Dugout canoe from Moossee

The dugout canoe from Moossee is the oldest boat found in Switzerland . The dugout canoe made of linden wood - Bronze Age boats are mostly made of oak trunks - at least 5.80 m long and 65 cm wide was built in the middle of the 5th millennium BC. Dated BC, is therefore older than the oldest known lakeside settlement in Switzerland in Egolzwil . The floor and the only preserved outer wall are extremely thin. The outer wall is only one centimeter thick.

The boat was found during excavations in July 2011 in Moosseedorf in the canton of Bern . The recovery was facilitated by two fractures of the wreck that were found in the sediment of the moss lake . The boat was paneled in three parts and lifted with the help of a mobile scaffold and a chain hoist. The head of the excavation was Marco Amstutz, who took on this role as head of the excavation at the lakeside settlement. From 2011 to 2013, since there are no such facilities in Switzerland, the boat was to be taken to the conservation laboratory of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz so that it would be available for exhibitions in 2014.

As part of the project "Carrying the boat back to the lake" by the municipality of Moosseedorf, the dugout canoe was brought into an outdoor showcase at Moossee in 2018 in cooperation with the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern and Groenlandbasel GmbH, where it has been on display since then.

literature

Albert Hafner, Christian Harb, Marco Amstutz, John Francuz, Friederike Moll-Dau: Moosseedorf, Moossee Oststation, Strandbad. New lido, pile dwellings and the oldest boat in Switzerland , in: Archeologie Bern / Archéologie bernoise (2012) 71–77, v. a. P. 73–76 (section The dugout find from 2011 ) ( online , PDF)
Geneviève Lüscher : Switzerland's oldest dugout canoe. Preservation in a special laboratory in Germany. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 11, 2013.
Christian Harb: Moossee. An overview of 160 years of pile dwelling research. Booklets on archeology in the canton of Bern 2, Bern 2017, ISBN 978-3-9524659-3-6 .

Web links

Moosseedorf, Moossee lido on the website of the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern
Dugout canoe Moosseedorf on the website of the municipality Moosseedorf
The dugout canoe from Moossee is back where it was found on the website of the municipality of Moosseedorf

Individual evidence

↑ Carrying the boat back to the lake , funding application (PDF).

[1] Carrying the boat back to the lake , funding application (PDF).