Collaborating to reconstruct a Mesolithic logboat

All the recent excitement of experimental archaeology and Mesolithic woodworking techniques culminated in a final public event for the year.

The Mesolithic woodworking team and The Log.

On Friday 28 August, a team of archaeologists and volunteers put their newly acquired woodworking skills to use at the breathtaking Exbury Gardens in the New Forest. To emphasize the maritime nature of the project, we were accompanied by the Maritime Discovery Bus, a mobile museum exhibition made possible through the EU-funded Common Cultural Connections project.

Using flint, wood, bone, and antler tools, we started constructing a logboat with Mesolithic techniques. The log was cut from a semi-seasoned oak tree that had been felled at Exbury Gardens. The tree was forked, and since we only had one day to attempt the construction project, the kind folks at Exbury removed the 'fork' to give us a head start. Even so, we may have bitten off more than we could 'hew'!

Maritime Archaeology Trust's
Discovery Bus joined us for the event
to better contextualize the underlying
maritime nature of what we were
attempting to do.

The logboat-to-be is a smaller-scale version of the oak watercraft suspected to have been constructed at the now-submerged site of Bouldnor Cliff some 8,000 years ago. By re-creating this logboat, we can better understand how our Mesolithic ancestors interacted with their forest resources to adapt to an increasingly marine environment. During this period of rapid climate change, people were becoming more reliant on watercraft for travel -- to move over widening rivers and lakes, and across newly formed seas.

On the end of the The Log, you can see a
patch of rot, which we thought would help us
remove wood more efficiently -
and with enough time, it would have!

Visitors to the event had a unique chance to learn more about these prehistoric construction processes, but we still have a long way to go before the logboat is ready to take out for a spin! Splitting and hollowing the oak, and even burning it, proved a much more difficult task than any of us anticipated.

We are in the planning phase of extending this one-day event into a longer-term, more comprehensive foray into the reality of Mesolithic boatbuilding techniques. For more information, or to see how you can get involved, please let us know!

After busting up flint nodules, the flakes were heated in a
fire pit and then put to work burning wood out from
The Log. Here, Ryan Watts of Butser Ancient Farm uses
a flint adze to remove the charred wood. A process like
this is time-consuming, but the labor involved is minimal.