Boat building tools
Ethnographic and archaeological evidence has shown that boats have been constructed using a simplistic tool-kit. For example, Durham (1960, 61) has suggested that the Chumash Indians of California built seagoing sewn plank boats with no other tools but flints and whalebone wedges. Others propose that in parts of Oceania boats were built with stone and bone tools. (Johnstone, 1980; Greenhill, 1976) Tools have also been made from alternative materials other than the traditional stone, bronze and iron of Europe. For example boring tools were fashioned from bird bones (McGrail, 1987, 148) and shells have been used in the axe, adze and scraping roles in Polynesia. (Hornell, 1948, 49) Heal (1978) has also emphasised that some metal and stone tools required hafts of wood or bone to obtain their full function. Worked timber has survived from the Neolithic age and experiments have shown that flint and stone tools can be used to fell, convert and shape wood. (Orme & Coles, 1983) The Bronze Age also reaps woodworking evidence in the form of planked boats and woodworking tools. From the Roman period and later many tools have shapes and constituent parts generally similar to modern ones. However some of the names given to prehistoric tools disguise their multi-function. For example, McGrail (1981, 150) suggests that some so-called axes may also be hafted and used as adzes and certain socketed tools may be used with a pushing motion, like a chisel, instead of, or in addition to a chopping motion such as an axe or adze. Many Viking settlement areas have also reaped woodworking equipment (Figure 2.11) and documentary and visual evidence such as the Bayeux Tapestry refers to and portrays boat-building activities.
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