Few artefacts can excite the maritime archaeologist more than the remains of prehistoric watercraft. This book tells the story of an extraordinary example of one such craft, a logboat, discovered in Poole Harbour, Dorset, in 1964. It is the largest known example of a logboat in Britain (length c 10m, max beam c 1.23m), radiocarbon dated to the Iron Age (397–176 cal bc) when Poole Harbour was known to have been an important trading hub.

This book brings together contributions from interdisciplinary specialists who tell of the logboat’s discovery, recovery, analysis, conservation and eventual display as pride of place in Poole’s Waterfront Museum.

In his introduction, (the late) Keith Jarvis provides a chronology of the project, which has spanned some forty years from the boat’s discovery by dredgers, recovery by divers and valiant attempts to study and conserve the remains despite numerous obstacles.

In chapter 2, Dr Eileen Wilkes considers the environmental and archaeological background to Poole Harbour, the largest natural harbour in the UK. She highlights the complex historical topography of the area due to changes in sea-level over time and the associated challenges of reconstructing the harbour’s environment in the Iron Age when sea levels were considerably lower than they are today. Wilkes notes that the site where the boat was discovered has not been investigated, hence the context of its deposition is unknown. Nevertheless, its very presence within the harbour attests to inland water travel, and a summary of contemporary sites is discussed. These include the substantial moles or jetties that extend into the South Deep area of the harbour, and large quantities of ceramic, shale and metal-working evidence from Green Island, all suggesting the importance of the harbour within a contemporary trading network.

In chapter 3, Damian Goodburn considers the boat-building process from the selection of the parent tree through the key stages of construction, together with the tool kit and manpower involved. His approach is well illustrated and informed by his vast woodworking and boat-building experience, including the full-scale reconstruction of the Poole logboat in 1989–90 at the Cranborne Centre for Ancient Technology, Dorset.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to the laser scanning and digital reconstruction of the boat by Pat Tanner, an experienced traditional boat builder who is also a leading specialist in the field of archaeological 3D scanning and modelling. Tanner’s impressive methods and well-illustrated results offer a hypothetical reconstruction from which he discusses the boat’s original size, shape and capabilities.

In chapter 5 Jeremy Hutchings and James A Spriggs outline the complicated conservation history of the boat. After one unsuccessful attempt to conserve the remains using PEG, a more economical solution had to be sought and sucrose was selected, though it had not previously been used on such a large scale in the UK. Nearly forty years after its recovery, the boat was finally removed from its conservation tanks in 2004 ready for cleaning and drying over the next two years.

In February 2007 the logboat was finally ready for display, as described in chapter 6 by Katie Morton and David Watkins. The Poole Waterfront Museum adopted a minimalist style for one of its highlights, accentuated with audio-visual footage of the reconstruction project in which Goodburn was involved. This approach is intended to encourage visitors to reach their own conclusions about what the vessel may have meant to the people who built and used it and to explore the many questions that still surround the boat’s story.

The Poole logboat is of huge archaeological significance and finally receives the attention it deserves in this comprehensive work. This book may have been enhanced by an additional chapter setting the logboat in the broader context of Iron Age Poole Harbour and prehistoric maritime archaeology more generally. However, its many strengths allow it to stand alone as an in-depth interdisciplinary case study. The chapters by Goodburn and Tanner, in particular, set out a useful methodology for the study of similar craft and the data and analyses presented provide an invaluable record to promote wider discussion

The new information that fills this book, especially the studies by Goodburn and Tanner, extend the pioneering studies of Professor Sean McGrail while highlighting the importance of revisiting old collections.