Birch Tar and Petroleum Tar

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Fri Oct 09, 2009 10:19 pm

This is not necessarily about Asian archery.

On the Texas gulf coast live Indians who covered a wide variety of objects with petrol. tar. This tar seeped up from the ocean floor, floated to the surface and was deposited as fresh blobs to beaches far and wide. Few objects of perishible materials survived but some with tar coatings have. These include basket fragments, fishing nets and dug out canoes. Ceramics are their most common of tarred objects.

One would need to go 1000 miles north to find a birch bark canoe.

In my reproductions of these Akokisa Indian bows and arrows, I find it believable to tar over the sinew lashings of the fletching and waterproof yucca strings. If the arrow is made from arundinaria bamboo (local) with a sharpened wood foreshaft point, goose fletchings (also local) and waterproofed lashings; oiled self longbow with waterproofed string, then the result is not only gear which can be shot in all weather, but an arrow which will float if shot in the water.

Akokisa fished in the winter and hunted bison in the summer making them some of the most unlikely plains Indians of them all. Not one person is known to be a descendant of Akokisa.

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Sat Oct 10, 2009 2:09 am

Jack,
Petroleum by-products were extensively used in the Middle East too. I have never seen it used with arrows, but I cannot see why it might not have been used.

MJuingong · Post by **MJuingong** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 11:43 pm

"Not one person is known to be a descendant of Akokisa."

I don't like the sound of that

Is it possible that it hasn't really been checked out? What about DNA sampling?

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 1:18 am

Well said!