Corfu's Reed Raft, the Papyrella

The papyrella built for the Exeter Maritime Museum, now held by the National Maritime Museum of Poland, photographed in Suffolk, England by Bob Holtzman (click any image to enlarge).

Rafts made of reeds are among the oldest types of watercraft, and remained in use in many areas through the end of the previous millennium “wherever there is a good supply of reeds” (McGrail, 2001:21, 104). Papyrus, among the most common reeds used for raft building, may have been among the earliest as well. Papyrus rafts are known from Egyptian tomb carvings, paintings, and funerary models as early as the Fifth Dynasty (2492-2345 BCE) (Hornell, 1970:47-48; McGrail, 2001:22), and these appear quite finely modeled and highly developed, so that much earlier use can be safely assumed (Hornell, 1970:48-49).

Papyrus reed raft under construction in an Egyptian 5th Dynasty tomb relief (McGrail 2001:21).

Modern examples of papyrus rafts are known from Lake Tsana (i.e., Tana) in Ethiopia; among the Buduma and Kuri people on Lake Chad; in Palestine; and elsewhere (Hornell, 1970:53-56). Among the last European reed rafts was the papyrella of Corfu, whose use apparently petered out only in the 1970s. Although the Corfiot name papyrella is clearly etymologically related to papyrus, the reeds from which they were built is disputed. They have been identified as giant fennel, Ferula Communs L. (Tzamtis, 1990:329), although a later observer states that they were Scirpus lacustris L. ssp lacustris, of the same Cyperacea family as Egyptian Cyperus papyrus (Tzalas, 1995:456).

The basic papyrus raft can be built with no tool other than a stone blade for cutting reeds, and with no specialized techniques other than rope-making (McGrail, 2001:21-22), and this goes a long way to explain the papyrus raft’s early appearance in history. The papyrella, however, is a unique hybrid design incorporating some wooden components and requiring a few additional tools and techniques.

Construction began with six to eight light cypress saplings about 3m long. These were tied together at their narrow ends – the end that would be the bow – and splayed to a width of 1.1-1.3m at the stern. Three broad planks were laid beneath this framework, one at the stern, one about a meter back from the bow end, and one halfway between. Papyrus reeds were gathered into bundles with their butt ends all aligned and tied with cordage, so that the bundles were roughly 20cm in diameter at the butt end, narrower at the other end. These bundles were laid over the frame, perhaps six or seven bundles across, in two layers. Three more planks were then placed on top of the bundles, directly above the lower planks. The two layers of planks were then lashed with heavy rope passing through two holes in both ends of each plank, sandwiching the reed bundles and holding them in place. More reeds were bundled and tied into a horseshoe shape on top of the raft to serve as a coaming or gunwale. Finally, the saplings at the bow were bent upward and back and tied in place to form a prow (Tzamtis, 1990:330).

Papyrus is delicate and easily crushed and abraded, and when damaged, it absorbs water readily and loses its buoyancy. To protect the reeds on the bottom of the bundles when the boat was grounded, “common reeds” of a more durable type than papyrus were sometimes placed between the cypress bottom poles. A second set of cypress poles, tied like the first set, was sometimes placed on top of the reed bundles and beneath the top set of planks (Tzamtis, 1990:330). This might have been done to stiffen the structure, although it is unclear if rafts without this feature were subject to excessive flexing. Since the poles run mostly parallel with the bundles, it does not appear to be useful for containing them. A third modification sometimes present was the substitution of short cypress poles for the transverse boards (Tzamtis, 1990:330).

Stern of the papyrella (photo: Bob Holtzman)

Descriptions of a few aspects of construction are ambiguous. Tzamtis states that the bottom cross-planks were placed beneath the cypress longitudinals (1990:330), which would hold the saplings in place sandwich-wise. In the example shown, however, the planks are on top of the longitudinals, so the saplings had to have been tied to the boards to remain in place. As one of the final steps, “two cypresses were placed on the stern, and bound there from the bottom to around the top, thus completing the caging in of the papyri bundles” (Tzamtis, 1990:330). This feature did not appear on the example I examined, and the disposition of these two poles on the stern is unclear. Also, the cypress base poles which extended beyond the reed bundles at the bow, were bent up and back and tied in place to bring the tips out of the water and create somewhat of a prow shape. Tzamtis (1990:330) indicates that this was done as the very last step in construction, but Tzalas (1995:444) states they were bent into this shape when green and held under pressure until the wood dried, after which they held the shape on their own. It is unclear if the square stern was the natural result of aligning the bottoms of the bundles, or if the aft ends of the bundles were all sheared even and square after being bound together. There is an account of papyrellas with a rounded stern (Tzamtis, 1990:330), which surely would have been cut to shape after the bundles were bound together.

The entire building process took two to three days. Finished rafts were 2.5-3m LOA, with their greatest beam of 1.1-1.3m at the stern and maximum thickness of 45-50cm, also at the stern (Tzamtis, 1990:330; Tzalas, 1995:443-445).

Papyrella were used for fishing in sheltered waters, “confined to lakes and bogs, rarely faring out to sea and far from the coast” (Tzamtis, 1990:330). Reports refer to their use for lobster fishing, but it would be surprising if other forms of fishing did not occur. There are reports that double-length papyrellas of 5-6m LOA were built by joining two single boats stern-to-stern, and that these larger boats would venture offshore for lobster fishing, but no such boats have been properly documented. Long poles were used to hold the two boats together, but it is unclear if the poles were forced through the bundles of both boats or lashed to their exterior surfaces or frameworks (Tzamtis, 1990:330-331).

Papyrella under way in Corfu by a standing paddler using a double-bladed paddle (Tzalas 1995:466)

The standard “single” papyrella was a one-man craft, propelled from a standing position with a double-bladed paddle 2.3-2.5m long, including the two 50cm blades (Tzamtis, 1990:330; Tzalas, 1995:449). With the paddler standing, the gunwales would have done nothing to protect him from waves, so their purpose must have been to protect his gear and his catch.

Fisherman standing a papyrella on end to dry (Tzalas 1995:465)

The more tightly the bundles are tied, the better a reed raft will resist waterlogging and decay (McGrail, 2001:22, 104). The bundles in the example examined were still tightly bound some 50 years after the raft was built. Another key to longevity was to dry the bundles after every use by pulling the raft out of the water and standing it on its stern end. Treated this way, the bundles might last two to three years, while the framework could be used over and over (Tzalas, 1995:443).

Regular use of the papyrella continued into the late 1970s or early 1980s, at which time a single user remained in Palaiokastritsa, in northwest Corfu (Tzalas, 1995:443). During the 1970s, three had been built for museums – one in Corfu, one in Piraeus, and one in Exeter, England (Tzalas, 1995:443), the original home of the papyrella I examined. The Exeter collection was subsequently transferred to the World of Boats collection in Eyemouth, England, and when that museum closed abruptly in 2017, the papyrella and a few other craft were purchased at auction by Valerie Fenwick, a renowned British maritime archaeologist who kept them secure in a barn in Suffolk until a proper caretaker organization could be found. This is where I photographed it and documented its basic features in concert with the fellow student who appears in the photos. The papyrella, along with the rest of the small collection, was recently transferred to the National Maritime Museum in Gdansk, Poland, where, one hopes, it will be stabilized and displayed (Fenwick and Pink, 2020).

For a 50-some-odd-year-old reed raft, it remains in quite good condition. The reeds are beginning to disintegrate, however, and lightweight monofilament fishnet has been fastened over them in an attempt to hold them together. It is unclear if the bundles at the bow were originally larger than in the photos or if they extended further forward. Some of the ropework is sloppy and haphazard, the result, I suspect, of attempted repairs by an individual unskilled in knots.

Harry Tzalas's double-ended papyrella, named Papyrella (Sampson, 2018:23)

Certainly the most famous individual papyrella was one named Papyrella and used in an experimental voyage from the Greek island of Melos to the mainland in 1988 (Tzalas, 1995). Seafaring by Mesolithic people has been indirectly but firmly established by the presence on the Peloponnesian mainland of obsidian from Melos, and Harry Tzalas (following Tzamtis’s lead) hypothesized that this was mostly likely accomplished by means of a reed raft. Tzalas had a double-length, double-ended papyrella built which he and five crew paddled from the mainland to Melos over the course of 16 days (Tzalas, 1995). Tzalas claimed that this voyage supported his hypothesis, but I and some others (Cherry and Leppard, 2015:745) find the experiment to be fraught with errors of theory, logic, and methodology and view its results as dubious.

The route of Papyrella from Melos to the Greek mainland (Cherry and Leppard, 2015:746)

Bibliography

Cherry, J. F. and Leppard, T. P. (2015) ‘Experimental archaeology and the earliest seagoing: the limitations of inference’, World Archaeology. Routledge, 47(5), pp. 740–755. doi: 10.1080/00438243.2015.1078739.

Fenwick, V. and Pink, J. (2020) ‘The Fate of the ISCA Collection: The World’s Largest Collection of Traditional and Vernacular Boats’, Nautical Archaeology Society. Available at: https://www.nauticalarchaeologysociety.org/the-fate-of-the-isca-collection (Accessed: 12 February 2020).

Hornell, J. (1970) Water transport: origins & early evolution. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.

McGrail, S. (2001) Boats of the World: from the Stone Age to Medieval times. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sampson, A. (2018) ‘The Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Southeastern Mediterranean and Their Contribution in the Neolithisation of the Aegean’, Archaeology and Culture, 1(1), pp. 11–36. doi: 10.22158/ac.v1n1p11.

Tzalas, H. E. (1995) ‘On the Obsidian Trail with a papyrus raft in the Cyclades’, in Tzalas, H. E. (ed.) Tropis III: 3rd International Symposium on Ship Construction in Antiquity. Athens: Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, pp. 441–470.

Tzamtis, A. I. (1990) ‘Papyrella: remote descendant of a middle stone age craft?’, in Tzalas, H. E. (ed.) Tropis II: 2nd International Symposium on Ship Construction in Antiquity Proceedings (1987). Delphi: Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, pp. 329–332.

The Boats of Iraq's Madan

The Madan, or Marsh Arabs of Iraq, depended heavily upon their boats, including canoes like this one under construction. Note the heavy, closely-spaced, roughly-formed frames, inner planking at the tops of the frames, and heavy thwarts. (Click any image to enlarge.)

Wilfred Thesiger was an upper-class Englishman, born the son of a diplomat in Addis Ababa in 1910 and educated in England at the best schools. After conducting expeditions and serving in the diplomatic service himself in Africa, he served with distinction in the Second World War then became a wanderer in Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia, immersing himself in traditional, tribal cultures and writing about them – and perhaps gathering intelligence on the side.

In the early and mid 1950s, he spent many months living and traveling in the marshy lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq. In his book about these travels, The Marsh Arabs, he explains that he found peace of mind living in undeveloped areas in general, and the less Europeanized and regimented, the better:

“(H)aving seen Iraqi Kurdistan I had no desire to go back. Travel was too restricted, rather like stalking in a Highland deer forest . . . . Admittedly the Marshes, for which I was now bound, covered a smaller area than Iraqi Kurdistan, but they were a world complete in itself, not a fragment of a larger world to the rest of which I was denied access.”

Thesiger was no anthropologist – The Marsh Arabs is a mixture of travelogue and memoir – but he was sensitive to culture and a keen and appreciative observer. Naturally, he saw, used, and reported on the Marsh Arabs' use of boats. Although every aspect of the lives of the Arabs who lived in the Iraqi marshes was regulated by their watery environment, we will concentrate on his observations directly related to their watercraft.

A Madan house, built of reeds and covered with mats, on a kibasha, or artificial island, also made of reeds and rushes. Buffalo were a mainstay for many of the Madan.

For context: The Marsh Arabs, or Madan, are Shia Moslems. (Northern Iraqis are Sunni.) Dotted with thousands of lakes and lagoons and cut through with innumerable permanent and seasonal waterways, large parts of the marshes dry out in summer and inundate after the rains begin further north. Many of the Madan’s homes and villages are built on tiny man-made islands, although a few areas of slightly higher elevation allow the construction of more permanent, conventional structures and small communities. Some of the Madan did not live in settled villages, but led completely nomadic lives.

A mudhif, or Madan meeting house, where the public business and pleasure of the community was conducted. Thesiger was entertained in many of these, which also served as guest houses. They too were built entirely of reeds.

Although I write about the culture indiscriminately in the past and present tenses, much of the marsh life Thesiger described is now past, destroyed in part by Sadam Hussein’s campaign against the Madan, which saw the swamps largely drained and destroyed. Some restoration efforts, however, are succeeding in bringing back parts of the habitat and with it, the culture.

Boat Types

A balam with a load of reeds.

With communities and individual homes sited on tiny, often temporary artificial islands, watercraft were used by everyone for every purpose, and small, plank-built one- and two-man canoes were ubiquitous. Larger boats were also common. Those used for the large-scale gathering of reeds and other commercial carriage were called balam, which were typically 30’ to 36’ long.

A tarada, with its incomparably graceful bow.

Taradas, which were indistinguishable from balams except for one detail, could only be owned by sheiks. Thesiger describes one of the first he saw:

“She was a beautiful craft that could carry as many as twelve people. Thirty-six feet long but only three and half feet at her widest beam, she was carvel-built, flat-bottomed and covered outside with a smooth coating of bitumen over the wooden planks. The front swept forwards and upwards in a perfect curve to form a long, thin, tapering stem; the stern too rose in a graceful sweep. Two feet of the stern and of the bows were decked; there was a thwart a third of the way forward, and a strengthening beam across the boat two thirds of the way forward. Movable boards covered the floor. The top part of the ribs was planked along the inside and studded with five rows of flat, round nail-heads two inches across. These decorative nails were the distinguishing mark of a tarada . . . .”

In spite of its reed-bundle construction, the zaima was a true boat, with a hull that displaced water by virtue of its water-tight shell, not because of the buoyancy of its materials.

Because the marshes are treeless, wood is expensive and even a small plank-built boat was beyond the means of some. Giant qasab reeds (Phragmites communis), however, were ubiquitous, and they were used to build bundle boats called zaima. Typically 10’ long and 2.5’ in beam, they were coated on the outside with bitumen to waterproof them and extend their life. Even so, they would last only a year, because, unlike on plank-built boats, the bitumen coating on a zaima could not be renewed. Even during Thesiger’s visits, the zaima was falling out of use due to a preference for wooden canoes among even the poor.

A young child's rudimentary reed raft.

This older child's reed raft is a bundle boat, floating by virtue of the reeds themselves. But with its rising bow, it mimics the form of the plank canoes of his elders. 

Thesiger mentions two more boat types in passing. Children would build rafts of rushes and paddle around on them. And two-masted boats, apparently much larger than balam, were used to trade large volumes of goods downstream with Basra.

Soon after he had bought himself a balam for 10 pounds sterling to use in traveling about the marshes, Thesiger received from his sheik-patron the extraordinary gift of a top-notch tarada, 36’ long, which he used henceforth. He hired local youth as crew and kept them with him for extended periods. To increase their loyalty, he did not pay them or treat them like employees. He was, in fact, more generous to them than would have been reasonable on a salary basis, but the arrangement allowed them to assert that they accompanied him as a matter of choice, respect, and friendship rather than a financial transaction.

Thesiger's tarada in choppy water.

As the only individual who was not a sheik to own a tarada – and an Englishman to boot – Thesiger was a notable individual in the marshes. The highly esteemed boatbuilder who made his tarada also made him paddles uniquely painted red. The boat and its crew were easily recognized for its distinctive paddles.

Boat Construction

Balams and taradas feature a multiplicity of relatively light, closely-spaced frames and heavy thwarts, with floorboards and end decks. The one in the foreground lacks the inner planking at the tops of the frames that Thesiger described in the quote above and that was also typical of the Madan's canoes.

No suitable wood was available in southern Iraq and every bit – even for items as small as paddles – had to be brought in from elsewhere. In boat construction, the preferred material for ribs was mulberry from Kurdistan. No mention is made of the type of wood used for planking, all of which was imported “from abroad.” The one key material that was obtained locally was bitumen, which was gathered from small pools where it naturally “bubbled out of the ground.” After being allowed to cool it was broken up into chunks for transport.

A balam being recoated with bitumen.

Boats had to be recoated annually, as the bitumen cracked off. Cracks could be temporarily sealed by heating the bitumen with a torch of reeds. But for proper annual maintenance, the entire coating would be removed with a chisel. Fresh, solid bitumen would be placed on a sheet of metal and melted over a fire, then spread onto the boat one quarter inch thick. Thesiger reports that the Madan believed that a coating applied in winter did not last long as a one applied in summer. This makes sense, as the boat’s planking would be warmer in summer, helping prevent the pitch from cooling too quickly to adhere properly.

Many of the Madan raised buffalo, and some of them acquired such a taste for pitch that they would eat it off the boats if allowed. This habit was apparently restricted to certain communities – perhaps buffalo are just as regional in their tastes as humans – and where it occurred, boats would be moored away from the shore rather than pulled up where buffalo could get at them.

With a tool kit limited to an adze, a hand saw and a bow drill, workmanship on most boats was rough.

Nonetheless, Madan boats, especially the larger balams and taradas, were fine and graceful. (The stem appears to be badly cranked to port, however.)

Most carpentry for boat construction and repairs was done with an adze. Thesiger offers this brief, sadly incomplete description:

“We watched an old man start on a canoe. He outlined the bottom with transverse slats of wood, an inch or so apart, and then nailed a single long plank down the centre. While we drank tea he fashioned the ribs, selecting suitable pieces of wood from a pile beside him. He used an adze, and his only other tools, a small saw and a bow drill, lay on the mat beside him with a heap of nails.”

Early stage of canoe building, with the floors and central plank in place.

Of the zaima, however, he provides a more detailed description: 

“First he made half a dozen tight bundles of five or six qasab reeds rather longer than the length of the proposed boat, and fastened them securely together side by side to form the keel, leaving eighteen inches free at both ends, which he bent upwards. He next bent five long reeds into the shape of a U, passed the middle among the loose ends of the keel, and laced them back to the keel itself. He repeated the process at either end alternately, until he had built up the sides and ends of the hull. This framework he stiffened by tying into it a number of ribs made from two or three willow wands. Bundles of a few reeds, fastened one below the other along the inside of the boat, covered the top half of the ribs and formed the inner planking. Finally, he wedged three stout sticks across the boat as thwarts and secured their ends in place with lumps of bitumen. The zaima was now ready to be coated outside with bitumen.”

Propulsion and Travel

A canoe being poled from the stern and padded from the bow through vegetation.

Boats were propelled by both pole and paddle as the situation required. Small fishing canoes would be punted with a fish spear, butt-end down. The spears were made of reeds, 12 feet long with five-pronged, barbed heads. Paddles were “shovel-shaped pieces of board nailed to lengths of bamboo” (actually reeds, not true bamboo). Those poles which were not fish spears were also simply straight sections of reed. Even such crude paddles were expensive to replace, and their owners would typically take them from their boats when they were ashore to protect them. Likewise with poles to which their owners had become accustomed. This was not to prevent theft, per se. Rather, it was accepted practice that anyone could take any paddle or pole that wasn’t in its owner’s immediate possession.

The method of poling balams and taradas was distinctive. In a boat with four men poling, two were in the bow and two in the stern. They poled in time, all of the same side of the boat, switching sides together as needed. In smaller boats with only two poling, the action was also coordinated on the same side. When carrying a full load of reeds, however, the crew of a balam would walk the boat along the gunwale rather than stand in place to pole. This would allow them to apply the full power of their legs to propulsion rather than relying entirely on their arms and upper bodies.

The solo paddler in the foreground canoe sits high in the stern. The tandem paddlers in the other boat are paddling on opposite sides.

When paddling a balam, two men would sit in the stern on the deck, one in front of the other. One would sit on the forward thwart, and one would kneel in the bows.

Passengers always sat in the bottom. The place of honor for a passenger was nearest the stern, leaning against the rear thwart. 

Some passages through the reedbeds were kept open artificially by driving buffalo through when the water was low. Thereafter, regular boat traffic would keep them open. Even so, during the dry season many channels would dry up, requiring much dragging through mud or even preventing passage. Some areas of swamp were dammed to create water impoundments for grain growing during the dry season. These dams interfered with free movement of boats through formerly open channels, forcing users to negotiate narrow, rapid sluices both up- and down-current, or even to be dragged over the dams. With a loaded, 35-foot-long balam, this was a difficult chore.

We'll continue with Thesiger's The Marsh Arabs in a future post, looking at how the Madan used their boats.

Quotations and images from The Marsh Arabs, Wilfred Thesiger, Penguin Classics, 2008. Copyright 1959. Originally published by Longmans, Green, 1964. This author thanks the copyright holders. Should they object to this use, he asks that they contact him through the blog comments. Their wishes will be respected.

Bundle Boats in Oman and Elsewhere

In the last week or so, two bundle boats from Oman came to my attention. First, a reader sent me a link to this travel article in Daily Kos, containing this photo:

Caption from original article: "This old, traditional, fishing boat is made from “barasti”, the aerial roots of the mangrove.  I took this shot on the beach near Sohar, the third largest city in the country located near the UAE border." (Click any image to enlarge.)

This brought to mind the following photo of a shasha, another Omani bundle boat, from Tim Severin’s The Sinbad Voyage, which I reproduced in a post several years ago. But unlike the boat in the Daily Kos photo, this one was made from palm fronds.

A shasha -- an Omani bundle boat made of palm fronds (Source: The Sinbad Voyage)

The very next day, an image of another Omani bundle boat, also apparently made of palm fronds, appeared in my Facebook feed. I found it surprising that, even in the present day and within the confines of a rather small country, two methods of bundle boat construction, based on different materials, remain in use.

Original caption: "These are fishing boats in Oman. They are filled with polystyrene and paddled out to sea. At night the catch is landed and the village builds bonfires to cook supper. Which is fish." (Posted by Jonathan Savill to the Facebook page Church of the Double-Bladed Paddle)

Bundle boats are not really boats: they are boat-shaped rafts that derive their buoyancy from the materials of their construction, which are themselves buoyant. In contrast, true boats achieve buoyancy enclosing air within a watertight shell (or, to phrase it another way, by excluding water from a watertight shell).

In most cases, bundle boats are made from soft, flexible materials like grass, rushes, reeds, or leaves, large amounts of which are wrapped with cordage into long bundles – generally pointed at both ends – and then tied to other bundles into a boat shape – i.e., pointed at the bow (and often, at the stern), and usually with something approximating either raised gunwales, also composed of bundles, or a cockpit formed by leaving a cavity in or between bundles.

Sticks, roots or branches may also be used for construction. In most cases, these are tied into bundles in a manner similar to that used for soft, flexible materials, but in others, they are arranged and lashed side-by-side and not truly bundled. This method reduces the craft’s buoyancy and freeboard, also reducing its payload and leaving the boatman’s bottom constantly wet, but it also reduces its weight and makes it easier to dry, probably prolonging its life.

A canoe-like bundle boat used on the Upper Nile by the Dinka and Shulluk people. In this example, ambatch branches are tied into bundles, then the bundles are tied to each other into a boat shape. Indigenous to parts of Africa, ambatch is a  large shrub or small tree with a lightweight wood. (Source: Hornell)

An ambatch canoe on Lobito Bay, Angola. In this example, the branches are not truly bundled, but are lashed side-by-side into a boat shape. This photo and the one above it are from Hornell's 1946 work, Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution. I don't know if such craft are still in use.

Absent gunwales or a cockpit, a bundle-built craft would have no “inside,” and lacking this characteristic, it would be a stretch to to call it boat-like. But that’s hardly a firm definition. Some models of papyrus bundle craft from ancient Egypt lack “insides” but are so boat-like in shape that it is hard to deny them the name bundle boat. (The models do have very low bundle-built toe-rails, however, which approximate the function of gunwales in a minimal way.)

Ancient Egyptian papyrus-bundle canoes pulling a trawl between them. (Source: Hornell)

Somewhat similar reed “boats” remain in use on Lake Titicaca, although they have substantial bundle gunwales, and thus a definite “inside.” What most distinguishes these craft from Egypt and Lake Titicaca from the Omani, Upper Nile and Lobito Bay types shown above, however, is the large volume of the bundles in comparison to the load, placing the boatman and his cargo well above the water and giving fair promise of keeping him and his cargo dry.

A fishing balsa made of totora reeds, on Lake Titicaca (Source: Hornell)

The bundle boat was an technological dead end in the sense that it apparently never evolved anywhere into a true boat. Although stick-built bundle boats appear superficially to be a step in that direction, they are still solidly rafts in concept.

But technological evolution is not the sole measure of past or present validity. The fact that bundle boats remain in use in more than one culture in the 21st century testifies to their practicality and the soundness of the concept. 

Sources: 

Basil Greenhill, Archaeology of the Boat

Paul Johnstone (Ed., Sean McGrail), The Sea-Craft of Prehistory

James Hornell, Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution

(and as noted in text)