Mesolithic Log boats.

As the hollowing out of The Eurybia continues I thought I would take this time to talk a little bit about Mesolithic logboats in general.

The two oldest logboats ever found are those from Pesse (Netherlands) and Noyen-sur-Seine (France). Both date to the Mesolithic period and are fantastic examples of log boats. Both of the boats were made from pine trunks (as is The Eurybia), as time went on the type of wood changed and by the Bronze Age oak was the clear favorite choice for log boat construction.

Pesse is about 2.98 in length while the example from Noyen-sur-Seine was nearer 4m. Both had a rounded bow and most likely an integral rectangular stern. The sides and bottom of the boats measured 50-80mm thick though other examples of logboats are thinner still measuring only 20mm thick. It is hoped that The Eurybia will be finished with sides just as thin.

Other examples of Mesolithic logboats comes from Denmark where they are just as beautifuly made. Some have evidence for hearths and fire places in them and this has been associated with night spearing of eels. This evidence gives us some indication of the role of logboats during this period.

There are sadly no examples of logboats from the British Isles dating back to the Mesolithic, though it is thought that there may be evidence for their construction at a number of different sites including Bouldnor Cliff, Isle of White, Hampshire. It is hoped that with the help of The Eurybia project we may better understand the debitage created when building logboats.

For more information on logboats throughout the ages you can not go wrong with Sean McGrail's book: Boats of the World; From Stone Age to Medieval Times.    

A splitt-ingly good idea!

With the method of burning out the inside of the log not going so well and our period tools broken or having not been delivered it was time to think of a new way to approach hollowing out The Eurybia. Looking through our research library I discovered the answer........ we could split the wood out.

The process of splitting out wood from the inside of The Eurybia. Oak wedges were hammered into the heart wood of The Eurybia to split out big chunk of the inside.

Evidence for splitting wood in prehistory dates back to the Neolithic (4,000-2,200BC) where large timbers that have been split have been discovered on monumental sites. Evidence for this method of wood working in the Mesolithic was recently non existent but a discovery on the excavations of Bouldner Cliff, Isle of White, Hampshire, have found potential evidence for its use in this time period.

During excavation on this now underwater Mesolithic settlement site archaeologists discovered 'a large timber of oak which has been tangentially split'. With the lack of any evidence of large monumental sites or buildings from this time period it has been theorised that this method of reducing wood could come from the building of a boat. So we thought lets give it a go!

Placing the wedge into position before hammering it along the grain of the wood to split out the inside of the log.

 Seasoned oak wedges were made (it was thought that oak would have been the material used by Mesolithic man to make his wedges as it is very solid), the grain runs vertically through the wedge to give it as much strength as possible. These wedges were then positioned into the log and hammered into the heart wood. The wedges worked very well and removed large chunks of the inside of the log with each go. This looks like a very feasible method for Mesolithic man to have hollowed out his boats.

A section of wood that has been tangentially split from the inside of The Eurybia. 

After feeling very low due to our inability to carry on with the boat build using authentic tools and methods discovering this method and knowing that is a potential method used by Mesolithic man has restored our drive and it also helps that it removes a lot more material with much less effort than adzing alone!

In the right hand is a single section of wood removed by using wedges, in the left is the shavings that were removed in the same time it took to split off the right hand chunk.

Archaeological evidence from the Bouldnor Cliff site, Isle of White, Hampshire suggests that Mesolithic man tangentially split wood in order to reduce its size. Our experiment has shown that this method of wood working is able to be used in logboat construction. We hope to continue using this method and producing samples of split wood to compare with other archaeological examples to support our method and its use in prehistoric boat building.

For more information on the Bouldnor Cliff excavations please visit: http://www.maritimearchaeologytrust.org/bouldnor.

NEWS:

With the deadline of the boat launch getting ever closer, still waiting for the tranchet axes and all our other period tools being broken The Eurybia Project will continue with the use of modern tools until a time when we have the materials to continue without them. This will not effect any research goals of the project and will be recorded in any further literature concerning the project. The difficulties that the project is encountering are all helping answer questions about prehistoric log boat construction, just not in the way that was thought it would.

Frustration!!!

The last week on the project has been a nightmare and things have almost got to the stage of despair! Everything that can go wrong seems to be going wrong and progress is very slow!

After last years 'Promethues' project it was decided that 'The Eurybia' would be built using fire and the result would be as good as those in 'The Prometheus'. This was not the case. After a number of small scale burn experiments the fire seemed to do very little to the parent log. The fire appeared to only burn the outer sap would but not penetrate the heart wood underneath. This led to further research into ethnographic log boat construction. This led us to the belief that we were being very impatient and that the burning we had done so far was no where near long enough.

A fire was set all along the log and would be left and attended for 48 hours to see if it was due to our impatience the fire appeared to be making no impression on the parent log.

  It was decided that a fire would be set on the parent log and the burn allowed to continue for 48 hours. This would mean constant supervision so sleeping bags were packed and we moved into the Mesolithic Tepee.

Early morning in the Mesolithic Tepee after tending the fire all night.

The burn was divided into two section on the log, one was a wood fire the other a charcoal fire to examine the difference in fuel used during the burn. The fires were kept going over two days and nights before being cleared off and the damage assessed.

The over night burn.

Once the 48 hours was up the embers of the fire were removed and the effect of the fire tested. Disappointingly and frustratingly the fire, even though having burnt for 48 hours had had almost no effect on the parent log.

One section of the log after the embers had been removed from the over night burn.

After clearing the burnt area it was possible to see just how little effect the burn had on the parent log. 

 It was appearing that the parent log of The Eurybia was too green to burn with the fires set on top of the log. This brought to light that fire may well not have been used to construct prehistoric logboats if the log being used was green. The lack of progress with the use of fire on the green log could also be due to lack of experience of the process as many documents describe historical log boat builders as constructing their boats out of green wood using fire.

For the moment the project has slowed down as we start hand hewing out the log without the aid of fire. This has slowed the progress of the build down and disheartened our team but we are still clinging on to our launch deadline and will be working hard to meet it.

Day12!

Over the weekend it became apparent that our method of burning the parent log was not very effective, for the amount of time we were spending burning the log we were not seeing the return we would like in the amount of material removed. To counter this today we tried a different method to see if we could make the process more efficient.

Covering the burning area on the parent log with turf in order to retain the heat and concentrate it onto the log and not let the heat escape.

It was decided that the possible reason for the inefficiency was the loss of heat into the air and not down onto the parent log underneath. To help concentrate the heat downwards we created a clamp kiln over the top of the burning area. This would help retain the heat and focus the heat onto the log underneath. The log was left to burn for the same time as the uncovered fire over the weekend to compare the results.

Unfortunately the clamp kiln did not help with the efficiency of the process and very little burning occurred.

 When the turf was removed we were disappointed to find that there was no major difference between what had been burn underneath the turf and what had been burnt over the weekend without the turf. The heart wood of the log refuses to char enough to remove any decent quantity of material. Disheartened we have gone back to the drawing board and will be testing out a new theory over the next couple of days so please stay tuned.

Day 9!

TGIF! Well that would be if it wasn't such a busy day!! With a film crew on the farm and having to take part in an interview as well as make props for their film as well as continue work on The Eurybia project it was a good job that we had help in the form of volunteers from Help for Heroes Recovery Center, Tedworth House.

The volunteers from Help for Heroes Recovery Center, Tedworth House, Wiltshire listening to an introduction talk by project leader and master boat builder Ryan Watts.

 The volunteers from Help for Heroes Recovery Center, Tedworth House, Wiltshire, will be working on their own boat during the duration of the project, The Epimetheus. This is a smaller boat than its sister The Eurybia but explores a new and exciting method of prehistoric log boat building.

When following the process of log boat building in prehistory the selection of the tree to be used as the parent log has always been seen to be of high importance. Pictures often show 'religious' men accompanying the boat builders into the woods to choose the biggest, straightest tree to fell in order to build their boat. This would be no easy feat when looking at the tools that were available to prehistoric man. The Epimetheus will challenge this popular theory about log selection.

A volunteer from Help for Heroes Recovery Center, Tedworth House, Wiltshire looses his head in the base of The Epimetheus.

The parent log for The Epimetheus was felled due to a cauliflower fungus growing at its base. This makes the tree rot from the inside out. The tree in question was felled due to health and safety reasons but if left to its own devices the tree would have come down in the next big storm. The rot inside is nice and soft and can be easily removed making the hollowing of the log a lot easier than a tree without the rot. Archaeological evidence shows that prehistoric man could place watertight transoms at the base of their log boats to stop the water flowing in. We hope to demonstrate that it was not always necessary to choose a healthy tree but could utilise naturally fallen trees and reduce their work load.

The volunteers from Help for Heroes made wedges from hazel rods to remove the rot from the log and also had a chance to work on The Eurybia, removing the days burning from the parent log.

Removing the heart rot from The Epimetheus's parent log with a sharpened hazel stick.

Removing char from The Eurybia using an Oyster shell, a method well documented in ethnographic sources.

   It was a very productive day and great fun was had by volunteers at the farm and the volunteers from Help for Heroes. They made good progress on The Epimetheus and will be back soon to carry on their work.

Day8!

Today was the start of a new phase of The Eurybia project. With the log 'flipped' yesterday we were now able to start the experiments on hollowing out methods. The log has been divided up into four different sections (1-4) and each section will be used to test different methods of construction.

Showing one of the four sections The Eurybia has been divided into. This is Section2 and will be used to test different Mesolithic tools on removing charred remains.

Work began today on Section2. This section would be hollowed using fire to char the wood and then a range of different Mesolithic tools to remove the charred remains. The difficult part is starting to char the parent log without there being a flat surface to put a fire onto. We got over this problem by holding a burning log on top of the parent log and allowed the embers to catch the parent log on fire.

Holding the embers of a burning log on top of the parent log to catch it alight.

Blowing oxygen on to the embers to increase the heat and help catch the parent log alight.

Once the parent log started to burn by itself a bigger fire could be built on top to char a bigger area. Once an area had been burnt it was time to try and remove some of the burnt wood. This was done today with an antler pick.

The antler pick in question. From a Red deer these are common finds in prehistoric finds assemblages. They can be used for all manner of jobs from mining to adzing. 

The pick was closely photographed before use and its wear will be monitored as it is used. As we began using the pick we re-learnt a lesson from last years boat build. Even if an area looks well charred that char may not penetrate the log very far. This was the case today, despite the parent log looking well burnt the burning had not gone deeply into the log making removing anything very difficult. It was however a good chance to work with a very new type of tool and reminded us that we need to burn a lot longer if we want to  remove any substantial about of material.

The antler pick in use.

Tomorrow the fire will be set on Section2 at the start of the day so by the afternoon we can really make a dent in the parent log. We will also try using more, different, Mesolithic tools. We are also looking forward to having volunteers from Help for Heroes recovery centre, Tedworth House, Wiltshire who will begin work on The Epimetheus!