The Ferriby Boats
Seacraft of the Bronze Age
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9675581 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lionel Casson, Edward Wright (0000-0002-0578-6570) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 33 |
| Publication date | 1992-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Classical World (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-8418 • E-ISSN: 1558-9234 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/4351195 |
| OpenAlex | W318006672 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
In 1937 the author, then aged 19, found some old timbers sticking out of the mud of the Humber shore at Ferriby. His amateur interest in archaeology helped him and his brother to identify them as remains of an ancient boat. Ferriby is Edward Wright's own account of his discoveries, excavations and research over 50 years since the first boat find. The importance of this, and the subsequent finds was only fully recognised after the World War II, when the new technique of carbon-14 dating revealed that the Ferriby Boats were built before 1000 BC. This makes them the oldest plank-built boats found anywhere in the world apart from Ancient Egypt and the Aegean; they predate any similar craft in Nothern Europe by half a millenium. And they present evidence for a style of boat building previously unknown, thus adding a completely new chapter to our knowledge of prehistoric boat building. The excavation and preservation of the boats presented many problems for Edward Wright and his fellow workers, not least the constant battle with mud and the tide, which was always threatening to sweep the boats away. Over the years he has pioneered methods of excavating and recording which have since become standard in the field of maritime archaeology. With the aid of a naval architect, he has now achieved a realistic reconstruction of the boats with estimates of its performance. They suggest a capacity for navigation at this time not previously imagined and add a new and fundamental dimension to the history of man's relationship with the sea
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Bronze · Bronze Age · Geography · History · Law, logistics, and international trade · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology
Shipwrights, Sailors and Society in the Middle Bronze Age of NW Europe
Deconstructing Reconstruction
Settlement and economy in a changing prehistoric lowland landscape
The Use and Significance of Socketed Axes During the Late Bronze Age
Tools and structures related to crop and processing of cereal in the protohistory at south of Iberian Peninsula
Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them ‒ Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art
The Dover Boat
Seascapes and Landscapes-the Siting of the Ferriby Boat Finds in the Context of Prehistoric Pilotage
The Re‐Assessment and Reconstruction of Excavated Boats
Morgawr
Some remarks on Romano-Celtic boat construction and Bronze Age wood technology
The Bartered Bride. Goldwork, Inheritance, and Agriculture in the Late Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula
Argonauts of the North Sea - a Social Maritime Archaeology for the 2nd Millennium BC
An ancient seascape
The social context of seafaring in the Bronze Age revisited
Ships and boats as archaeological source material
Plankboat skeuomorphs in Bronze Age logboats
The ‘Kilnsea-boat’, and some implications from the discovery of England's oldest plank boat remains
New AMS radiocarbon dates for the North Ferriby boats—a contribution to dating prehistoric seafaring in northwestern Europe
| Citations per year | 0.59 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1994 - 2019 (26) |
| Highly cited | No |