The Ferriby Boats: Seacraft Of The Bronze Age (routledge Library Editions: Archaeology)

In 1937 the author, then aged 19, found the remains of an ancient boat at Ferriby on the Humber shore. This book is his own account of his discoveries, excavations and research over 50 years since the first boat find. The importance of this and the subsequent finds was only fully recognised after World War II, when the new technique of carbon-14 dating revealed that the Ferriby Boats were built before 1000 BC. This makes them the oldest plank-built boats found anywhere in the world apart from Ancient Egypt and the Aegean; they predate any similar craft in Northern Europe by half a millennium and present evidence for a style of boat building previously unknown. The excavation and preservation of the boats presented many problems, not least the constant battle with mud and the tide. Over the years the author pioneered methods of excavating and recording which have since become standard in the field of maritime archaeology. This book also presents a realistic reconstruction of the boats with estimates of its performance. They suggest a capacity for navigation at this time not previously imagined and add a new and fundamental dimension to the history of man's relationship with the sea. This book is one of a series of volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986 which addressed world archaeology in its widest sense, investigating how people lived in the past and how and why changes took place to result in the forms of society and culture which exist now. The series brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds who could lend their own expertise to the discussions. This book is an exploration of the way in which the animal world features in the works of art of a variety of cultures of different times and places. Contributors have adopted a variety of perspectives for looking at the complex ways in which past and present humans have interrelated with beings they classify as animals. Some of the approaches are predominantly economic and ecological, some are symbolic and others philosophical or theological. All these different views are included in the interpretation of the artworks of the past, revealing some of the foci and inspirations of cultural attitudes to animals. Originally published 1989 Experimental archaeology is a new approach to the study of early man. By reconstructing and testing models of ancient equipment with the techniques available to early man, we learn how he lived, hunted, fought and built. What did early man eat? How did he store and cook his food? How did he make his tools and weapons and pottery? Such everyday questions, besides the more dramatic mysteries associated with the monuments of Easter Island and Stonehenge and the colonization of Polynesia, can all be explored by experiment A comprehensive discussion of what can be established about the culture and daily life of medieval Germany. Besides methodological questions, the author considers what can be learnt about the history of settlement and architecture, of technology, of economic and social matters, of churches and missions, and of population, diet and vegetation. This volume develops a new approach to plant exploitation and early agriculture in a worldwide comparative context. The studies throughout the book come from a worldwide range of geographical contexts, from the Andes to China and from Australia to the Upper Mid-West of North America. Originally published 1989. An account of the author's discoveries, excavations and research into ancient boats. The text a provides a realistic reconstruction of Bronze Age boats which suggests a capacity for navigation previously unthought and adds a new dimension to the history of man's relationship with the sea.