Niche Construction and Iron Smelting Technology: Some Thoughts on the Development of Regional Metallurgical Economies

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.

Linking the evolution of smelting technology to the development of regional economies remains one of the greatest challenges for archaeometallurgy. It is neither possible to explain technological evolution without reference to its costs and benefits in a given socioeconomy, nor explain the economic patterns of a society without regard to production systems and their associated changes. Metallurgical production is an example of cultural niche construction, through which producers continuously modify the selective context of their future technological behaviour and that of other members of society simply by adding more and different products into circulation. Modelling and testing hypotheses about the relationships between changes in metallurgical technology and the development of economies is not a new goal. However, investigative tools and data volume have only recently reached sufficient maturity to see it realized. This endeavour requires the consideration of technological transmission, production quantifications, livings earned through production, and characterization of socioeconomic networks. Using examples from archaeological and experimental investigations of ironmaking systems in the UK and Sudan, this paper discusses the prospects for exploring the interconnectedness of evolving metallurgical practice and developing socioeconomies. It highlights the importance of experimentation and the construction of large open databases for identifying and explaining interconnections.

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)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25647