canoe paddles from the Sepik river. |
The prow of the Solomon Islands canoe, decorated with shells and mother-of-pearl. |
Lashed-lug construction of the Solomon Islands canoe. |
Toward the ends of the Solomon Islands canoe, the strakes are lashed directly to each other via the lugs that are left standing as the planks are carved. |
Stern of the Solomon Islands canoe. |
War canoe figurehead representing a crocodile, from the Kenyah people of Borneo, late 19th C. The eyes are Chinese porcelain teacups. The teeth are boars' tusks and sheet metal. |
Model of a Maori war canoe from New Zealand, 19th C. Real ones were up to 40m long -- too big to be collected by a museum -- so Maori craftsmen built models for ethnographers to collect. |
Detail of gunwale carving on the Maori canoe model. |
Bow carving on the Maori canoe model. |
Figure at the base of the sternpost on the Maori canoe model. |
Stern of the Maori canoe model. |
Side-to-bottom stitching, carved thwart, and carved gunwale (amidships) on the Maori canoe model. |
Maori Canoe bailer collected in Aotearoa, New Zealand, by Capt. Cook, 1768-1780. The eyes are of haliotis shell. A split has been repaired with flax thread. |
Wooden dish in the form of a double-hull canoe, used by a Fijian priest to hold scented oil.. From Rewa, Levu River, Fiji, collected ~1875. |
Although the exhibits are somewhat old-fashioned in their presentation, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology appears to change most of them but rarely (if ever), it's enlightening nonetheless, and there are items here that are probably no longer in indigenous use. Museum entry is free.