The Stitched-Plank and Logboat-Underbody Tradition in Northern Vietnam, Southeast Asia and China, and the Potential Importance of Locked Mortise and Tenon Joints

Peter Bellwood1, NGUYEN Van Viet2, LE Hai Dang3, HUNG Hsiao-Chun4, and Ambra Calo5

We record eight virtually complete logboat hulls and a further 15 bow, stern, and plank segments from the bed of the Kinh Thay River in northern Vietnam, most directly C14-dated to between 700 BCE and 1500 CE. Lashing holes along gunwales for washboard attachment are present on many hulls, continuing around the bow and stern end-pieces on some Dong Son/Han Dynasty specimens. Three specimens of Dong Son/Western Han date have mortise-and-tenon joints locked with transverse dowels. Lashed lugs are absent, as are blind dowels set in plank edges for carvel construction. Many of the logboats have internal bosses and/or indentations to hold thwarts or bulkheads for seating, and to maintain expanded hull contours.

The oldest examples in eastern Asia of the carpentry skills required to manufacture such logboat underbodies and their attachments can be traced from the Early Neolithic (ca. 6000 BCE) onwards in waterlogged contexts in the lower Yangtze region. The locked mortises and tenons also raise the question of long-distance dispersal of a specific and relatively complex carpentry technique that appears to have linked communities around 2000 years ago from the Mediterranean to Dong Son and Han Dynasty eastern Asia.