Abstract
ABSTRACT Reconstructing past anthropogenic influences on forest and woodland resources is an important tool to understand the development of present patterns of land use, and their long-term impacts. Past metallurgical activity undoubtedly consumed significant charcoal, exploiting forest resources for fuel at various stages of metal extraction and processing. This study aimed to quantify this fuel consumption from archaeometallurgical remains, with North Pare as a case study – a prominent centre of precolonial iron production activity in north Tanzania, and a mountainous region subject to considerable erosion processes attributed to changes in forest cover. Archaeometallurgical remains from Pare were examined with bulk chemical analysis, optical microscopy and elemental analysis to reconstruct Pare’s past iron production technologies. The data was interrogated to distinguish the contribution of the fuel ash to the smelting system, with implications for our understanding of past forest degradation processes in relation to metallurgy, reducing reliance on potentially problematic analogy.
Highlights
Reconstructing past anthropogenic influences on local environments and assessing their contributions to changes in those landscapes can make a valuable contribution to understanding how present patterns of land use developed, as well as anticipating the future impacts of current land use practices (Stump 2010; Finch, Marchant, and Courtney-Mustaphi 2017)
Given the availability of an archaeological dataset of slag and technical ceramic samples, supplemented with ore and charcoal samples collected from the vicinity of the same archaeological sites, it was expected that the analysis of the described samples would provide an
In terms of an understanding of environmental data, this includes a lack of data on the specific regrowth rates for exploited trees, a lack of an anthracological identification of the specific tree species used in past iron smelts, and a limited understanding of the management strategies of local woodlands, such as species selection
Summary
Reconstructing past anthropogenic influences on local environments and assessing their contributions to changes in those landscapes can make a valuable contribution to understanding how present patterns of land use developed, as well as anticipating the future impacts of current land use practices (Stump 2010; Finch, Marchant, and Courtney-Mustaphi 2017). The utilisation of forest and woodland resources is a important issue. Not widely practiced today, local, charcoal-fuelled metal production processes would have been a significant consumer of woodland resources in the past, as these technologies require the creation of long-burning and strongly reducing atmospheres within smelting furnaces (Pleiner 2000). It is important to ask whether past metal production technologies had a role to play in past process of forest degradation, or in the maintenance of forests and woodlands through the adoption of management practices in response to increased fuel demand, and the changes in forest structure that may have ensued
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