Bronze Age Shipbuilding

Indian Ocean maritime history goes back a long time. Trade and fishing industries of ancient civilizations instigated people to explore the seas and develop techniques in shipbuilding and navigation – the earliest ones would have been meant to sail near the coast, and then others already through the deep seas. The archeological and iconographic evidence available today indicates that Arabs and Persians would have already been sailing through the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman during the Bronze Age (about two thousand years BC). The question that scholars ask at this point is not so much whether, but how sailors managed to complete these voyages at such an early stage of history, as well as the kind of technology that may have been involved.

To try and access this information, a group of researchers from NYU Abu Dhabi and Zayed University is working together with a team of shipwrights from Kerala, India, in the reconstruction of a boat from the Bronze Age. The process is challenging, for there is no existing shipwreck from this period – the reconstruction has therefore to be based on every piece of evidence that may help to elucidate the materials and techniques used at the time. These include ancient miniature models, lists of goods recorded in clay tablets and indigenous ship building techniques. The final outcome of the project will be an 8-meter vessel made with materials such as bitumen and wood, or goat hair in the case of the sails. The entire reconstruction process will result in more than that, in the sense that it will provide researchers with a more solid understanding of the maritime technology existing in the Gulf region during the Bronze Age. Once it is finished, the ship will be tested on water and, who knows, perhaps even sailed in the deep sea. [Inês Bénard]