The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Ancient logboat to take visitors back in time.
New display to include 3,000-year-old Bronze Age craft
A 3,000-year-old Bronze Age logboat has been delivered to its new home at Perth Museum and Art Gallery on the back of a specially-equipped lorry.
The Carpow logboat will be the centrepiece of an eagerly-anticipated exhibition that is due to open at the George Street museum this month.
Visitors will be able to find out more about its history – along with the story of its painstaking excavation and conservation following its discovery in the River Tay.
It was found in 2001, buried in the sands and gravel of the estuary, and had survived tides and time to an incredible degree. Though the bow of the boat had been eroded, the buried hull and stern remained in excellent condition.
The logboat had been carved from a single tree trunk and archaeologists carbon dated it to between 1130 and 970 BC, making it an example of one of the first known boats in existence.
Five years later, the boat was carefully lifted from the water and subsequently spent six years at the National Museums Scotland Centre for Conservation and Analytical Research in Granton.
The logboat was displayed for the first time in Perth in 2012, then placed in storage at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre at Nitshill.
Its new home will be at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, which is being redeveloped to accommodate the boat.
The gallery will now tell Perth’s story, guiding visitors from the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron ages, Medieval and later period, ending with modern-day Perth.
New exhibits include mysterious carved stone balls, Bronze Age swords placed into the river as ritual offerings and a massive Iron Age cauldron from Abercairney, near Crieff.
Visitors will be able to see the Carpow logboat and the new displays from Tuesday March 21.