Dugout canoes of the Altmark

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The dugout canoes of the Altmark in Saxony-Anhalt are among the rarer finds. The country's lakes and rivers hardly appeared archaeologically for a long time. In 2003 a fish fence and a dugout canoe were discovered in the Arendsee . The parts of the boat not embedded in sea ​​chalk in the area of ​​the bulkheads showed the first signs of decomposition. The slightly higher stern facing the bank was also attacked. The scientific documentation of the dugout canoe and its recovery took place in 2004. Since no other finds were observed in the vicinity of the boat, a single find was to be assumed.

Altmarkkreis Salzwedel

The dugout canoe discovered in the northwest of the Arendsee in the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel was about three meters deep. The almost completely preserved boat rested about 80 m from the northwest bank, weighted down with field stones, on the lake bed. At the side was a spherical bottom vessel from the 14th century. The annual ring and wood species analysis gave the result: ash wood with a felling date of around / after 1389.

description

The boat has a length of 4.18 m. The largest width at the bow is 0.52 m. The stern is 0.4 m wide and the hull is 0.33 m high in the middle. Both ends are rounded like a spoon and tapering off flat. The middle area has two transverse bulkheads with an edge thickness of 5 cm, which form a box (internal dimensions 40 cm × 43 cm) and separate the rear boat area. The boat wall is 3–5 cm thick and the cross section of the dugout canoe is semicircular. On many parts of the hull, traces of machining of a flat hollow dome can be seen. Since most dugout canoes are made of oak , ash ones are an exception.

The Arendsee boat will have served as a fishing vessel, as the area separated by transverse bulkheads forms a kind of fish box . The flat, rounded bow was well suited for landing on flat banks in the north of the Arendsee. The dugout canoe was probably used as a fishing boat for net and trap fishing from the Zießauer Ufer.

fishing

Although historical information on fishing in the Arendsee is unknown, connections can be made using documents that identify the lake as a monastery property. The villages around the lake were owned by the Arendsee Monastery, founded by the Benedictine nuns in 1183 . The fishing rights are more clearly shown in the confirmation document for the monastery from the year 1208. The discovery of a fish fence in 2003, the 14 C-dating of the late Neolithic between 2700 and 2600 BC. BC, shows that the lake was constantly used for fishing.

District of Stendal

The Arendsee boat is by no means unique in the Altmark . A boat fragment that was found in 1970 and no longer exists comes from the Elbe near Arneburg . Remains of two dugout canoes from a gravel pit near Bertingen , which were delivered in the 1970s, are stored in the Wolmirstedt Museum . In 1936 a gripper caught a dugout canoe in the Zehrengraben near Bömenzien , which ended up in the Osterburg district museum . The boat Kuhlhausen was in an oxbow of 1934 Havel discovered and is located in the Museum Genthin . A find from 2007 comes from Neukirchen , which was recovered from the Schwarzen Wehl, an arm of the Elbe. In the Landesfundarchiv, the local file of Nitzow gives a reference to a dugout canoe from the Havel, which used to be in the Havelberg Museum .

District of Jerichower Land

In 2005, a dugout canoe that was washed ashore on the east bank of the Elbe was seized near Schartau . Two dugout canoes came out of the bed of the Stremme (tributary of the Havel) near Schlagenthin in 1967 and 1973 and can be seen in the Museum Genthin.

context

The series could be continued with sites in Brandenburg and Lower Saxony. However, measured against the millennia of inland navigation practiced, only a few dugouts have been discovered. The oldest German boat find was unearthed in 1785 in the Teufelsmoor in Lower Saxony . However, only some of the pieces that were found have survived. The state monument office dated the boats accessible in Saxony-Anhalt between 2007 and 2009. The oldest dugout canoe in the region is Carolingian (8th century Schartau, district of Jerichower Land ), all the others were from the Middle Ages to the modern era, with a focus on the 12th and 13th centuries. and 15./16. Century made; the youngest is from the 18th century (Bertingen, Stendal district ).

Dugouts have been known since the Mesolithic . They were created by hatching a tree trunk, sometimes with the help of fire. They were important parts of the history of traffic in prehistory and early history . As part of the transport of people and goods, the flat, agile boats were used in almost every region. They enabled transport by water, as there was no road network until modern times. Dugouts are also one of the basic tools in inland fishing. Their economic potential is shown by their continued use parallel to the development of plank boats, in some regions until the 19th century.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Praeterea quicquid inter stagnum, quod dicitur antiquum Arnesse, et fluvium, qui dicitur Byndin, et provinciam lynegowe habuerunt, vel habere possunt, in silvis, in pascuis, in piscacionibus, in venacionibus." (Also everything that you between the standing Waters that are called the old Arendsee, the river Binde and the landscape of Lemgow have owned or may have used forest, pasture, fishing and hunting)

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