02 Lundberg 2003 Time Travels in Whaling Boats

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Time travels in whaling boats

ANITA LUNDBERG

School of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, UK

ABSTRACTReading this article is to embark on an adventure through certainethnographic and archaeological texts about a specific form of boatconstruction. The voyage sets out from the village of Lamalera inEastern Indonesia where whaling boats continue to be built accord-ing to traditions passed on by the ancestors. However, whileresearchers write about boats, they simultaneously board the boats inorder to construct the sequence of their narratives. Whether theyjourney back through the eastern archipelagos in search of the originof a boats design; or follow the plank by plank construction sequence;or whether they find a leak in previous boat building discourse allare involved in intricate relations of becoming through the materialityof the very boats they desire to observe and describe. Narratives arepremised on unquestioned notions of linear time and travel. In thisarticle, however, readers find themselves carried along on a differentvoyage, where time and travel are always in the here and now.

KEYWORDS boat construction collecting desire Eastern Indonesia embodied stories ethnography material culture unconscious

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)Vol 3(3): 312333 [1469-6053(200310)3:3;312333;034875]

02 Lundberg (to/d) 22/8/03 1:05 pm Page 312

313Lundberg Time travels in whaling boats

The ship may well be a symbol for departure; it is, at a deeper level, theemblem of closure. An inclination for ships always means the joy of perfectlyenclosing oneself, of having at hand the greatest possible number of objects,and having at ones disposal an absolutely finite space. (Roland BarthesMythologies)

In civilisations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place ofadventure, and the police take the place of pirates. (Michel Foucault OfOther Spaces)

SET TING OUT

The whaling boats of the village of Lamalera, on the island of Lembata inEastern Indonesia, are of an ancient design. It is broadly noted that they aremade of wood, use no metal, and are propelled by paddles and oars and awoven palm-leaf sail. The archetypal romance of these boats is evokedthrough such quotations as the following from the Lonely Planet guidebook:

Like characters out of Moby Dick, the people who live in this village on thesouth coast of Lembata still hunt whales using small boats. . . .

The whaling boats are made entirely of wood with wooden pegs instead ofnails. Each vessel carries a mast and a sail made of palm leaves, but these arelowered during the hunt when the men row furiously to overtake thewhale. . . . [A]s the gap between the boat and the whale narrows, theharpooner takes the three-metre long harpoon, which is attached by a longcoil of rope to the frame of the boat, leaps on to the back of the whale andplunges in the harpoon. An injured whale will try to dive, dragging the boatwith it, but cannot escape since it has to resurface to breathe. (Cummingset al., 1990: 638)

Rather than dismissing such passages as mere exoticism, I am interested inwhat they tell us about our unconscious desires. After all, the same features,which in the guidebook quotation allure readers to travel, also form thematerial motivation for the documentation of these boats in specialist texts.Experts such as Horridge, Barnes and Dwyer and Akerman identify theLamaleran tna (or pldang, peldang) as one of the last extant examplesof a plank-dowelled lashed-lug technique. This technique involves aconstruction sequence whereby the hull is built first, working up from thekeel by fixing planks edge to edge with internal dowels. The planks arecarved individually from split logs using hand adzes, and are shaped in threedimensions leaving projecting lugs in situ on their inner surfaces to formtransverse rows inside the boats shell. Ribs are then lashed to these project-ing lugs (Figure 1).

Additional features that mark this design as particular to an ancient style


314 Journal of Social Archaeology 3(3)

of craft include: the quarter-moon shape of the hull which curves up ateither end; a pivoting bipod mast, which supports the rectangular palm-leafsail; and a long-handled oar with a round blade the size of a large dinnerplate (Hornell, 1946; Horridge, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1985; Scott, 1981).

It has been the documentation of the evolution of this style of boat thathas inspired many of Professor Adrian Horridges numerous texts on thewatercraft of the Austronesian region and has gained him recognition asthe leading authority on this construction principle (Horridge, 1978, 1979,1982, 1985). He expresses great fascination in the lashed-lug design,especially since:

this method of construction . . . was also characteristic of the earlyScandinavian boats and it persisted in a modified form through the firstperiod of the development of the Viking ship. . . . [W]e have here a veryearly and sophisticated way of building boats that was evolved in the longperiod of the Bronze Age. (Horridge, 1985: 523)

Horridge, upon first seeing the Lamaleran whaling boats, states that theamazing feature of these boats is that when you look inside you see thetraditional lashed-lug design in one of its perfect forms (Horridge, 1982: 51).

Figure 1 Horo Tn Midsection Jean Weiner, 1994 (pen and ink on paper)



PASSIONATE (RE)COLLECTIONS

As the boating expert peers inside one of the tna, he sees the manifes-tation of the technique he has sought via museum models, in historical,ethnographic, and archaeological documents, and through numerous field-trips. What he sees, then, is not just the material embodiment of this tech-nique a static perfect form but the form that has all along supportedhis own search for perfection.

Horridges texts on the lashed-lug technique are, in one respect, aboutcollecting. As the Professor explains:

the whaling boats in the isolated whaling village of Lamalera . . . are part ofthis widespread and barely surviving ancient tradition. . . .

Certainly it is time that examples of the lashed prahu [boat] be collected forthe major museums before it has entirely vanished, as it is likely soon to do.(Horridge, 1985: 534)

Here in this story, there is a sense of a desire for fullness, preservation andcompletion. Likewise, this notion of plenitude is displayed in the very styleof Horridges writing. There is a feeling of contentment and containmentin his narrative. While his words speak of a desire for enclosure and anostalgia for the traditional, they also speak of a craving for beingsurrounded by things, and of the possibility of always discovering anotherspecimen. This is a story that speaks of creating the perfect collection:

Prahu-chasing, like bird-watching, is a sport that grows on you, sobeware. . . . To spot a new one, and especially to find the last survivingexample of an old traditional type, you will endure hours in a bemo [minibus] on a bumpy road, hours waiting in the hot sun on a small boat for aprahu [boat] to come by under sail . . . . To seek them being built is likesearching out the rookeries of some rare sea-bird. Almost always you findthe boatyard on an almost inaccessible island, with nowhere to stay the nightexcept in the house of the local police chief, but at the end of the effort youlook back on your collection with pride. (Horridge, 1985: xvi)

In this narrative there is something about the vessel itself that suggests thecontainment that the voyage seeks (Stewart, 1993: 159). For this journey isa quest it sets out to uncover a far off treasure in order to return home,complete. This is the same desire discussed by Roland Barthes in hisanalysis of Jules Vernes novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.Captain Nemo, in the womb-like enclosure of his submarine, has made aworld all his own. As Barthes points out, this enclosure is suggestive of theauthors unconscious desires:

Verne had an obsession for plenitude: he never stopped putting a last touchto the world and furnishing it, making it full with an egg-like fullness. His



tendency is exactly that of an eighteenth-century encyclopaedist or of aDutch painter: the world is finite, the world is full of numerable andcontiguous objects. The artist can have no other task than to makecatalogues, inventories, and to watch out for small unfilled corners.(Barthes, 1973: 72)

This desire for fullness is also examined by Merleau-Ponty who suggeststhat fullness is not a thing held in the conclusion, but is a tenuous feelingthat is alive in the present (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 15). This is also true ofthe processes of viewing, for it is impossible to say where, or what it is, thatone looks at: I do not look at it as I do at a thing; I do not fix it in its place.My gaze wanders in it as in the halos of Being. It is more accurate to saythat I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it (quoted in Boon,1977: 125).

The object is not a thing fixed by a gaze, but is inextricably entwined inrelations of becoming. A similar relationship is at work in collecting: thecollector brings alive the object at the same time that the object gives birthto the collector. Horridge is thus originated as the expert on the lashed-lugtechnique through and with boats. Boat construction experts do not simplywrite the story of boats that pre-exist the text; rather, the lashed-lug designand author are born of each other through the performance of writing(Barthes, 1986). Writers (and their readers) do not come to know boats fromsome objective, external vantage point, but read and write through them.

It is this notion of intertwining that opens up the practice of collectingto further analysis. Collecting is the attempt to encompass or trap every-thing and so conclude the story. It is also to acknowledge that the worldcannot be brought to presence, and hence that the wonderful sense ofmomentary fullness felt in these stories is held in these intricate relationsbetween boats and construction experts and writing and reading, andcannot be extracted from them. As Baudrillard has argued, the collectionis not initiated in order to be completed; rather, the missing item in thecollection is in fact an indispensable and positive part of the whole. Tosecure the last item of a collection would mean that the subject would ceaseto be the living and passionate individual he was! (Baudrillard, 1994: 13).

James Clifford also discusses the emotions involved in this enterprise:collecting is inescapably tied to obsession, to personal recollection(Clifford, 1988: 21819). From the rational gaze of scientific endeavour,collecting bleeds into impassioned accumulation, into the irrational realmsof obsession, opulence, and curiosity. Paraphrasing Clifford, it is as if thecollector had stepped into a tabooed zone, along a path of too intimatefantasy; the vision of a personal forbidden wood exotic, desired, savage(Clifford, 1988: 217).

Horridge, aware of these passions in his discourse, light heartedlyexcuses the digressions and excesses of his texts (Horridge, 1985: v). Hismanuscripts remain delightfully exuberant which make them stand out in



discourses of boat construction. These texts are sensuous, almost tactile,overflowing with enthusiasm, as evidenced through detailed descriptions ofboats and their evolution, and through copious asides referring to travel,places, people, histories and cargoes. Here collecting as a desire for self-conscious control and stasis lies dangerously close to getting out of control,of turning into impassioned curiosity. As Nicholas Thomas warns:

to be curious is to be addicted to enquiry. Enquiry may be a proper andessentially masculine activity, but addiction, like the impassioned desire for anovel commodity, or an extreme instance of passionate attachment, entails acomplete or partial surrender of self-government before an external objector agent; it is certainly an anxious, restless and giddy condition. (Thomas,1991: 1258)

Too much curiosity too many divergences, too much eagerness does notspeak of the cool collecting of the rational mind. Rather, it is suggestive ofthe body and the unconscious of lust and passion, seduction and desire.Horridges anxious, restless and giddy texts evoke images of that whichalways escapes, that which cannot be tamed, that which interrupts closure(Cixous and Clment, 1986; Irigaray, 1985). Horridges texts are vivid andalive, sensuous and pregnant with possibility; they are passionate discoursesthat speak of a pleasure in digression and a joy in roving.

Thus, it is possible to see a double moment in collecting, including thecollecting of ancient boats. As the sociologist Ann Game writes: while thetalk of former modes of travel . . . might be read as nostalgia, it might bethat there is simultaneously another moment in this: not a nostalgic desirebut a positive desire to feel, touch, smell, move (Game, 1991: 166). Gameencourages a thinking of the antiquarian object not just as the salvaging ofan origin, as if origin(s) are things that lie neglected somewhere in the past,but as creating origin stories here in the present.

Horridges narratives of the search for the lashed-lug technique areclearly origin stories, created in the present. They speak of the sheer adven-ture of collecting. He tells the tale of the journey that the boats take himon as he wanders through the eastern archipelagos. It is not just a story ofcollection as possession; Horridges tale always holds out a promise ofsomething more there is a sense of expectancy. The world of the ark, asSusan Stewart comments, is a world not of nostalgia but of anticipation(Stewart, 1993: 152).

SEA ADVENTURES

Horridge does not just write about boats; he invites the reader to climbaboard and sail the seas on an adventure in search of the treasure of the



lashed-lug technique. And like the adventurers of myth, fiction and historywho have sailed before him, Horridge, too, is destined to meet with manyperils along the way. His story tells of near encounters with sea monsters,savages, marauding pirates, head hunters and slaves as he wanders throughexotic kingdoms full of luxurious riches guarded by barbarous customs.Starting in Lamalera, we join him on a journey that will take us throughvarious islands of the Indonesian province of Maluku and on into thePhilippines, until we miraculously emerge in ancient Scandinavia.1

The encounter with the Lamaleran tna speaks of only one of the Pro-fessors adventures, but this boat is nevertheless an integral part of the tale.Hence, Horridge describes the whale hunt in considerable detail, for a boatused to hunt whales can also surely sustain the imagination on this longjourney. The tna proves that this ancient design could have been effec-tive, watertight and remarkably strong . . . even when regularly draggedalong as a sea-anchor by wounded whales; it is a boat that men could confi-dently trust at sea (Horridge, 1982: 53). And it is a boat that can bearHorridge and his readers on a voyage to far flung islands where a fewexamples of the lashed-lug design survive alongside old animistic beliefsin isolated places sacred places that are, in turn, all difficult to reachexcept by prahu [boat] (Horridge, 1985: 81).

It is evident that the lashed-lug design seen inside the Lamaleran whalingboats is, in fact, merely a remnant example of the perfect form thatHorridge seeks. The desire here is ultimately to uncover the origin of thisdesign:

Reviewing the evidence, the pledang [tna] is not peculiar to Lamalerap. . . .Boats of this common design, conforming to the engineering principlesoutlined, must have been widespread perhaps as far back as 500 BC. . . .Many survived into this century in isolated islands (Hornell, 1920) and weare fortunate that a few examples survive intact as the pledang of Lamaleraand the prahu belang of the Aru Islands. (Horridge, 1982: 53)

Thus, having battled with whales, the voyage continues. From Lamalera thestory can be read as travelling back in time as it sails to the Aru Islands inthe remote eastern Indonesian province of Maluku (the Moluccas). TheAru Islands are of legendary renown as a veritable treasure trove for adven-turous traders and naturalists. From here come pearls, mother of pearl,tortoise shell, edible birds nests, trepang, birds of paradise feathers andexotic butterfly specimens. As the naturalist Alfred Russell Wallacedescribes: the voyage to the Aru Islands is looked upon as a rather wildand romantic expedition, full of novel sights and strange adventures(Wallace, 1869, 1906: 30910).

However, Horridge is not drawn to Aru by the magnificent and rarespecimens of nature that Wallace sought. What he discovers, and meta-phorically collects, is the belang. As he makes clear, the importance of these



particular boats, like the Lamaleran whaling boats, is that they are one ofthe few surviving examples with the primitive internal lugs carved in situ(Horridge, 1978: 24) another rare example of a style of boat constructionthat has almost disappeared from the world (Horridge, 1985: 51). Hereinforces this point by reference to the boats ancient links, for the prahubelang raises again the whole question of convergence between theMoluccan construction method and that of the early Scandinavian ships(Horridge, 1978: 28).

Here recurs that detail of a similarity between the Austronesian andScandinavian designs. While Horridge suggests these similarities are linkedthrough an evolutionary convergence (and at other times a diffusion) oftechniques, his descriptions serve to entice the reader to follow this trailfurther back through the islands of Maluku, unravelling as they go thecausal links of this narrative with their corresponding connection to evol-utionary time.

As he explains, the belang of Aru, in turn, probably originated from thenearby Kei islands, where boat building is a specialty. He goes on to explainthat one of the styles of boat that continues to be built on Kei today is thekalulus (also kalulis and kulis), and although its construction has changedconsiderably, its ancient features are still discernible. But here, suddenly,Horridges story of the evolution of boat construction has itself convergedwith the origin story of the first Lamaleran ancestors. The boat style kalulusis evident in the name, Kelulus, given to a whaling boat or tna owned byone of the Lamaleran clan houses (Muri Langu of Bedion). I am likewisereminded of another of the clans of Lamalera called Ataki meaningpeople of Kei. On the side of their boat, the Muko Tn, is written Bao lauKey dai (Sail from Kei arrive), indicating their distant connection with theKei islands. Like the Lamaleran tna, Horridge advises that the kalulus ofthe Kei Islands would have displayed the classical features of the lashed-lug craft: a steeply curved, quarter moon shape; a tripod mast and squareor rectangular sail; and projecting lugs on the inside of the carved planksto which ribs would have been lashed (Horridge, 1978: 31).

However, Horridges story does not rest here. He continues on his questto trace this design back through space and time. Searching in turn for theorigins of these boats of Aru and Kei, Horridge quotes a passage from ac.1544 Portuguese treatise on Maluku by Antnio Galvo, who lists themany types of boats of the region, including the kalulus. However, it is thelarger and more ostentatious boats mentioned by Galvo that continue toinspire the majority of the writings on ancient boats of South-East Asia. AsHorridge remarks: the most conspicuous of the large boats were thoseadapted for carrying many men and used for raiding. Hunting parties wentto other islands by boat, new lands were regularly colonized by boat; slaveswere brought home at the paddles (Horridge, 1982: 35). Horridge isspeaking here of the famous korakora, whose design corresponds with the



plank-dowelled lashed-lug construction, but with additional platformsadapted for carrying hundreds of men at the paddles. As he describes, theends of the boat were curved up to high stem- and stern-posts decoratedwith streamers, and in the earlier days with the heads of defeated enemies(Horridge, 1985: 5).

This feature of the high stem and stern posts resonates once more withthe image of the Viking ship. In another document, Horridge againdescribes the korakora, elaborating upon this archetypal image with a detailfrom Galvos description:

in the middle they are egg-shaped and at both ends slope upwards. . . . Atthe prow they insert a high snakes neck with the head of a serpent and thehorns of a deer. (Galvo quoted in Horridge, 1978: 9)

Further details of the korakora come from a manuscript written by a Jesuitpriest who worked in the Philippines. In his precisely detailed document onthe construction of the plank-dowelled lashed-lug technique, Father Alcinadescribes a range of boats built in the eastern Visayan Islands in the 1600s.Translations of his work have again given considerable attention to thekorakora (Horridge, 1982; Scott, 1981). As the Alcina manuscript notes,rowers face forward when using the paddles (Figure 2), beating a rhythmas they go. But they also have long oars with which they face backwards torow. These oars (Figure 3) are comprised of flat round blades larger thandinner places (Horridge, 1982: 26; Nooteboom, 1932: plate 97; Paris, 1841:90; Scott, 1981: 16). These distinctive and now extremely rare oars, alongwith masts and rectangular sails and the plank-dowelled, lashed-lug tech-nique, are what Horridge saw when he first looked inside the Lamalerantna. What is more, the sound of paddles beating a rhythm against the hullof the boat recalls the sound of Lamaleran men rowing and chanting as theyhead out to sea or tow a whale to shore.

These characteristics, so clearly displayed in connection with theLamaleran tna, are read by Horridge as a remnant of this once widespread

Figure 2 Tiller & Paddles Jean Weiner, 1994 (pen and ink on paper)



design. Horridge notes the disappearance of the korakora and the way oflife it supported, stating that in the past 2,000 years or so the slow progressof civilisation spreading across the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagoshas pushed back the deeply ingrained Australo-Malay custom of maraud-ing by sea (Horridge, 1985: 4). Likewise, the rituals associated with thesetraditions of pirating and slave raiding have gone the way of the boats.Again Horridge turns to Alcina for a description of the blessing that wouldhave once been carried out in order to ensure the safe return of the menwho put to sea:

There is a special ritual when they launch a boat for war or for their thievingexpeditions. All the way down to the water they put rollers . . . on which theboat will slide, but instead of the last roller they put a prisoner of war. As theship passes over him he is squashed into a pancake, and the sacrifice ensuresthat the ship and all who sail in her will be feared by the enemy and valiantin taking captives. . . . They believe that the boat will be more formidable bythe power of the blood that is shed. What a barbaric Godless lot they are!(Quoted in Horridge, 1982: 245)

There is a recurring motif of blood and sacrifice in Horridges story. Likethe consistent repetition of details which hint that this evolutionary storyof boat design is also a personal story about desiring ones origins and ends,the repeated mention of blood conjures up notions of birth and death(Irigaray, 1985: 25). Horridge goes on to document the last vestiges of theserituals. They are no longer the human blood sacrifices of Alcinas time, butthey nevertheless carry out the same sacred role of ensuring the safety andsuccess of the boat and all the men who sail in her. He describes the launch-ing ritual of the modern plank-dowelled Bugis pinisi of South Sulawesi inIndonesia:

A goat is sacrificed and in the path of the prahu it is burnt in a fire madefrom offcuts from the prahu. . . . The pushing and heaving of the prahu bythe crowd of men is likened to the birth process, and they chant appropriatesongs. . . .

Figure 3 Oar Blade Jean Weiner, 1994 (pen and ink on paper)



Intense ceremonies such as these are found among boatbuilders, sailors andfishermen in many parts of Indonesia . . . but they are scarcely documented.The whalers of Lamalera . . . now use holy water instead of chickens bloodto consecrate the boat before a whale hunt. (Horridge, 1985: 7981)

Horridge implies that these are barely surviving rituals, found only inisolated places. However, as he goes on to argue, these rituals even in asanitised form are essential to boat construction. Here he suggests thatthe rituals preserve traditions, offering researchers portals into the past:

the ceremonies have been effective in keeping alive the importance offollowing the ancestral methods and of avoiding offence to the spirits ofprevious generations. The religious aspect supports the routine work andensures that detail is faithfully carried out. Boatbuilders everywhere areextremely conservative; those of Indonesia spend long apprenticeshipscopying exactly the methods of the [master builder], with the result that thesurviving boats of Aru and Lamalerap could be examples from the BronzeAge. (Horridge, 1985: 7981)

However, ethnographic observations, even in the form of historical docu-ments, can only take this journey back so far. Continuing his search for theorigins of the plank-dowelled lashed-lug design, Horridge turns to archae-ology. In the mid-1970s, two ancient boats were uncovered in the Philippines.Planks from the two finds have been dated at thirteenth to fourteenth centuryand as early as the fourth century (Horridge, 1982: 32; Scott, 1981: 1). Theseplanks bear the classic features of the plank-dowelled lashed-lug design,including a short piece of transverse ribbing which was still lashed to the lugsof several planks (Dwyer and Akerman, 1998: 125; Scott, 1981: 13).

Horridge details this archaeological find in the context of his otherethnographic and documentary evidence. The importance of Horridgescollection of such information is summed up in the foreword to his manu-script where the Chief Archaeologist of the National Maritime Museum inGreenwich notes that:

A knowledge of precisely how boats were being built and used . . . beforeany European influence, is . . . of high priority in historical research. If thisstate can be established it will form a baseline from which other researchmay extend our knowledge back into the prehistoric period. (McGrail, inHorridge, 1982: v)

However, this desire to extend knowledge by travelling back in time in orderto unearth the origin of this boat construction method is never fulfilled. Thewonderful adventure of the lashed-lug technique is interrupted by a gap inthe story. Although Horridges detailed documentation has consistentlypointed to a link between the Austronesian boats and those of early Scandi-navia, this bridge cannot be found. Concluding his argument on the evol-ution of the lashed-lug technique of Austronesia and Scandinavia, Horridge



notes that the two designs are astonishingly similar and again suggests theircommon origin:

Projecting lugs as a way of fixing each plank to a flexible rib and internalframework were well established in the pre-Viking age Hjrtspring boat of350 BC . . . . Hornell (1935, 1946) suggested that the internal lugs . . . aredirectly related by cultural diffusion with those serving the same function onthe early Viking ships. The problem is that nowadays there is no strongtradition of internal lugs in the intervening regions, and it is a very difficultmatter to copy such a design without a long apprenticeship. . . .

In my view, the internal lugs survived in the two extreme outlying areas ofwhat was a very ancient Indo-European technique, and I expect that theywill appear in archaeological finds, possibly in lake boats, in the interveningareas. (Horridge, 1978: 2830)

VIKING SAGA

In this intricate discourse of boat construction, it is as though the coinci-dence of the lashed-lug design occurring in both Austronesia and in theBronze Age and early Viking ships of Scandinavia but not in the inter-vening spaces is not a lack to the story, but rather its excess. It is thiswonderful mystery that holds the tale and moves people to its adventure.This same coincidence likewise compels me to follow this story, for I amreminded of that far away and exotic land of Scandinavia from which myown ancestors and relatives hail but which for me, Australian born andbred, remains forever a land of nostalgic reverie.

Like Professor Horridge, I desire to find a link that will bridge the gapbetween the Austronesian and Scandinavian lashed-lug designs as if, inmaking this link materialise, I would magically be united with my ownancestors and become complete through the conclusion of this story.

Ultimately, however, like those researchers who have journeyed beforeme, my quest also proves unredeemable. Having now given up all hope, indespair, I pick up a childrens book on the story of Ragnarkr, the Vikingsaga that describes the death of the gods, the giants, the monsters andhumans, the destruction of the world and its rebirth. Doomsday, the storysays, will be ushered in by disharmony among people, and the very earthwill tremble with mighty earthquakes. All the monsters that were fetteredby the gods will break free from their bonds: the wolf devours the sun anda dark winter will last for three years; then Jormungandr, the serpent thatlies in the sea encircling the earth, emerges from the depths causing thewaters to rise and engulf the land. Launched on the flood is the ship Naglfar,a vessel made from the nails of dead men. It carries a crew of giants whotravel across the rainbow bridge to Asgard, the land of the gods where the



final battle is fought. Thor, the venerated god of thunder, is pitted againsthis old enemy Jormungandr. All the gods fall and the monsters aredestroyed with them. Thor kills the serpent only to be overcome by itsvenom. Then fire is cast over the whole world so that the race of menperishes along with the gods, giants and monsters; everything is finallyengulfed in the sea. But later, the earth will arise again from the waves cleansed and fertile. A man and woman who sheltered from destruction inthe world tree will come out to re-people this regenerated world. And anew sun will shine from the heavens giving light and warmth to the earth(Gregory, 1978).

The drawings that accompany this story depict men as blonde orredheaded, bearded, heavily built, warrior Vikings. The few women arelikewise fair and strong, and some are warriors. In stark contrast to thesepictures appearing throughout the book, the scene for the dawn of the newworld features two towering volcanic-shaped mountains stretching up andcurving inwards towards a large sun. At the base of the volcanoes lies alagoon of cool water; clumps of palm trees frame a man and woman walkinghand in hand from the water across a field of long grass. The couple haveblack flowing hair; the man is beardless and they are unarmed.

This final image fills me with an uncanny sense of recognition. It is notjust that the illustration resonates with the biblical story of Genesis and itsEdenic landscape and couple. More strikingly, this picture suddenlyreminds me of Lamalera the details of volcanoes and that huge sun, thewater and palm trees. It makes me ponder this magical journey that haswhisked me away in search of Bronze Age Scandinavian origins, tenuouslyconnected to whales and lashed-lug boats, only to end up back in the sun-drenched, volcanic, palm-strewn land of Lamalera via a story in a childrensbook that tells of the demise of the Vikings. It is as if I have travelled inthe boats of Lamalera back to my ancestry only to find myself taken up onthe back of Jormungandr, the world serpent, to be returned from mynostalgic reverie to Lamalera; as if, never having left, I am woken from adream, to find myself once again reading those lines from Horridge as helooks inside a tna and sees that perfect form.

ETERNIT Y

The experience of being returned to Lamalera and to the beginning of mystory via the illustration from the myth of Ragnarkr speaks of a verydifferent sense of time to that of the evolutionary passage of Horridgesboat construction story. Instead of a line with beginning and end, this timecurls back on itself. However, while in one respect this alludes to cyclictime, in another sense, time has remained still. This is suggestive of time as



eternal, the notion of the present as simultaneously moving and standingnow (Loy, 1988: 223).

Furthermore, there is also the suggestion of another related sense oftime. The gap in the narrative, where a causal link cannot be made betweenthe Austronesian and Scandinavian lashed-lug traditions, implies a non-causal coincidence. Synchronic time refers to the experience of connectionswhich traverse causal time and which therefore cannot be explained incausal terms (Jung, 1983: 41819). The personal experience of a coinciden-tal link between my Norwegian heritage and Lamalera suggests that,despite there being no bridge connecting Lamalera and Scandinavia, thereis something significant in this, if only because of its persistent recurringresonance. As with stories of Lamaleran boat construction, the repetitionof this coincidence of the lashed-lug demands that we take this story itselfas a link, but one that is not evolutionary.

Horridges evolutionary story is based on causal time and relations: onemoment comes before the next and affects it. In this story, time becomesthe space of a line which is divided into equal periods of time hours, days,years, centuries which all exist as separate entities that can be added up.As the philosopher Henri Bergson pointed out, according to this calcu-lation, time is not conceived as duration but as space. Separate and enclosedcapsules of time are set alongside one another in a continuous chain. Likecounting a rosary, each period of time is a bead that remains behind evenas it is succeeded by the next (Bergson, 1913). Thus, Horridges notion ofevolutionary time enables an ontology and epistemology that supports hispractice of venturing out to find remnant examples of a disappearingtradition, tracing back in the time capsule of the boat in order to uncoverorigins.

Yet, it remains that Horridges evolutionary or causal stories cannotbring the tale to a satisfactory conclusion. The story itself points to anacausal relation whereby two lines, even though they do not meet, arenevertheless experienced as somehow connected. Rather than cause andeffect, it is now this mysterious gap that holds the story and makes it seemso alive. Instead of the tale ending, the gap holds it open, allowing thecontinual movement of both the story and its readers.

These various temporal explanations, as they emerge from the encounterwith the tale of the lashed-lug design, indicate an ontology of time asembodied and relational. We are not outside of time, and neither are weimmersed in an endless undifferentiated flow, as the philosopher Bergsonoften argues, for this paradoxically would also give no sense of time; it is therelation between flow and stasis that allows us to experience time. In fact,the notion of a ceaseless and undifferentiated flow of being in time itselfbecomes strangely static (Game, 1991). Bergson demonstrates that it isnecessary to disrupt the description of time in spatial terms. However, toprivilege time over space, or flow at the exclusion of stasis, only reintroduces



the hierarchy in its reverse form. The Buddhist psychoanalyst, David Loy,in interrupting the stasis-flow opposition which is apparent in both Westernand Eastern philosophies of time, writes:

Consider a solitary rock out of an ocean current, protruding above thesurface. Whether one is on the rock or floating past it, it is the relationbetween the two that makes both movement and rest possible.(Loy, 1988: 217)

Loys quotation suggests that time is not one thing, but a multitude ofexperiences, which may occur simultaneously.

In re-reading Horridges words as he looks inside the tna to see thatperfect form, there is a sense of both movement and stillness, the wordssuggesting a moment of revelation. The lashed-lug design comes to life asit meets his gaze. This is no dead fossil from the past, but rather the arche-type made flesh. Here the lashed-lug technique holds the traces of all thoseother boats, not as evolution, but as eternally now. What this suggests is avery different experience of time to the causal one that Horridge attributesto it. Instead of some remnant preserved in aspic, there is a sense of eternaltime and of acausal relations, which is to speak of the interrelation of rockand water that enables a sense of time as both movement and rest. Thissame interrelation is furthermore experienced through another inherentdesign detail of the Lamaleran whaling boats.

According to Lamaleran boat building custom, the tna itself is neverstatically perfect. The implementation of the boats design is in a constantstate of change even though the construction of the boat must follow exactprocedures as handed down by the ancestors. These include: design prin-ciples; correct deportment of boat builders and members of the cooperativewho own the boat, and of all the people of the clan house identified throughthe boat; a series of ritual ceremonies; and the consumption of special foods.The signs of this paradoxical situation are visibly embodied in the tna.Several lines inscribed on the hull of the boat establish the traditionaldesign. Of these markings, those called gu gat stand out as particularlyimportant. These lines are inscribed on both the inside and the outside of thehull in order to show the theoretically correct plank pattern of the tna.Invariably each tna will deviate from this pattern as planks are carvedshorter or longer according to the size of available timber. If the gu gat arenot inscribed into the hull, the sacred koteklema (sperm whale) will see thatthe boat has deviated from the ancestral design and will strike it at that point.

Through the gu gat, the sperm whale is in direct relation with the tna.Thus the whale maintains the traditions of the ancestors through protect-ing the traditional design of the boat. These lines not only visibly demon-strate the inherent animist belief of relations between whales and boats andancestors and contemporary Lamalerans, but also indicate that theseconnections are in movement, constantly being created in the present. The



boat is not a thing that can be divorced from these intertwinings to becomea perfect form separate, static and past nor can the boats be divorcedfrom Horridges and other researchers stories about them (Barnes, 1985;Dwyer and Akerman, 1998; Olon, 1992; Tim Expedisi, 1991).

LEAKING STRUCTURES

When researchers write about boats they are, in fact, simultaneously writingthrough boats. The words of boating experts and of ethnographers of boatssuch as Professor Robert Barnes cannot, in practice, maintain the distancedobservation that many of their texts would suggest is their desire. The docu-mentation of boat construction involves intricate relations of telling storiesthat simultaneously create the world they speak of.

As Barnes documents the construction process of the Lamaleran tna,his texts simultaneously ride on the structure of the boat building process.Just as the boat is pieced together from the laying of the keel and theedge dowelling of planks to form a hull, to the decoration of the stem andstern posts, the addition of ribs lashed to the lugs and the introduction ofthwarts, stringers, a mast and a sail, and finally to the fitting out withharpoons, ropes and all the gear of the hunt so, too, does Barness storygradually build up to give a sense that the boat is fully known and that thediscourse of its construction is complete. In his final description of thisconstruction sequence, Barnes notes that:

The boat and all its gear as well as everything to do with it are indicated inLamalera by a compound term made up from the word for boat and that forsail, tna-laja. (Barnes, 1996: 203)

The sense of wholeness indicated by the term tna laja is reflected inBarness writings on the boats. In reviewing two of Barness papers writtenabout the tna, which culminate in several chapters and appendices of hisbook, it can be seen how this final description builds on the foundationalready laid down in a paper specifically on boat building (1985). This inturn adds to, and corrects, certain imperfections of his first introductorypaper (1974). The circle of Barness writings on boat construction itself feelscomplete. Like the tna laja, it speaks of the entirety of the boat, its rig, andall its equipment.

As the cultural theorists Game and Metcalfe (1996: 68) havecommented, the basic structure of such narratives is sequential: and then,and then, and then. Barness narrative halts the flow of time; his is ameasured time like a measured and carved plank, and hence is bound upwith a notion of space. The succession of the plank by plank description islike the succession of minutes ticking by, one set alongside the next. The



story unfolds in naturalised time supporting the documentation of boatconstruction as a given reality that is merely re-presented through thedescription. In this description time disappears in order to underpin thestory and present it as real. However, rather than a representation of givenreality, the story is simultaneously constructing the vessel it speaks of in away that structures time. It is as though time is contained in the very vesselbeing written. The story of boat construction appears as outside of time, ascomplete and static. Barness story is about being bounded and ordered,allowing us as readers to likewise feel contained.

However, as the researchers Dwyer and Akerman imply through theirown story of boat construction, the description of the tna can never becomplete and whole, and therefore, nor can time be contained by the boats.As much as Dwyer and Akermans discourse likewise suggests a desire forcompletion and stasis, there is also inherent in their story the notion ofsmall gaps or imperfections which constantly open up and require mending.Thus these researchers, following Barnes, are quick to point out severalimperfections in Horridges description of plank-dowelled boats. One pointthat is taken up is Horridges statement that such craft cannot be caulked.Dwyer and Akerman point out that not only are joins luted2 with palm fibreduring construction of the tna, but state that when out at sea they regu-larly saw crew caulking leaking boats (Dwyer and Akerman, 1998: 128).Similarly, these experts also find a small leak in Barness description of thetna, which they proceed to fill in with their own story:

our aim here is to present the lines of a peldang and provide technical dataabout the craft and the manner in which they are operated. Illustrationsprovided by Barnes are very schematic and it was our intention to recast thetechnical details of the peldang with attention to the relevant proportions.(Dwyer and Akerman, 1998: 124)

Their task becomes one of amending the schematic drawings of the anthro-pologist through clean and mathematically precise diagrams. There is herea notion that fine adjustments and additional information will give the fulland ordered picture of the Lamaleran tna. This is an epistemology basedaround gaps as error and thus the filling up of holes (Clment, 1994;Lundberg, 2001). As the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray notes, suchstories are about a surfeit, being stuffed full, and stuffed up: immobilised(Irigaray, 1981: 62). It is as if time could seep through these fissures andreveal that this is not, after all, the natural time of real events, but is storytime. However, to acknowledge this story time would be to admit that boatconstruction discourse is not merely about the translation of facts. In theend, although the gaps in Horridges and Barness stories enable Dwyerand Akerman to move to be able to write about the Lamaleran tna this movement is paradoxically only towards stasis.

In stark contrast to the specialised literature on boat construction with



its call for completeness, measured precision and order, the writer AlisonMoore expresses through her observation of the tna (or peledang) a spacethat is a mess of intertwinings:

At first glance a pelendang [sic] appears to be an improbable craft, its abilityto make its way through water nothing short of miraculous.

After remarking that the boat looks as if it is pieced together like a puzzlein a pre-Viking, lashed-lug design, she continues:

The scene inside a pelendangs hull looks wildly chaotic coils of rope, somewoven of palm frond, some of coloured nylon, some a combination of both,appear to have no beginning or end. Tree limbs crafted into narrow seats atintervals throughout the hull feel more like perches, and a jumble of smallbaskets that hold tobacco are tied to anything above the water that collectsin the bottom of the hull. (Moore and Ives, 1995: 103)

Moores story of the whaling boat suggests that the tna is never in a perfectform, but rather, like the lines of the gu gat, hints of a complexity of timein which traditional and modern features occur simultaneously and wherethere is no beginning or end. Her description, like the materially embodiedinscriptions on the hull of the boat, also speaks of the inter-relations thatresearchers are embroiled in while setting out to write disciplined storiesof the Lamaleran tna. No matter how measured and objective we maydesire our discourses to be, our unconscious desires still manifest them-selves on the surface of our page. Rather than plugging up these rupturesin our stories, I am interested in what is at work in these nervous slippages,just as I am interested in those excesses of boat construction discourse, asevidenced through Horridge, that have provoked a call for the Professorswork to be more objective (Burningham, 1987: 154).

SHAVINGS

It was the artist in residence and research assistant, Jean Weiner, whofollowed the boat construction as part of the processes of my fieldwork inLamalera. His eye for detail, combined with architectural training andartistic skills, have made his journal of the construction of three whalingboats, the Mnula Blolo, Sika Tn and Kebako Puk, a delightful referencesource. It is not only informative and technically precise, but it is full ofsketches of tools and boat parts as well as numerous interesting asides.

It was one of these asides that caught my eye. In a bracketed commentunder a drawing of the ketilo olla the old style of chisel bore the artistnotes:

(women take shavings away for firewood for cooking of food for men)



In the long labour of adzing away split logs in order to gradually carve outplanks in three dimensions (arr) complete with lugs (klik), and in shapingkeels (i) and solid ribs that will be lashed to the lugs, and in boring holesfor hand-made dowels (ketilo), it suddenly becomes obvious that thisconstruction necessitates the constant falling away of shavings of wood.These off cuts, now collected for use as firewood to cook the ceremonialmeal for the boat builders, are, in fact, part of the planks (and keel and lugsand ribs). They are part of the story of the design and construction of thetna: the not-planks that allow the planks to be.

But stories of boat construction are never about these no-things. Thesepiles of shavings are the excess to the law of structured texts. Shavings arelike biographical notes, the private asides that have inspired researchers towrite, but must disappear in order to allow stories to appear objective andlinear.

And yet, it is through these shavings or no-things that I finally come tounderstand something of the moving joyousness of Horridges story of thelashed-lug technique: his interest in boat construction began as a hobby forthis professor of neurobiology at the Australian National University. Thesetraces are thus never entirely discarded; they are incorporated into thestory, swallowed up by the story even as it becomes the manifestation ofthese asides just as in Lamalera the shavings disappear in order to becomethe fire that cooks the ceremonial food to sustain the boat builders whilesimultaneously sustaining the traditions that build a tna.

Acknowledgements

In anthropologists nervous quests to prove our presence in the field (as if beingthere is verification of our ethnographic stories), we can easily be seduced todownplay the role of people who assist us. This article is partially a story about mypartner, the artist and research assistant Jean Weiner. I hope it conveys my gratitudefor his technical and moral support during fieldwork and beyond. I remain verygrateful to the people of Lamalera for their patient tuition during my stay in theirvillage from 199495 and for welcoming me on two subsequent visits. I acknowledgesponsorship from LIPI, Jakarta, and the Universitas Nusa Cendana, Timor. Thisarticle was written while an Honorary Visiting Fellow with the School of Sociology,University of New South Wales, Sydney; a Guest Researcher with IRSEA, Univer-sit de Provence, Marseille and a Visiting Fellow with ATMA, UniverisitiKebangsaan Malaysia. Ideas discussed here were first presented at the EngenderingMaterial Culture: Fifth Women in Archaeology Conference, at UNSW, in 1999.

Notes

1 In this article, I concentrate on notions of time. A discussion of space withreference to its relation to time appears in Lundberg, 2003. Although time andspace are interrelated concepts, I tend to emphasise one or the other in these



articles in order to better discuss each through particularities of fieldwork. Itshould be noted that fieldwork, as conceived in contemporary theory, is notlimited to a physical place, but as this article highlights, the space of Lamaleraalso lives through artefacts and monographs as well as in the unconscious.

2 Luting is the placement during construction of absorbent material (in theLamaleran case palm fibre called rappo) between the plank edges to render thejoints waterproof. Caulking is the waterproofing of joints by insertingabsorbent material after construction is completed. Thanks to Jeffrey Mellefontof the Australian National Maritime Museum and Jean Weiner for clarifyingthis point. Dwyer and Akerman appear to have misread Horridge (1982) on thispoint.

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ANITA LUNDBERG has been dividing her time between Australia,France and Malaysia. In France, she wrote short poetic texts on thephenomenology of stone. In 2002 she was awarded an Evans Postdoc-torial Fellowship for an ethnography set in Malaysia based on theelement of wood. [email: [email protected]]


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02 Lundberg 2003 Time Travels in Whaling Boats