I JUST COULDN’T RESIST
... noting that English archaeologists and conservators have launched the an intensive conservation program to save the eight dugout canoes that have been discovered 5 meters below the surface in a buried riverbed at Must Farm near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire.
Examination of the boats – dating from 1600 to 1000BC – has so far revealed that Bronze Age Britons developed a much wider range of dug-out boat design than previously thought.
Four of the eight craft were extremely light-weight – with sides on average just two centimetres thick. Two of these light-weight boats had been deliberately made from less heavy, more easily carved, timber – lime and alder. Fast and easily manoeuvrable, they would have accommodated just one or two crew.
The other four boats discovered were robust, heavy-duty vessels all made of oak. One was 8.4 metres long and 85 cm wide – and would have been capable of carrying up to 20 people or, alternatively, up to a tonne of cargo.
Another heavy-duty dugout, capable of carrying up to ten people or up to half a tonne of cargo, was richly decorated with criss-cross designs. It is the first decorated boat ever found in Britain.
The parallels with the ongoing conservation of a nearly-complete, seven-metre long Maori wooden waka tikai, or river canoe that was recently found in Muriwai Beach, Northland, New Zealand are too interesting to let pass unnoticed.
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