Logboat Repairs in Britain and Ireland: A New Typology

Abstract

AbstractRepairs in British and Irish archeological logboats have been recorded and described by several authors, and the wide variety of repair methods present has been noted, but otherwise, repairs have received little analytical attention. This may be a result of three factors: (1) failure to recognize the significance of repair as social action; (2) the absence of a convenient source that consolidates repair data from all countries of the Atlantic Archipelago; and (3) the inadequacy of existing typologies of logboat repairs. Because they fail to recognize the distinctiveness of certain types of repairs and to organize repair methods into logical categories consistent with the data, existing typologies are of little help in comparing archeological examples or in analyzing repair methods for spatial or temporal distributions. This paper argues that logboat repairs can be socially significant; tabulates all known repairs in British and Irish logboats; describes the situations or events that make repairs necessary; and proposes a typology of repair based on general mechanical or engineering responses to logboat damage. It also presents findings of spatial and temporal distributions of some aspects of repairs.