16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

119 Zadar, Croatia | 26 September – 1 October 2021 Krzysztof Zamościński National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, Poland Expanded logboats in the world – the ethnological perspective Contemporary expanded logboats arouse interest of many archaeologists. For them they are helpful for interpretations of archaeological finds, but also some- times for formulating hypotheses concerning their place in a regional boatbuild- ing tradition and their influence on its development. At the same time archaeol- ogist researching north-European finds usually limit themselves to placing them only in northern Euro-Asiatic area of distribution of those expanded logboats. They rarely express awareness of wider distribution of this technique of building logboats, particularly the existence of the parallel southern range along Asiatic Sea coasts. Author would like to change this perspective. The article will be a look on the expanded logboats from ethnological point of view. The author will try to record every available information on their occur- rence in the contemporary world and in old written sources as well as archaeo- logical sources. It will describe techniques of expanding logboats. The attention will be focused on the similarities and the differences in application of this tech- nique depending on a place of its occurrence. Using the created map of ranges of occurrence, it will research their relation to the maritime and river routs and possible contacts among communities using this technique, so in consequence a possibility of migration of the concept of the expanding logboat. The article will also explore the possibility of creating this technical solution independently in different places. Finally, the author will consider the influence of the created picture on existing interpretations and hypothesis. The author will use ethnohis- torical and ethnogeographical methods in his research. Moreover, he will support his research with his own experiences gained during the building of an expanded logboat in Estonia in 2000 and he will use photographical material recorded there.