Uncovering the Culture of Bronze Age Logboats

The advent of metal tools created demand for a European trade network—and boats to deliver the goods.

When people first took to the water, it’s likely they did so in boats carved from the trunks of large trees. The first “logboats” are thought to predate both pottery and agriculture by thousands of years. Their invention opened up new lands to settlement and made long distance travel easier, but during the Bronze Age, which lasted from roughly 2000 to 500 BCE in Northern Europe, logboats began to change. According to archaeologist Ole Thirup Kastholm, of Denmark’s Roskilde Museum, the changing boat designs were a symptom—and reflection—of the broader cultural transformations that were sweeping across the continent.  

During the Bronze Age, early European societies were beginning to exchange goods and ideas across the continent. Fueled by a demand for tin and copper—the base metals needed to smelt bronze—massive trade networks began to grow. “Some trading networks went as far as from the North to the Mediterranean,” says Kastholm.

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