Friday, January 29, 2016

Log Boats and Cultural Connections in Bronze Age Europe

According to this article, Bronze Age log boats from all across northern Europe look very much the same. Above, one from the Must Farm site in Britain; below, from Denmark. You might think that is unremarkable, because how many way are there to make a boat from a log? But actually these look nothing like log canoes from North America. So perhaps the argument that the similarity of these boats implies close cultural contact makes sense. And anyway I always enjoy it when archaeologists stretch the frame of the argument a little, using artifacts that people generally don't know what to make of.

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