Complex Canoes: Technological Innovation and the Origins of Scandinavia’s Maritime Society

During the Bronze Age (1700 to 500 BCE), drastic changes took place in Scandinavia that laid the foundation for the maritime focused society that came to characterize the region for the rest of our history. Starting during the Early Bronze Age, a new class of powerful chiefs began to make long-distance voyages across the Baltic Sea and west, bringing both foreign riches and new ideas back to the Nordic region. Central to this maritime way of life was a completely new type of boat, the sewn plank canoe, which enabled longer voyages than older log and reed boats but required more materials and labor to build. This project examines the hypothesis that the knowledge and materials involved in boat construction were crucial for early chiefs to be able to strengthen and expand their power. To do this, we will use cutting-edge techniques to date ancient boat fragments and map the economic networks that were involved in their construction.

Intact finds of plank canoes from the Bronze and Iron Ages are extremely rare. Dozens of small canoe fragments, however, have been found all over Scandinavia and are currently curated museums around the region. Many of these fragments have not been studied for over three decades and most have never been dated. Using modern scientific techniques, we will be able to glean far information from these archaeological boat fragments than was possible when they were first discovered. We will date all boat fragments that may come from the Bronze or Early Iron Age and determine the types of wood and tar that were used in the boats' manufacture to piece together the economic networks that supplied early boat builders. To do this we will use scientific methods such as pollen analysis, chemical composition analysis, and DNA studies of tar clumps. The results of our project will also serve as a starting point for a global comparison of the impact of plank boat technologies that will place Scandinavian prehistory at the center of the international discussion on the emergence of social complexity in early maritime societies.