CIPAC will be participating in the VII Portuguese Conference of Anthropology Associations in Lisbon, Portugal between June 4 and 7, 2019 at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Nova de Lisboa University (NOVA).
The CIPAC’s professor, Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Torres, the researcher Dr. Samila Ferreira and the professor of the Nautical Archeology Program (NAP) of Texas A&M/USA, Prof. Dr. Filipe Castro will present the paper “Meia lua, inteira” … Genuine knowledge and the counterpoint to the exceptional appreciation of knowledge. The end of the legacy of the traditional construction of Saveiros in Valença, Bahia, Brazil.
The city of Valença, located 125 km from the capital of Bahia, was one of the many cities in the state that used the laky transport for domestic supplies before the roads cut through the interior of Brazil. The “Saveiros” connected the great centers and the interior and distributed products manufactured by all the cities and surroundings. In two visits to Valença in 2013 and 2014 he showed that there is an active community of traditional shipbuilders in the region and that his work deserves more attention. The ancestry of each of the active boat builders seems tremendously important and must be addressed through a file investigation. During the 1980s, the American engineer, maritime historian and specialist in Portuguese caravels, John Patrick Sarsfield was assigned to the south of Bahia to design and build a replica of a caravel, and it was there that he identified that in Valença the shipbuilders were still using 15th century Mediterranean and Iberian shipbuilding practices and methods.
The generation that is now more than eighty years old has fascinating stories about the learning process in which, for example, the word “vocation” was heard more frequently than we expected. While in some places, such as Valença, many builders seem to be fighting, in other places their activity is prosperous. All the legacy of this practice and this knowledge is at imminent risk of disappearing due to the advanced age of some master builders and mainly due to the interruption of this knowledge to new apprentices due to disinterest, artisanal devaluation and the search for opportunities in big cities.
