A Very Early Maori Canoe

A sizable component of a large canoe found in New Zealand gives clues to the type of boats used to settle the islands, which probably occurred sometime between 1050 and 1250 CE. Found at Anewaka, on the northwest coast of South Island, the artifact has been dated to around 1400. Given the slowness with which technology changes in traditional societies, it seems probable that the boat it came from was similar to those used by the islands' first colonizers.

Canoe fragment recovered at Anewaka, New Zealand (click any image to enlarge)

More than 6m long and 85cm wide at its widest point, the part was a piece of what must have been a large composite canoe. For convenience, we'll call it a plank, though it was carved "in the round," following the shape of the tree trunk from which it came, and it is therefore somewhat closer to dugout technology than to plank-on-frame boatbuilding. (The proper term for this kind of component is ile.) The boat was, however, by no means a dugout. The part represents less than one quarter of one hull which may have been from a single-outrigger canoe but was more likely half of a double canoe.

Stitching holes exist around the entire perimeter of the plank, and pounded tree bark that was used to caulk these holes was recovered from some of them. Carved ribs and a longitudinal stringer on the inner surface of the plank show sophisticated carpentry and structural design. The stringer has notches and lashing holes along its whole length which were obviously used to locate and lash other parts of the boat's structure, but the exact nature of those other parts and the connections between them is unknown.

Partial hull reconstruction through duplication and mirror-imaging of the single recovered plank 

The authors of a paper on the find suggest that the part would have had a mirror-image to itself opposite, plus a similar pair of parts extending the hull at least a comparable distance from its butt end. To avoid having the mirror-image parts meet along the hull's "keel" line, where lashings would have been exposed to rapid wear when grounding the boat (an arrangement that, the authors state, is unknown ethnographically), it is necessary to accept another part between them -- call it a keel plank if you will. Although the two ends of the hull need not have been identical, it seems fair to assume that they were of similar length. There is nothing to preclude more sections between the two end pieces, for a much longer hull.

Carving of a sea turtle on the canoe plank

A sea turtle appears carved in relief on the outer surface of the plank. If one assumes that it is depicted swimming forward, then the plank must be from the after part of the hull. Sea turtles are not important in the iconography of the New Zealand Maori, so its carving here is thought to be a lingering transmission from pre-colonization Maori culture, which arrived in New Zealand by way of the Society Islands.

Proposed reconstruction of the Anewaka canoe as a double-hulled voyaging canoe with a single oceanic sprit rig

Relying on internal and ethnographic evidence and historical records, the authors created a reconstruction showing a double-hulled sailing canoe with dissimilar ends, a house aft of amidships, and a steering oar. The single sail is an inverted triangle held by two spars: known as an oceanic sprit rig, this is a tacking rig.

A Tahitian tipaerua, drawn by John Webber

As the authors note, the Tahitian tipaerua has a similar hull configuration, though the sailing rig depicted by John Webber on James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific was different. The authors suggest that the Anewaka canoe and the tipaerua had a common ancestor.

Thanks for Yoram Meroz for alerting us to this item.

With the exception of the final image, all images are from An early sophisticated East Polynesian voyaging canoe discovered on New Zealand's coast by Dilys A Johns, Geoffrey J. Irwin, and Yun K. Sung.

Two Current Bits of Nautical Archaeology

Swedish warship Mars

A couple of quick marine achaeology links:

Recent news about the discovery of the remarkably intact 16th-century three-masted Swedish warship Mars. Not within our definition of "indigenous boats," but fascinating nonetheless (if you ignore the ludicrous "cursed warship" in the headline of the National Geographic article). 

Reader and contributor Edwin Deady sent me this link for a free online course in marine archaeology, offered by the University of Southampton. It starts in October and, according to the description, it does address non-European examples and topics.

Ancient (?) Dugout Canoe Found in Florida

AP photo. Click to enlarge.

According to an AP article carried by Fox News (among others), a well-preserved dugout canoe was recently recovered from a lake near Ocala, Florida. The article includes little detail about the boat, other than its approximate length ("nearly" 20 feet), but it is generally factual, and it makes no assumptions, wild or otherwise, as in the case of a possibly-marine-related finding reported in Wales. 

In spite of the AP reporter's good efforts, however, the Fox headline writer felt compelled to juice the news, calling the find an "ancient" canoe when, in fact, its age is unknown. While "ancient" isn't an objective term, I think most would agree that it shouldn't be applied to archaeological finds in North America dating to the 19th century or later. Until carbon dating is completed, it's impossible to say whether the canoe at hand is any older than that. 

It could, in fact, be younger. From the photo, it looks to be in excellent condition. The caption to the AP photo refers to a "burn mark" on the inside of the boat, but doesn't indicate whether this was an artifact of the construction process. Burning was a common method used to hollow out a logboat, especially prior to the introduction of steel tools by Europeans into the Americas, but other explanations for the mark are possible.

As I observed in the previous post about the finding in Wales, the general news media is often a poor source of science information. This is often due, I'm sure, to the lack of science training among general-news reporters, and to the tight deadlines they face which prevent them from carefully checking and clarifying facts and statements. In the present case, however, it was the headline writer who's at fault, trying to make more of a story than is really there.

That this was Fox's doing can be easily demonstrated. Google the first sentence of the AP article, and you'll see the story reported verbatim by many news sources. Only Fox inserted the word "ancient" into the headline.

(Thanks to Anneli Skaar for pointing out the article.)

A Catamaran with an Outrigger?

A recent BBC story concerning a possibly marine-related archaeological discovery in Wales reports some off-the-wall speculation about the find's significance. (Before going further, I must acknowledge that general news media like the BBC are often poor sources of information on scientific issues, and the reporting might badly misstate the facts.)

Three closely-spaced channels were discovered dug into the ground near the site of a vanished lake in Monmouth. All are 30m long; two adjacent ones are 1m wide, and the third beside them is narrower. The channels appeared over a mound of charcoal that has been carbon-dated to the Bronze Age (2,500 to 800 BCE in Britain).

According to Stephen Clarke of the Monmouth Archaeological Society, the find represents a kind of launching ramp for a Bronze boatbuilding facility. Although no boat remains or evidence of woodworking have been found at the site, artistic reconstructions show the site used to launch a canoe with twin dugout hulls and an outrigger.

Everything about this interpretation seems misinformed. To start with the boat:

• The use of monohull dugouts in Bronze Age Britain is well proven. There is no prior evidence for multi-hulls.
• A twin-hulled canoe of the size and breadth shown in the reconstruction would provide more than enough stability for any conceivable conditions on a lake. The outrigger serves no conceivable purpose. (Has any boat anywhere, used on any waters, ever had two main hulls plus an outrigger? I doubt it.) 
• If the site was indeed a boat launch, three alternatives offer more likely and practical interpretations: i. three monohulls (two wide, one narrow); ii. a twin-hulled canoe and a narrow monohull; or iii. an outrigger canoe and a wide monohull.
• There is also no evidence for the use of sails in Britain's Bronze Age, although a mast is shown in both reconstructions, and a sail in the line drawing.

But even the notion that the site represents a boatbuilding facility, or any sort of boat-related facility, cannot be accepted so easily. Aside from the absence of woodworking or boat-related artifacts, the trenches make little sense for the purpose of boat launching. If one wanted to drag a heavy boat up and down the shore, the last thing he would do is carve channels that would increase friction around the hulls. Friction would be much lower if the rounded hulls rested on a flat plane, and flat ground would also permit the use of rollers or, if the ground was too soft or sticky, launching ways similar to Hawaiian canoe ladders.

Even if the trenches did make sense as a launch ramp, there is no reason for them to have been so long. Assuming that the color illustration is accurate in its depiction of the slope of the shore and the trenches' location relative to the water level, the trenches extend much farther than necessary to haul the boat(s) entirely out of the (non-tidal) lake. The amount of extra work that would have been required to dig the trenches, and to haul the boat any farther than just out of the water, makes its use as a boat launch unlikely.

One final item: since the trenches were found above the charcoal, they must be of more recent origin. Britain's Bronze Age lasted for 1700 years or so, and the article doesn't report the exact carbon-dated age of the charcoal, but from the information available, it seems possible that the trenches were dug after the end of the Bronze Age.

I have no better, alternate interpretation for the find, but the current one seems to be based on a poor understanding of boats and how they are used. The BBC article claims that Mr. Clarke has a book on the subject in the works: this promises to be a fanciful piece of pseudo-archaeology, akin, perhaps, to the laughable and inexplicably well-known The Life and Death of a Druid Prince.

(Thanks to Edwin Deady for pointing out the BBC article.)
(Both images are from the BBC article.)

Update (2 Oct., 2013): This article by the Daily Mail contradicts some details of the BBC article, and provides useful photos of the excavated channels. It states that the channels were cut through the charcoal deposits (dated to the early Bronze age), not over them. And it reports possible evidence of woodworking at the site, in the form of "sharp flakes of imported flint found alongside the channels." The article claims that "Prehistoric cave drawings in Scandanavia (sic) have been discovered depicting outrigger boats like the one built at Monmouth," but provides no backup for this statement. The images it shows of "similar" boats of the historic period depict double canoes and single-outrigger canoes, but no double canoes with outriggers.
(Thanks to Tom Rankin for pointing out the Daily Mail article.)