Location & record of dugout canoes in Magdalena River and adjacent swamps (Colombia): methodology and advances of a contemporary scientific expedition

Abstract

Magdalena River has been the main channel of communication between the Colombian continental territory and maritime dynamics of the Caribbean coast, from the pre-Hispanic period to at least early 20th century. Its huge basin was the scene of an extraordinary nautical dynamism, whose technological base has been predominantly the dugout canoe. Consequently, this article exposes the preliminary advances of an investigation on the ground, raised in a transdisciplinary way by combining views and methods of ethnohistory, ethnography and nautical archeology, whose objectives were related to analysis of that river navigation that connected territories, goods, people and ideas; evaluation of possible conceptual and constructive continuities on canoes that still are present in the river, and recording the artisan knowledge of the communities that still today navigate its waters and populate its riverbanks.