Article
Early West African Metallurgies: New Data and Old Orthodoxy
Journal of World Prehistory 12/2009; 22(4):415-438. DOI: 10.1007/s10963-009-9030-6
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Available from: Augustin F.-C. Holl, Jan 14, 2014 Data provided are for informational purposes only. Although carefully collected, accuracy cannot be guaranteed. The impact factor represents a rough estimation of the journal's impact factor and does not reflect the actual current impact factor. Publisher conditions are provided by RoMEO. Differing provisions from the publisher's actual policy or licence agreement may be applicable.
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- "Africa, a continent that is adjacent to Eurasia, offers a contrasting picture as far as the origin of metallurgy is concerned. Comparative work on the origins of metallurgy indicates that unlike the Middle East and adjacent regions of Europe that opened their metallurgical enterprise with the working of native copper and progressing through the Bronze to the Iron Ages, Africa seem to have started with iron and copper and in some instances iron only (Alpern, 2005; Holl, 2009; Killick, 2004a; Miller and van der Merwe, 1994; Phillipson, 2003; Pringle, 2009; Zangato and Holl, 2010). More importantly, the consensus dating evidence suggests that African metallurgy began around 1000 BC. "
[Show abstract] [Hide abstract] ABSTRACT: This contribution discusses the geochemistry of ancient metallurgy, a subdiscipline of anthropological and archaeological sciences known as archaeometallurgy. It shows that elemental data enables archaeometallurgists to access temperatures and conditions operating in extant furnaces as well as the organization of metallurgical production and its likely political, social, and environmental impact. However, numbers by themselves mean very little, they only make interpretive sense when considered in relation to well-resolved archaeological contexts and the people responsible for the archaeological record. - [Show abstract] [Hide abstract] ABSTRACT: This article traces the beginnings of metallurgy in the eastern half of the African continent, focusing on three regions: (1) Egypt and Nubia; (2) the Great Lakes region of Central and East Africa; and (3) southern Africa. Metallurgy was not practiced much beyond the Nile valley until the first millennium BC, when copper, bronze and iron metallurgy began in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and iron metallurgy in the Great Lakes region. The expansion of agricultural societies carried iron metallurgy south, reaching its southern limit in South Africa by c. 300cal AD. Copper was also smelted in southern Africa, but its use was restricted to pendants, bracelets, wire and other items of jewelry. In stark contrast to the metallurgical sequence in the Nile Valley, there was no production of tin, lead, gold or silver in central or southern Africa before these regions were linked to the Islamic world system after c. 800 AD.
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