Material or technique:
Carved wood
Collection:
Ethnographic
Canoe carved out of the trunk of a bay tree. This softwood tree was of great symbolic importance to the Mapuche people. The canoe, which measures 4.85 m in length and 80 cm in width, was found by chance in 1995, submerged at a depth of less than four meters in Lake Lanalhue in the Biobío Region of central-southern Chile. This was the first experience in Chile of archaeological recovery from a lake.
Canoes were used in central-southern Chile from the time of the first island settlements (Isla Mocha 3,300 BP, Isla Quiriquina 4,500 BP, Isla Santa Maria 4,500 BP) through to the second half of the twentieth century.
