From Pacific Islands: Peabody Museum #7

Let's look at some more maritime-related objects from several Pacific cultures on display at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. (Earlier posts in this series on the Peabody looked at Baffinland Inuit, Aleut, other Alaskan Eskimo, and Chinook, Coast Salish, et al, other Pacific Northwest exhibits, and a large stitch-planked monohull canoe from the Solomon Islands.)

This canoe model from New Zealand was collected prior to 1850. Its origin is probably Maori. The base of the hull appears to be carved from a single log, as would have been the real canoe that it represented. It measures approx. 108" LOA. (Click any image to enlarge.)

Elaborately carved stern decoration on the Maori canoe model. 

Bow decoration on the same model. The carved washstrakes are stitched to the dugout hull, and a black half-round batten is captured by the stitches. On a real canoe, some kind of vegetable fiber and mastic would have been placed beneath the batten to make the seam watertight.

The museum has an impressive display of adzes from various Pacific cultures, most with stone blades. The adze is the primary tool for dugout canoe construction.

This side-hafted adze from the Carolina Islands has a blade of sea-turtle bone and bindings of twisted coconut fiber.

This adze from Kirapuno, New Guinea, has a reversible stone blade held in place with nicely woven rattan binding.

Navigation chart from the Marshall Islands, made of the midribs of palm leaves, shells, and hibiscus and banana fibers.

Collected prior to 1903, this model Philippine double-outrigger sailing canoe has a squaresail rig, a dugout base and trifurcated ends, with two of the horns at each end turned up sharply. The outrigger floats are attached directly to the straight outrigger booms, placing the floats quite high -- possibly above the load waterline.

The struts on this Hawaiian double canoe model (wa'a kaulua) curve up between the hulls before passing through the washstrakes just above the gunwales of the dugout bases. Naturally-grown, curved timbers were used on real canoes. The curvature raises the struts above some splashing waves.

The unadorned simplicity of this single-outrigger Hawaiian paddling canoe model clearly identifies it as a workboat for inshore fishing and/or transportation.  

Whereas the two previous canoe models from Hawaii were representational, this delicately carved canoe-shaped effigy vessel from Indonesia probably had a ceremonial purpose. 

Composite fishhook of bone, fiber and wood. The display card says it's from the "Sandwich Islands": one wonders why the museum chose to use this antiquated name for Hawaii. A leader is bound to the shank of the hook, the bindings tightened by an inserted wooden wedge.

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