Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: Metallurgical Analysis (Other Keyword)
1-25 (56 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Faynan region of Southern Jordan is one of the largest copper ore deposits in the Levant. These ores were exploited throughout history, and during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-800 BCE), copper production in Faynan reached an industrial scale. However, excavations at Khirbat...
Análisis morfológico y químico de escorias de cobre del sitio Jicalán Viejo, en el Occidente de México (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Este trabajo presenta los avances de la clasificación morfológica, caracterización química elemental (pXRF), y microscopía estereoscópica y óptica de las escorias de cobre recuperadas entorno a las áreas productivas...
Archaeometallurgy and Productive Processes: Understanding Copper Smelting Production in the Prehispanic and Colonial Site of Jicalán, Michoacán, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the characterization of technological processes used for producing copper at the archaeological site of Jicalán Viejo, Michoacán, in Western Mexico, which includes both prehispanic and colonial...
Artisanal Lineages, Communities of Practice and Learning Traditions in Muisca otive goldwork (Colombia): An Initial Exploration (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technological and stylistic regularities in material culture are often used to define archaeological ‘cultures’, and variously interpreted as resulting from communities of practice, learning traditions and/and imitation, together with consumer or patron demands....
The “Bronze Age” of Southern Africa: Insights from Isotopes and Trace Elements (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Southern Africa project (2015–present) uses lead and tin isotopes plus trace element concentrations to infer the geological provenance of copper and tin in Iron Age copper alloys, and to investigate the behaviors responsible for moving these objects from their geological source to the eventual...
Changing and Exchanging Social Values of Metals: The Integration of Tumbaga and Iron Objects in Indigenous Graves in the Colombia’s Caribbean Region (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the colonial order between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries transformed the use and trading of metal objects employed in indigenous funerary practices in Colombia’s Caribbean region, it also enabled local goldwork traditions to continue. Particularly, in the lower-Magdalena River region, the “Malibú” buried their dead...
Changing Times, Changing Ways? Evidence for Metallurgy at the Cividade de Bagunte (2018)
The Iberian Peninsula has been a rich source of metallic ores for millennia, and the quest for control of those resources has profoundly impacted the history of the Peninsula. Iberia has followed a unique trajectory in the development of metallurgy, with a case for the independent invention of copper smelting in the southwest, and small-scale production of bronze and other metals across the Peninsula until Roman occupation. The advent of Roman imperial control of labour and mines constituted a...
A Complex History of Human-Environment Interaction Revealed by the Study of Metal Production Industries in Imperial China (2018)
The study of technology with archaeological science approaches is a powerful proxy for investigating the history of human-environment interactions and provides essential information which could not be revealed by other types of evidence. This great potential was however not fully exploited in previous works. Here we present an on-going project of archaeometallurgical investigation of 7th-15th century silver-lead production sites in China. Environmental history study agreed that during this...
The Diversity of Old Copper Culture Projectile Points (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Old Copper Culture (OCC) (4000-1000 B.C.) of the Lake Superior Region of North America features a wide variety of utilitarian tools manufactured from native copper. Here, we assess the technological diversity of copper projectile points found in the region spanning Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota U.S.A., as well as artifacts found...
Early Iron Metallurgy in the Caucasus: Filling in a Technological "Missing Link" (2018)
In the study of technological transformations, there is often much discussion of how innovations are conditioned by earlier systems of technical knowledge. Identification of transitional features is often challenging, however, particularly for questions about the origins of iron smelting and its relationship with copper-base metallurgy. This paper discusses some unusual technological features in iron metallurgical debris (circa 8th-6th c. BC) from a fortified hilltop site in the Caucasus,...
Economic Changes through Time along the Tanzanian Swahili Coast, as Seen through the Examination of Non-ferrous Metals and Metallurgical Technologies (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historic Swahili towns along the East African coast played prominent roles in the triangular Indian Ocean maritime trade linking East Africa with India and the Persian Gulf/Red Sea, but the impact and extent of economic changes through time in these towns are still poorly understood. Examining...
The Economies of Twentieth-Century Blacksmith Shops in Idaho (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In March 2022, the site of an early twentieth-century blacksmith shop on my family’s 90-acre sheep ranch in Montour Valley of southwestern Idaho was excavated due to dilapidation and subsequent collapse of the structure. In the early twentieth century, the valley was the site of intensive agriculture and ranching, and the establishment of the railroad in...
Experimental Investigation of Primary Copper Smelting in Central Michoacan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Copper was the main metal produced and worked in Mesoamerica, but data for pre-modern primary production and processing remain elusive. Systematic research at Itziparátzico, a Late Postclassic location in Central...
Extracting Copper from Sulphidic Ores: The Jicalán Viejo Smelting Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Contrary to other Mesoamerican cultural and political entities, the Purépecha Empire is renowned for its remarkable development of metallurgical production. Ongoing research at the site of Jicalán Viejo involves the...
From Jalisco, Mexico, to Quimistán, Honduras: Analyzing Mesoamerican Metals from the Field Museum (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Copper artifacts were prominent in Mesoamerica during the last precolonial millennium, more widely distributed than silver and gold. Mesoamerican copper was formed into axes, axe-monies, rings, pendants, bells, and needles, among other artifacts. The most used alloy in this region was...
GlobaLID: A New Research Data Infrastructure for Lead Isotope Data (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lead isotope data are an important tool for the reconstruction of raw material provenances of non-ferrous archaeological materials. The quality of the provenance reconstruction depends, among other factors, on the comprehensiveness of the reference data the archaeological samples can be compared...
High Energy Generation and Elevated Temperature Potential of an Archaic Furnace in Ancient Peru (2018)
We present an aerodynamic and thermal study of the architectonic complex including a fire pit (locally named Fogon Mayor) on top of the largest pyramid in Caral, a society that flourished between 2627 and 2020 cal B.C. near the Pacific coast of present day Peru.The air flow produced by wind on the corridor and ducts feeding the fogon was estimated by various engineering approaches that agreed (within 7-18%) with calculations obtained by fluid-dynamics-modeling of the whole pyramid. Results were...
Hot Spot Analysis: Copper Production in the Northern Lake Superior Basin (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. North America’s Native Copper Industry is one of the oldest metalworking traditions in the world, with metal use in this region dating to over 9,500 years ago. While several studies have focused on copper mining and use, few have focused on copper production. As a result, little attention has been given to the waste materials generated during the...
IRANGKOR Project: Production, Trade and Consumption of Iron in the Khmer Empire, Cambodia (9th to 15th c. CE) (2018)
Investigation into material production and distribution is an important way of understanding the political and socioeconomic organization of premodern states. Iron, with its specific technological characteristics and diverse cultural utility, can be perceived as one of the most dynamic materials for facilitating social and cultural transformation. Reconstructing how iron was managed in the Khmer Empire is therefore a critical perspective for documenting the interrelationship between its multiple...
Iron Production at Marginal Settlements in Northern Iceland (2018)
The environment of Iceland was rapidly and severely affected by the Norse Settlement, in particular by deforestation. In Iceland’s changing environment the production of iron, an essential material, became limited not by access to iron ore but by availability of wood to make charcoal fuel. The large-scale production of iron may be one of the primary processes that led to deforestation in Iceland due to the large need for charcoal. Investigations at Stekkjarborg on the farm of Keldudalur in...
Isolation, Innovation, and Fraud: Assessing Failure in Historical Mining and Metallurgy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Failure" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mining and metallurgy are high-risk endeavors, and failure is common. In the first, the extent and nature of ore deposits are unknown, and the second is prone to mishaps due to inadequate temperature control, poor quality ore, and refractory malfunction, among other factors. Thus, failures in this industry—as measured by output—can be easily attributed to...
The Landscape of China’s Participation in the Bronze Age Eurasian Network (2018)
In the last decade, much has been learned about the network of interactions in Bronze Age Eurasia, and the importance of the steppe pastoralists in the creation of this network. However, the mechanisms that enabled societies in ancient China (both those bordering on and distant from the steppe) to participate in the Bronze Age Eurasian arena are still poorly understood. Based on the latest archaeological discoveries in China, this article focuses on the participation of four regions of ancient...
Large-Scale Craft Production and the Andean Religious Center: A Reconsideration (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our conventional conception of the prehispanic Andean religious or ceremonial center emphasizes a limited range of sacred, ritual activities, intermittent public gatherings, a relatively small resident population, and perhaps small-scale production of craft items for offerings. At the Middle Sicán (900-1100 CE) religious center of Sicán, however, the large...
Lead Isotope Analysis Providing Insights Regarding Pecos Pueblo's Role in Spanish Colonial New Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pecos was one of the major Puebloan communities in New Mexico from circa AD 1450 until the 1790s. As the nexus of an interregional-intercultural network, this pueblo became a dominant economic force in Pueblo-Plains-Hispanic interactions throughout most of the Spanish colonial period. A metal...
Little Bronze Things: What They Do and How They Do It in the Early Bronze Age in NW China (2018)
Small bronze objects, some tools, others ornaments, and yet others of undetermined function, are the earliest known Bronze objects in China. Many of these objects are found in sites from Northwest China that date to the early part of the second millennium BC. Their manufacture seems to have been conducted locally on a small scale in this region, and yet the transformation of matter that their production entailed played a role in large scale transformations of society – ultimately culminating...