2 au 4 avril 2024

Le colloque "Après le naufrage...Récupération , réemploi et recyclage des épaves" organisé conjointement par le ministère de la Culture et de Drassm se tiendra du 2 au 4 avril 2024 au musée national de la marine à Paris.

Le mardi 2 avril, P. Markoulaki présentera la communication suivante:

Recycling and old bits of boats : the meaning of prehistoric logboat fragmentation

Although under-represented in terms of quantity of the examples known to date, there is evidence to suggest that Iron Age logboats were intentionally dismantled and their fragments re-used. The deliberate dismantling of a logboat in mortuary and ritual contexts may have had symbolic connotations, but can we postulate such symbolic concerns for the dismantling of logboats whose fragments were functionally re-used?

The motivation of such treatment seems to have been pragmatic; the raw material an old logboat could offer for re-use may have been important enough to have led to such post-use treatment and disposal of the boat. But on the other side of the coin it is equally possible that this pragmatic motivation may have integrated symbolic concerns.

On the basis of the depositional and landscape contexts of re-used Iron Age logboat fragments examined, it becomes apparent that these fragments may have been as much functionally re-used as ritually deposited as offerings; this is clearly a case where function and symbolism are parallel factors of significance.

But what is the symbolism here? And what may have happened to the rest of the fragmented hulls? My proposed contribution aims to present this small but important set of data and to suggest a hermeneutic approach aiming at the identification of such finds as well as the better understanding of the motives and motivations of the act of logboat fragmentation and subsequent re-use of the resulting fragments.