Boat and ship Archaeology in Gilan Province (Iran) · The MUA Collection
This site contains image and text documents gathered to facilitate research in maritime history and underwater archaeology.
Description

Gilan province is one the northern states of Iran which is located in south west of Caspian Sea and has relatively long coastlines. According to historical and geographical location of Gilan, in 2017, Maritime archaeology group of Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR) decided to do a project as "Archaeology of maritime landscapes of Gilan Province". Main goal of perform this project was identifying immaterial and material of maritime culture across of Gilan province maritime landscape. Our Research area was from "Astara" county to "Rudsar" county in Gilan province. We were surveying about navigation and Boatbuilding in rivers, Lagoon and coastlines of Caspian Sea. For example: in "Estil" Lagoon in Astra county we observed a kind of Simple Watercraft which is more look like to a Dugout canoe. During this project, we observed and investigated about wooden boats with simple construction in different sizes that locals called "lutka/lodka" or "Nodonbal". Nowadays, fishermen use flatbottomed, double-ended vessel (in local dialect called "karaji") that linked to past period. So we were investigating on remains of "Ghorogh" wooden shipwreck in "Talesh" County and wooden shipwreck "LalehrÅ«d" in "Rudsar" County. We visited Traditional Wooden Boat Factory and interviewed with locals. This article based on desk and field research on traditional and historical boat and ship in each city of Gilan province.