Archaeology of Dugout Canoes in Global Perspective

Summary

This is an abstract from the "What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Dugout canoes, typically made by felling trees then hollowing out logs by burning and chipping, are a widespread form of watercraft throughout the world, and one with great antiquity. There are archaeologically known dugouts from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, as well as from Australia and Oceania. Early examples of dugouts date to as much as 8,000 years ago, dugouts have persisted even as other kinds of watercraft have been devised and developed, and people still make dugouts for water travel in some parts of the world today. This paper introduces a symposium about the archaeology of dugout canoes, canals and portages associated with dugout canoe travel, replicative studies of building dugouts, and modeling patterns of canoe travel in the past by outlining a global perspective on the significance of this form of watercraft to peoples of the past. Many papers in the symposium concentrate on dugout canoes in particular areas of the Americas, and we therefore review here some ethnohistoric and archaeological background from these areas. We also consider the contributions that archaeology of dugouts and dugout canoe travel in the Americas can make to broader conversations about the archaeology of traditional and vernacular forms of watercraft worldwide.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39811.0