Style, technology, and iron smelting furnaces in Bantu-speaking Africa

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how and why iron smelting furnaces exhibit style. This goal stems from a broader question conceming why a great diversity of iron smelting furnaces exists in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the Bantu-speaking area. The effort falls into three sections. First, I discuss some theoretical issues of style in archaeology as they affect socially conscious interpretations of variation in material culture. My particular focus is upon the behavioral foundation of style as it relates to the process of production. Second, and centering on the complex object which a furnace is, I address the factors that cause stylistic variation in the process of African iron smelting. With the working de& nition of technological style and a methodology for reading stylistic variation in the iron smelting process, I proceed to suggest how and why iron smelting furnaces exhibit style in the context of MaShona culture in present-day Zimbabwe. A functional view of style, generally following Wobst (1977) and Wiessner (1983, 1985), is important for probing into some of the relationships between the technology and style of iron smelting furnaces. More specifically, technological style (Lechtman 1977; Lechtman and Steinberg 1979; Steinberg 1977) provides the framework to examine the behavioral underpinnings of style and the cultural influences which structure technological behavior into a form of communication. I define technological style as the formal integration of the behaviors performed during the manufacture and use of material culture which, in its entirety, expresses social information. The theory of technological style requires that we direct our attention to the iron smelters and the operations they perform. The furnace is merely a physical manifestation of the smelting event and offers a means to reconstruct the behavioral choices made. The position of the master iron smelter in his culture, on the other hand, a person with special