The Beginnings of the Use of Metals and Alloys ed. by Robert Maddin

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 544 Book Reviews back-to-back crises ofthe Great Depression and the Second World War. His various attempts to fashion energy policy in the rapidly expanding federal bureaucracy of that time is a fascinating part of Clark’s study. Energy and the Federal Government is an important work that should be a required reference for specialists in government policy, technol­ ogists in the energy community, and scholars who have an interest in the area of energy development and policy. George T. Mazuzan Dr. Mazuzan is the National Science Foundation historian. The Beginnings ofthe Use ofMetals and Alloys. Edited by Robert Maddin. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 393; illustrations, tables, references, index. $55.00. The Beginnings of the Use ofMetals and Allays represents the proceed­ ings of the second international conference on the subject (BUMA-II) held in Zhengzhou, China, in 1986. It includes twenty-seven of the thirty-six papers presented there (adequate translations of the nine Chinese contributions could not be obtained in time for publication) and three others from the 1981 BUMA-I conference. The authors, an international group of scholars (fourteen countries represented), treat early metallurgical developments in a diverse array of geograph­ ical and cultural settings: China, Africa, the Near East, Southeast Asia, Europe, India, Central and South America. The time period extends from the 8th millennium b.c. (Turkey) to the first millennium of the Christian era. Robert Maddin, the editor, is Honorary Curator of Archaeological Sciences at Harvard’s Peabody Museum and was one of the organizers of both BUMA-I and BUMA-II. The success of the conference and of this volume stems in large part from the achievement of Maddin and his Chinese colleagues in securing the participation not just of metallurgists but also of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, chemists, and geologists. They, in turn, frequently report on signifi­ cant input from living artisans and artists. The articles have been arranged in roughly chronological-geographical order. In the recent past, models for technological innovation have tended toward one or the other of two extremes: the diffusionist concept, tracing each development to a unique source in time and place; and that of local, independent invention, free from outside stimulus, influence, or inspiration. Collectively, the papers in this volume bring us to a more rational middle ground, where each culture develops its technology neither de novo nor as a gift from abroad but idiosyncratically , subject to numerous influences, not the least of which are the local social and political milieu and the available resources. In Tamara Stech and Maddin’s words, “Technological systems such as metallurgy, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 545 should be interpreted as integral parts of the cultural context in which they occur rather than as entities possessing their own dynamic, independent of context, which is uniform through time and space” (p. 173). Another contributor, Joyce White, introduces a new phrase, “indigenous innovation,” and aptly applies an old one, “appropriate technology,” to express the same idea. While a couple of the papers are generalist in their approach and a few consider a particular process, alloy, or artifact, the majority focus on developments in a particular region and time frame. China and Southeast Asia receive particular attention (understandably in view of the conference venue), but Oman, Sardinia, Yugoslavia, and Malawi are among the lesser-known regions whose early metallurgical history is studied. Throughout the book, there is considerable emphasis on the nature of technological developments in human and historical terms. Yet, as Cyril Stanley Smith remarks in a philosophical gem of a foreword, “the technical historian . . . [sees] the richness of history in the diversity of ways in which matter, with its constant properties, has been handled” (p. x). Two implicit themes forcibly struck me. First, the major contribution made to archaeometry by new instrumentation techniques. No longer restricted to wet chemical analysis and carbon-14 dating, the modern archaeometallurgist studies chemical composition by chromatography, neutron activation, atomic absorption, PIXE and EDAX X-ray tech­ niques, and mass spectroscopy; detection of buried metal by proton magnetometer surveys; and dating by thermoluminescence, archaeomagnetic aging, and sediment analysis. Photomicrography, now as in the past, is another powerful tool. Second, the materials...