Totem Pole Virtual Gallery
Source: www.sfu.ca
Topic: Wood Carving
Sort Desciption: Made from one plank of wood, steamed, bent, and painted. On top of the box. are small wood carving tools for fine, detail carving. Can you tell what animal ...
Content Inside: Woodworking Virtual Gallery Woodworking and the use of wood is an important part of aboriginal culture. Not only does it represent the use of an abundant resource, but also reflects the cultural beliefs about the world around them. What symbols or images can you see here? (For example, the adze handle has an animal carved on it.) What do you think they might mean? Because wood does not preserve well in the archaeological record, wooden tools are rare finds. We learn from the people themselves how woodworking has been done by their ancestors. What parts of these tools would be preserved in an archaeological site? (What parts are made from metal or stone?) Some carvers will marker their tools with their names. Perhaps a creative carver decided to carve his or her animal or clan figure on his or her tools. Organic materials generally do not preserve well in archaeological sites. Some bone and shell preserves in midden sites, but wood, basketry and other things made from plants usually do not. Archaeologists generally find only the stone or metal portions of tools. Splitting wood into planks As wood was an abundant resource on the Northwest Coast, the aboriginal people developed complex and efficient techniques of woodworking. Small wooden pegs were inserted into a groove in a log and struck with a maul until the log split. Do you think it would have taken a lot of time and energy to split logs into planks? What might people do with the planks? What would they build? Sometimes planks were removed from standing trees without felling the tree. See Hillary Stewart’s book ‘Cedar’ for an illustration of this. The planks would be used for building houses and other buildings. Canoes were not made from planks, but hollowed or dug out and formed with steam. Hafted Maul A composite tool made of different materials. These mauls were used like a hammer to split logs and planks. D-Adze Used for planing or smoothing wood planks. The handle is made of carve ...
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