« Scientific Literacy
Main
Mark Twain, The Sea of Galilee and Lake Tahoe »
September 26, 2007
Fishing with Fire
Yesterday, a couple of bloggers noted a Discovery Channel piece on Galili and Rosen's discovery of a 7th Century shipwreck off Dor in Israel. Now, I don't normally worry much about anything later than the Iron Age, but this account (the underlying paper was actually published online in April) struck me as sufficiently abnormal for a post.
Among the finds was the "fire basket" pictured below.
The abstract from the original International Journal of Nautical Archaeology paper tells us what it and other artifacts mean,
The ancient anchorage of Dor, Israel, contains wreck-sites from several periods. Underwater exploration of one Byzantine wreck discovered the remains of a medium-size boat constructed with iron nails. Coin-finds dated it to c.665 AD, after the Muslim conquest. The wreck was probably caused by natural agents, but an event in the Byzantine-Muslim conflict can not be discounted. The artifacts include a group of objects testifying to the practice of light-fishing. Literary sources indicate a prevalence of light-fishing, but archaeological finds are very rare. This discovery clearly indicates light-fishing in late antiquity. A sounding-lead and steelyard can be seen as auxiliary to the fishing.
As the article points out, the method of using the light of a fire to attract fish is well known from antiquity. In Plato's Sophist, a few paragraphs after telling us that "the hunting of water creatures goes by the general name of 'fishing'" and while still on the subject of fishing, the Elean Stranger says, "Then the kind of striking which takes place at night by the light of a fire is, I suppose, called by the hunters themselves, 'fire-hunting'." See Sophist, 220 B-D; I used Fowler's translation in LCC.
And Oppian(os) of Corycus, in what is now south-central Turkey, said in his Halieutica( c. 215),
Even so many devices, I know of the fishermen's craft in the sea and bitter destruction for so many fishes. And all the others a like fate overtakes, by weels and hooks and deep-woven net and sweeping trident - some in the day-time, but others evening takes and slays, when at earliest dusk of night with lighted torch, the fishers steer their hollow boat, bringing to the resting fishes a darkling doom. Then do the fishes exulting in the oily flame of pine rush about the boat and, to their sorrow seeing the fire at even, meet the stern blow of the trident. [Halieutica, IV 640, Mair's translation, LCC].
As a kid, I knew that a flashlight attracted fish at night. I also knew that I wasn't supposed to use my flashlight to help me catch fish (or to even fish at night). I don't remember anyone mentioning dynamite but I really didn't know how to get it anyway.
Picture credit:
Reference:
Posted by Duane Smith at September 26, 2007 7:40 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2265
Comments
Post a comment
Please read Abnormal Interest's Comments Policy.