Saturday, 31 December 2016
Boats at the Hudson Anthropology Museum 1
The Hudson Museum a brand new museum associated with the department of anthropology at the University of Maine, Orono (near Bangor). Rather small, it nonetheless has fine exhibits, is well worth a visit, and has a surprising number of boat-related artifacts on display.
I'll try to cover several of their boat artifacts in a series of posts. For now, we'll look at an interesting ceramic boat model from the Salinar culture of Peru's Moche Valley.
I don't quite follow the Kon-Tiki reference, since that raft was made of logs, not bundles of reeds. The model's shape is reminiscent of a reed float composed of one longer central bundle flanked by two shorter bundles. It's also quite reminiscent of a log jaganda -- a Brazilian raft-boat that I've blogged about several times. I'm not suggesting that the model depicts a jaganda -- only noting the similarity.Salinar Stirrup Vessel, c. 500-2000 BCThe Salinar were precursors of the Vicus, developing in Moche Valley. The vessel depicts a man on a reed raft, similar to the ones studied by Thor Heyerdahl and used as models for Kon-Tiki.
This isn't just a simple model, however. It's a "whistling jar," a noisemaker or musical instrument of a type made in a great variety of styles and designs by this culture, depicting people, animals, vegetables, and in abstract designs. The diagram below shows how it works.
12:00 Insufficient air supply
2:00 Vacuum that pulls back air bubbles
6:00 Water that is passing into the second chamber is interrupted by returning air
8:00 Second chamber
9:00 Water level
9:30 (inside jar): Returning air
11:00 (top) Escaping air
11:00 (bottom) Whistle
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