The medieval Basque iron industry, cultural traits in technological traditions

Summary

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 Basquesmith project investigates ironworking production during Early Medieval times ‒mostly utilitarian iron implements such as ladles or keys‒ excavated in rural settlements in the Basque Country (northern Spain), focusing on the characterisation of the manufacture used, the quality of the utensils produced, and the debris generated. The material characterisation and reverse engineering of the technical materials is starting to reveal a complex network between smelters, smiths, consumers and agencies of a lively market in force at least during the 7th-12th centuries AD. While the metallographic study on ~100 items detects a technological tradition in the manufacture of iron implements inherited from the Roman times, the smelting technique seems to be well developed in the area before the arrival of the Roman people and apparently both technological procedures coexisted in time. The reconstruction of the various processes in a relatively small region illustrates a technological adaptation to natural resources and socio-technological contexts, seemingly permeable to external influence but also retaining its own traditions in technical activities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23290