S5003128

EXPERJMENTAL SMELTING TBCHNIQUKS: ACHIEVEMENTS AMD FUTURĘ

R P Tylecote and J F Herkcl Institute of Archaeology, Unwersłty of London

Abatract

The tendency towar cis experimental archaeology has put experimental smelting lnto the llnelight. In face, sińce che end of the nlneteench cencury when it was reallsed chat the technlques then beIng used sonetimes had little in common with previoue techniąues, there has been a tradition ln archaeometallurgy of proving your theorles by experiment. Cushing's experiments of the 1890s on copper smelting were followed by Gowland' s in 1912 and by Coghlan's and others in the 1930s. Since the 1939-45 war much work has been done on the iron bloomery process and latterly the morę difficult problem of copper smelting. Side by side with this work has gone the anthropologists* attempt to record and reproduce techniąues that were almost extinct in Africa and Asia before the memory of how to do them has died out. This type of work is still continuing as we can see from this volume and is a valuable aid to the work ln the laboratory. The experlmental work that has been done in northern Europę both in the field and in the laboratory has resulted in a body of people who are skilled in the reproductlon of iron smelting processes and it is to be hoped that this tradition will be passed on so that the detailed knowledge of obsolete processes will never in fact disappear. Pinally, it should not be forgotten that the simplified techniąues of early peoples have an important place in modern teaching institutions.

As modern plant, even on a pilot scalę, gets morę compli-cated and expensive the smali scalę processes of antiquity can be pressed into useful service and fully instrumented to teach the principles of modern metallurgical processes.

Keywords:    EXPERIMENT, SMELTING, COPPER, IRON, LEAD, TIN,

TEACHING. ARCHAEOMETALLURGY, FURNACE, EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Deflnition

The word 'smelting' can be interpreted in several ways. Considering the mass of Information now available it is our intention to restrict its meaning morę 'to reduction or oxidatlon under a controlled environment with a predetermined ore/fuel ratio and alrflow, and to omlt those reduction experlments in which the reductant is being consumed in the process and not replenished (i,je, crucible smelting) and those where ore is being reduced