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p X Craddock,    The investigation of a smali heap of sllver

I C Freestone,    smelting debrls from Rio Tinto, Huelva, Spain

H H Gale, H D Meeks,

B Rothenberg and H S Tite

Michael R Werner The archaeological evidence for gold smelting at Kraku'Lu Yordan, Yugoslavia, in the Late Roman period

I C Freestone,    Zinc production at Zawar, Rajasthan

P T Craddock,

UH Hegde,

H J Hughes and H V Pallwal

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INTRODUCTION

The papers la Chla volune were read at the Symposlum on Early Furnace Technology organlsed jolntly by the British Museun Research Laboratory and the Hlstorical Metallurgy Society and hcld at the British HuseuE on 29-30 October 1982.

Research on all aspects of early metallurgy nas been gathering aomentua during the last decade, and it becace elear at the 1979 Archaeoaetry Conference that there was considerable research Interest specifically in extractlve metallurgy In early tiaei. The papers f rom this were publisked separately in 1980 as Scientific Studies in Early Mining and Extractive Metallurgy, (ed. P T Craddock, British Huseua Occasional Paper No. 20).

Much work is currently in progress around the world, researching how metal was won fron its ores in the past. This reąuires the coordinated efforts of excavation of the sites of mining and smelting, the scientific study of the stratified remains of ores, slags, refractories and metal, and the experimental reconstruction of the processes based on the researched evidence.

In the short time sińce the publication of Occasional Paper No. 20 there have been major advances such as the publication of the Bronze Age mining Systems at Timna (Conrad & Rotnenberg, Antikes Kupfer in Tirana Tal, 1980); early iron smelting in Europę (Offa, 40, 1983); and the study of early slags (Bachmann, The Identification of slags trem archaeological sites, 1982, Institute of Archaeology). Conpletely new areas of inwestiga-tion have also appeared recently with topics as diverse as very early copper metallurgy in Africa, south of the Sahara (Echard, Hetallurgies Africaines, 1983) ; zinc smelting in India (Craddock et al., Early zinc production in India, The Mining Magazine, 1985); and copper mining and smelting in ancient China (Tonglushan: a pearl amongst ancient mines, Huangshi Museum).

We look forward to the next five years and beyond.