Early Metalwork Research Articles

Advanced Ancient Steelmaking Across the Arctic European Landscape

Abstract This article presents results that seriously challenge conventional frameworks regarding the time, course, and cultural context of the introduction of iron and steel in Europe, in turn central metals in the narrative of civilization development. From focusing on 2,000-year-old finds from 42 different sites across the national borders of present-day northernmost Norway, Finland, and Sweden, our study reveals advanced iron and steel production contemporaneous with Roman steel production within the hitherto unthinkable cultural context of hunter-gatherers. By employing archaeometric analyses alongside a lens that considers the Arctic climate and landscape, long-standing inadequate interpretative frameworks are challenged and we manage to shed novel light on the metallurgical practices and skills of the ancient Arctic hunter-gatherers. By examining local conditions, the research specifically reveals adaptation strategies and previously underexplored social and organizational aspects of early ironmaking. The implications of these findings are profound, urging historians and archaeologists to adopt similar methods and perspectives to potentially uncover additional “unthinkable” locations/regions or contexts with advanced and early metalworking.

Forging empire: Angkorian iron smelting, community and ritual practice at Tonle Bak

Abstract

Bronze Age Beginnings – a Scalar View from the Global Outskirts

This article tracks the formation of the rich and socially complex Nordic Bronze Age (NBA),c.2000–1500bc, by applying a scalar methodology and using theentrepôtand early metalworking site of Pile in Scania as its point of departure. By regarding the Bronze Age as an ancient example of globalisation, Island Melanesia at the outskirts of contemporary globalisation is first examined to provide an analogue to the Nordic entrepreneurial and maritime culture into which metallurgy was first adopted. How did this northern margin become ‘Bronze Age’, and what impact did its inclusion have? Various scales, from local to Bronze-Age-global were found to intersect in the Pile hoard, and in similar sites near and far. Byc.2000bc, metals and other commodities travelled along well-established local, regional, and super-regional networks, which even incorporated the British Isles and Únětician hubs at the Middle Elbe–Saale. Back in Scandinavia, metal and metal-related culture provided a comparative advantage when navigating local competition for influence and leadership. The transculturally global was strategically appropriated locally, using the reinvention of tradition as a principal strategy. The first metal boom caused friction and slow social change, rather than a social revolution. The real tipping point came in 1600–1500bc, when the nearly full-blown NBA emerged, through engagement with a considerably expanded world. By this time, large amounts of metal were in circulation. Seen from the non-urban north, this unprecedented expansion of their world brought new opportunities but likely also deep social tensions. Thus, the effects of adopting metallurgy permeated society and connectivity at every level, even at the outskirts of the Bronze Age world.

The social organisation of metalworking in southern England during the Beaker period and Bronze Age: absence of evidence or evidence of absence?

This paper attempts to consider the social dimensions of metalworking during the Beaker period and Bronze Age in southern England. However, any attempt to discuss the social context of metalworking in these periods, i.e. who was working metals and where these activities occurred, is confronted with an extremely low evidence base of excavated archaeological sites where metalworking is known to have taken place. This lack of data and subsequent understanding of metalworking locations stands in stark contrast to the thousands of Beaker and Bronze Age metal artefacts housed in museum archives across Britain. These metal artefacts bear witness to the ability of people in Beaker and Bronze Age societies in Britain, and particularly southern England, to obtain, transform and use metals since the introduction of copper at c.2450 BC. Such metal artefacts have been subject to detailed analytical programmes, which have revealed information on the supply and recycling of metals. Likewise, there have also been significant advances in our understanding of the prehistoric mining of metals across the British Isles, with Beaker and Bronze Age mines identified in locations such as Ross Island (Ireland), the Great Orme (UK) and Alderley Edge (UK). Consequently, there is detailed archaeological knowledge about the two ends of the metalworking spectrum: the obtaining of the metal ores from the ground and the finished artefacts. However, the evidence for who was working metals and where is almost completely lacking. This paper discusses the archaeological evidence of the location of metalworking areas in these periods and dissects the reasons why so few have been found within archaeological excavation, with the evidence for early metallurgy likely to be slight and ambiguous, and possibly not identifiable as metalworking remains during excavation. Suggestions are made as to where such metalworking activities could have taken place in the Beaker period and Bronze Age, and what techniques can be applied to discover some of this evidence of metalworking activity, to allow access to the social dimensions of early metalworking and metalworkers.

Digging deeper: Insights into metallurgical transitions in European prehistory through copper isotopes

Southeastern Europe is the birthplace of metallurgy, with evidence of copper smelting at ca. 5000 BCE. There the later Eneolithic (Copper Age) was associated with the casting of massive copper tools. However, copper metallurgy in this region ceased, or significantly decreased, centuries before the dawn of the Bronze Age. Archaeologists continue to be debate whether this hiatus was imposed on early metalworking communities as a result of exhaustion of workable mineral resources, or instead a cultural transition that was associated with changes in depositional practices and material culture. Copper isotopes provide a broadly applicable means of addressing this question. Copper isotopes fractionate in the near-surface environment such that surficial oxide ores can be differentiated from non-weathered sulphide ores that occur at greater depth. This compositional variation is transferred to associated copper artifacts, the final product of the metallurgical process. In the central Balkans, a shift from 65Cu-enriched to 65Cu-depleted copper artifacts occurs across the metallurgical hiatus at the Eneolithic-Bronze Age boundary, ca. 2500 BCE. This indicates that the reemergence of metal production at the beginning of the Bronze Age is associated with pyrotechnical advancements that allowed for the extraction of copper from sulphide ore. Thus copper isotopes provide direct evidence that the copper hiatus was the result of exhaustion of near-surface oxide ores after one-and-a-half millennia of mining, and that the beginning of the Bronze Age in the Balkans is associated with the introduction of more complex smelting techniques for metal extraction from regionally abundant sulphidic deposits.

Ancient metalworking in South America: a 3000-year-old copper mask from the Argentinian Andes

Abstract

Prevalence and risk factors for re-interventions following reamed intramedullary tibia nailing

IntroductionThis study aimed to identify the prevalence and the risk factors for re-interventions following reamed intramedullary nailing (IMN) of tibial shaft fractures. Patients and methodsWe retrospectively analysed a prospectively populated data of adult patients that underwent reamed intramedullary nailing for stabilization of tibial shaft fractures over a period of three years. Exclusion criteria were immature patients, pathological and periarticular fractures. Data collected included patient demographics, mechanism of injury, open or closed injury pattern, ISS, perioperative complications, reintervention characteristics (time, cause, number), smoking habits, medical co-morbidities and progress to radiological fracture union. Fractures were classified according to AO/OTA system. The cohort of these patients was divided in two groups: Group 1 included the patients who healed uneventfully and Group 2 included the patients who underwent a re-intervention for the healing of the fracture. A logistic regression analysis model was used to assess the odds ratio (OR) of identified risk factors predicting the necessity of re-interventions. Results181 (129 male) patients with a mean age of 37 (range 16–87) met the inclusion criteria. 30 patients were excluded due to inadequate follow up, leaving 151 patients for the study group. 119 patients were included in Group 1. 32 (21.2%) patients who had at least one re-intervention (range 1–3) were included in Group 2. The most common causes for re-intervention were aseptic non-union (31.3%) and removal of implants due to soft tissue irritation/anterior knee pain (31.3%), followed by early metalwork failure (12.5%), infected non-union (9.4%), correction of rotational deformities (9.4%) and canal intramedullary sepsis with evident fracture healing (6.3%). 29 (25.8%) from the study cohort patients sustained an open fracture and 8 of them underwent a re-intervention (20.5% of interventions). Incidence of fracture pattern 42-B, C was statistically significant greater in the reintervention (40.6%) compared to the non-re-intervention group (23.53%) (p = 0.026). Risk factors predicting the need for re-interventions included the type of fracture B, C (p = 0.026 OR: 2.528, range: 1.117–5.721) and increased alcohol consumption (p = 0.027/OR: 2.618, range: 1.116–6.141). ConclusionFracture pattern and alcohol abuse were highly predictive for re-interventions following reamed IM nailing for stabilization of acute tibial shaft fractures.

Evidence of Early Metalworking in Arctic Canada

This paper examines new evidence related to an early (pre‐Columbian) European presence in Arctic Canada. Artifacts from archaeological sites that had been assumed to relate to pre‐Inuit indigenous occupations of the region in the centuries around A.D. 1000 have recently been recognized as having been manufactured using European technologies. We report here on the SEM‐EDS analysis of a small stone vessel recovered from a site on Baffin Island. The interior of the vessel contains abundant traces of copper–tin alloy (bronze) as well as glass spherules similar to those associated with high‐temperature processes. These results indicate that it had been used as a crucible. This artifact may represent the earliest evidence of high‐temperature nonferrous metalworking in the New World north of Mesoamerica.

‘Productive’ Sites in the Polders? ‘Griffin brooches’ and Other Early Medieval Metalwork from the Belgian Coastal Plain

The present paper demonstrates how metal detectorists’ collections potentially form an important addition to the extant corpus of early medieval non-ferrous metalwork. Several sites in the Belgian coastal plain featuring rich metalwork assemblages dated to this period are presented. The important questions raised by these artefacts regarding the chronology, nature and socio-cultural affiliations of settlement in the early medieval coastal plain are discussed. In addition, a previously unrecognised, distinct type of openwork disc brooch is described, dated and framed within technical, typological and artistic developments of late tenth- to early twelfth-century north-western Europe, in particular the North Sea area.

The function of Chalcolithic metalwork in Italy: an assessment based on use-wear analysis

This paper presents results of the use-wear analysis of Chalcolithic copper-base metalwork from the Italian peninsula. Previous research led to contrasting scholarly opinions regarding the function of early metal axes, daggers and halberds from this region. Whilst some authors interpreted these objects as utilitarian tools and weapons, others saw them as symbolic signifiers of social status and personhood. The analysis conducted here shows that this is a false dichotomy as all classes of metalwork seem to embody to some extent both utilitarian and non-utilitarian values. In particular, axes were primarily used for woodworking and other practical tasks, but were mostly withdrawn from circulation when still usable. This suggests that deposition practices bore a loose relationship, if any, with the functional value of the tools. Daggers were employed in a range of symbolically charged practices that left little wear on cutting edges. These probably included the sacrificial slaughtering and skinning of large animals such as cattle and horses. Halberds were utilised as weapons in champion’s duels in which display of combative skills and prowess would have been far more important than killing the opponent. This explains the relatively low rate of damaged blades in the record. Regardless of their practical function in lifetime settings, these objects were all similarly employed in burial to reproduce core social values such as gender and age. Importantly, this study contributes to debunking undemonstrated assumptions concerning the function of early metalwork in European prehistory. It also defines a replicable analytical protocol for the use-wear analysis of ancient copper-alloy artefacts.

Gold technology of the ancient Scythians – gold from the kurgan Arzhan 2, Tuva

In 2000-2003, a ‘royal’ burial site in Tuva Republic, Siberia, dating to early Scythian times, was excavated by a joint German-Russian research program. Thousands of gold articles were discovered in the wooden chamber of ‘royal’ burial no. 5, dated to the late 7th century BC. The majority of these ornaments are decorated in the Scythian animal style. The study of the technological aspects reveals the variety of manufacturing techniques and designs employed for these extremely rich ornaments, and provides an insight into the complexity of the art of the early Scythian goldsmiths at the end of the 7th century BC. This paper aims to present the large variety of distinct processes used in the manufacture of these gold artefacts. The technical expertise and the equipment at the disposal of the Early Iron Age craftsmen can be inferred from tool marks and analysis of surface structures. The early date of these finds, demonstrated by a combination of radiocarbon and dendrochronology, supports the assumption that this particular, sophisticated style of early Scythian metal work originated in the Tuva region.

What Did Iron Really Look Like? Patination and Coloring Treatments on Iron and Steel

Over the past century, the powerful but mythical image of knights in shining armour, with bright polished swords to match, has dominated our view of what ironwork looked like: that of a polished greyish-white metal. This impression is gained not only from descriptions and illustrations in many books but is also obvious from even a casual walk around museum collections specializing in high status ironwork (such as the Royal Armouries in Leeds). But a close examination of much of this ironwork is likely to reveal that this was not its original appearance. Many poorly preserved patinated surfaces have been mistakenly removed by restorers and conservators wishing to improve the appearance of the objects in their care, not realizing they were altering the appearance by removing surviving traces of the original surface. However, it is possible to work out what much early iron or steelwork was originally intended to look like even if very little of the original surfaces survive. This can be done by the study of a combination of things: actual surviving traces, related decorative features (such as inlays), early descriptions, pictures, and even the use of inhomogeneous metal for certain objects or the making of composite ferrous artifacts. From this we can start to find out that much ironwork was actually intended to be either one or more colors, mostly in the range black (hence blacksmith) or dark grey to brown or blue, sometimes with one color intended to show up in contrast to another, or to a decorative feature such as an inlay. The probability that induced patination on iron surfaces was also intended to serve as a protective film is also indicated by some written sources. These issues need to be examined to promote a much better understanding of this little understood aspect of early ferrous metalwork, both to find out how and why it was intended to look originally and avoid bad decisions on how it should be cared for and displayed.

1 - Experiences of an old-age psychiatric liaison service on a limited basis on a medical ward

Southeastern Europe is the birthplace of metallurgy, with evidence of copper smelting at ca. 5000 BCE. There the later Eneolithic (Copper Age) was associated with the casting of massive copper tools. However, copper metallurgy in this region ceased, or significantly decreased, centuries before the dawn of the Bronze Age. Archaeologists continue to be debate whether this hiatus was imposed on early metalworking communities as a result of exhaustion of workable mineral resources, or instead a cultural transition that was associated with changes in depositional practices and material culture. Copper isotopes provide a broadly applicable means of addressing this question. Copper isotopes fractionate in the near-surface environment such that surficial oxide ores can be differentiated from non-weathered sulphide ores that occur at greater depth. This compositional variation is transferred to associated copper artifacts, the final product of the metallurgical process. In the central Balkans, a shift from 65Cu-enriched to 65Cu-depleted copper artifacts occurs across the metallurgical hiatus at the Eneolithic-Bronze Age boundary, ca. 2500 BCE. This indicates that the reemergence of metal production at the beginning of the Bronze Age is associated with pyrotechnical advancements that allowed for the extraction of copper from sulphide ore. Thus copper isotopes provide direct evidence that the copper hiatus was the result of exhaustion of near-surface oxide ores after one-and-a-half millennia of mining, and that the beginning of the Bronze Age in the Balkans is associated with the introduction of more complex smelting techniques for metal extraction from regionally abundant sulphidic deposits.

A New Look at the Prehistoric Metallurgy of Southeastern Iran

The 1981 dissertation of Dennis L. Heskel (1982) on the development of metal technology in Iran and his related publications (Heskel and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1980, 1986), are still three of the most influential treatises on Iranian metallurgy and the social dynamics of metallurgy despite two decades of continued work. Based on his metallographic and chemical analyses of a large corpus of copper-base artefacts and ores from Chalcolithic and Bronze Age levels at Shahr-i Sokhta, Tepe Hissar, Susa, and Tepe Yahya, Heskel argued convincingly against the Marxist models for the development of metallurgy that rely on an inevitable progression of technological stages (e.g. Childe 1944); models that, unfortunately, still exert great influence on archaeometallurgical thought. Heskel, following the seminal work of Cyril Stanley Smith (1965), was also one of the first scholars to note the importance of the copper arsenide deposits of the Anarak-Talmessi region in the early appearance of arsenical copper in Iran and to attempt to demonstrate this connection through technical analysis of the artefacts themselves (see Pigott 1999a: 112-13). Although no archaeological nor geochemical research has yet provided indisputable evidence for the exploitation of this important ore region in prehistory, it is a hypothesis that has remained largely unchallenged. Heskel's most significant contribution, however, was his use of metallographic analysis to understand the techniques of early metalworkers and his integration of these data into a larger socio-cultural context. Although the classic techniques of material science (e.g. optical microscopy) have played a minor role in archaeological explorations of Iran since Mlle. Halm analysed a few metal artefacts from Tepe Giyan and Tepe Sialk in the 1930s (see Heskel and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1986: 207), Heskel was the first to apply these methods to a large sample set (-100 metal objects and ~50 pieces of ore) and make these data the focus of his archaeological research. In recognition of this important contribution to Iranian prehistoric archaeology, we have returned to Heskel's data armed with the last twenty years of archaeological reinterpretation and important new findings from a number of sites. Although Heskel's metallographic research is exempl ry, it suffers from two unavoidable problems. First, the stratigraphy of Tepe Yahya, a small (4 ha) site in the Soghun Valley -220 km. south of Kerman that was the centrepiece of Heskel's study due to its long C'4-dated chronological span, had not been interpreted fully by the time he finished his dissertation. Thus, many of the artefacts' contexts were misconstrued. S cond, the spectrographic analysis of his samples was only semi-quantitative, most notably in the detection of arsenic (see Heskel 1982: 284-85). Indeed, recent analyses of the Yahya collection using an inductivelycoupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) and electron microprobes have shown that the levels of arsenic he reported are consistently too low by a factor of 1-3wt% (see Thornton 2001: 72-74). Despite the problems, Heskel's work should not be ignored and will here, once again, serve as the foundation for a paper on the development of metallurgy in prehistoric Southeastern Iran as seen from Tepe Yahya.

Rings of life: the role of early metalwork in mediating the gendered life course

Rings of life: the role of early metalwork in mediating the gendered life course

Rings of life: the role of early metalwork in mediating the gendered life course

This paper explores the changing role of early metalwork in mediating age-gender dimensions of social identity in the Copper Age of the Carpathian Basin. Taking a life course approach, it suggests that metal was used to convey difference within exceptionally complex and contrasting constructions of male and female life. Variation in the use of metal throughout the Copper Age was linked to shifts in the pattern of age-gender life course constructions. The expansion of metalworking in the early Copper Age may be regarded as a socio-cultural development of the categorization of the person originating in the late Neolithic, enabling those categories to be maintained and refined. The decline in metal production at the end of the Copper Age can be related to a reconfiguration of age and gender relations. The design of metal objects played an important role in expressing the performed relationship between biological and social life change. In mediating the life course, metal objects acted as foci of time, powerful symbols of life stages and events.

The Mineralogy of Bronze Age Copper Ores from the British Isles: Implications for the Composition of Early Metalwork

Numerous analytical studies during the latter half of this century have contributed to the compilation of a large compositional database of Early to Middle Bronze Age copper‐based artefacts revealing distinctive impurity patterns which appear to change over time. However, attempts to relate these data to copper ore sources proved problematic in the absence of firm evidence for the location of prehistoric copper mines. Over the last fifteen years this situation has changed dramatically with the discovery of numerous Early and Middle Bronze Age copper mines in England and Wales. This study is the first attempt at a comprehensive mineralogical survey of the principal mines investigated to date in order to define the likely composition of the copper ores as mined in antiquity for comparison with the artefact database. The study suggests that the majority of these mines can only have produced essentially pure copper. Only one mine, Ross Island, is likely to have produced copper with a significant level of impurities. The relative purity of the known ore sources is contrasted with significant levels of various metallic impurities among the analysed artefacts, leading to the conclusion that metal circulation and mixing may have been more extensive than previously thought even during the earliest part of the Bronze Age.

Caracterización de la metalurgia inicial gallega: una revisión

Many attempts have been made to establish a chronological framework for Galician early metalwork, and none is wholly satisfactory. Metal-working has been seen in terms of poorly defined traditions and industries, and the conventional terminology has tended to straitjacket the artefacts themselves. Through the contextual study of that set new outlines are proposed on the articulation of the metalwork with Bell Beaker pottery and the Early Bronze Age, the beginnings of the copper-tin alloy, or the argaric origin of silver spirals in the North-West of the Iberian Peninsula.

Early Metalworking: A Heterarchical Analysis of Industrial Organization

The study of prehistoric industries is examined from the perspective of heterarchy. The main metalworking traditions of Bronze Age and Iron Age Wessex In southern England are discussed. Bronzeworking during the earlier period seems to be organized in a hierarchical fashion. The concept of heterarchy illuminates the complex organization of ironworking in the Iron Age, however, an industry that was deliberately non‐hierarchical.

The environmental impact of prehistoric mining at Copa Hill, Cwmystwyth, Wales

A recent upsurge of interest in early mining and metal working sites in Europe led to experimental quantification of their apparently prodigious demand for fuelwood. However, the real impact of prehistoric mining on woodland remained unknown. Excavation of a prehistoric copper mine at Copa Hill, Cwmystwyth, from 1986-91, afforded an opportunity for linked palaeoenvironmental investigations. Pollen analytical methods were applied in a pilot study of blanket peat deposits adjacent to the prehistoric mine at Copa Hill. Results provide circumstantial evidence linking prehistoric human activity at the mine in the Early Bronze Age both to selective woodland removal and to upland peat initiation close to the site. Woodland clearances seem to have been relatively small-scale during the inferred period of mining, with limited overall impact, suggesting either protracted small-scale mining operations, or active management of woodland resources. Future directions for study of the impact of early mining on woodland are suggested.