Metallography In Archaeology And Art

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the metallographic study of ancient metals. Metallography is important both conceptually as a microstructural science and in terms of its application to the study of ancient and historic metals. Metallography is a well-established methodology for the characterization of the microstructure of metals, which continues to be significant today in quality control and characterization of metallic properties. Not only does the metallographic examination of ancient metals present its own challenges in terms of sample size and interpretation of evidence, but it must be integrated with archaeological data and cultural research in order to obtain the most meaningful results. Issues of authentication and the establishment of fakes and forgeries of metallic artefacts often involve metallographic evidence of both metal and patina or corrosion interface, as an essential component of such a study. The present volume sets out the basic features of relevant metallic systems, enhanced with a series of examples of typical microstructural types, with illustrative case studies and examples throughout the text derived from studies undertaken by the two authors. This book provides a comprehensive presentation of metallography for archaeologists, archaeometallurgists, conservators, conservation scientists and metallurgists of modern materials.

David A. Scott provides a detailed introduction to the structure and morphology of ancient and historic metallic materials. Much of the scientific research on this important topic has been inaccessible, scattered throughout the international literature, or unpublished; this volume, although not exhaustive in its coverage, fills an important need by assembling much of this information in a single source. Jointly published by the GCI and the J. Paul Getty Museum, the book deals with many practical matters relating to the mounting, preparation, etching, polishing, and microscopy of metallic samples and includes an account of the way in which phase diagrams can be used to assist in structural interpretation. The text is supplemented by an extensive number of microstructural studies carried out in the laboratory on ancient and historic metals. The student beginning the study of metallic materials and the conservation scientist who wishes to carry out structural studies of metallic objects of art will find this publication quite useful.

This book seeks to communicate to both a global and local audience, the key attributes of pre-industrial African metallurgy such as technological variation across space and time, methods of mining and extractive metallurgy and the fabrication of metal objects. These processes were transformative in a physical and metaphoric sense, which made them total social facts. Because the production and use of metals was an accretion of various categories of practice, a chaine operatoire conceptual and theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the embedded technological and anthropological factors was used. The book focuses on Africa’s different regions as roughly defined by cultural geography. On the one hand there is North Africa, Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan, and the Horn of Africa which share cultural inheritances with the Middle East and on the other is Africa south of the Sahara and the Sudan which despite interacting with the former is remarkably different in terms of technological practice. For example, not only is the timing of metallurgy different but so is the infrastructure for working metals and the associated symbolic and sociological factors. The cultural valuation of metals and the social positions of metal workers were different too although there is evidence of some values transfer and multi-directional technological cross borrowing. The multitude of permutations associated with metals production and use amply demonstrates that metals participated in the production and reproduction of society. Despite huge temporal and spatial differences there are so many common factors between African metallurgy and that of other regions of the world. For example, the role of magic and ritual in metal working is almost universal be it in Bolivia, Nepal, Malawi, Timna, Togo or Zimbabwe. Similarly, techniques of mining were constrained by the underlying geology but this should not in any way suggest that Africa’s metallurgy was derivative or that the continent had no initiative. Rather it demonstrates that when confronted with similar challenges, humanity in different regions of the world responded to identical challenges in predictable ways mediated as mediated by the prevailing cultural context. The success of the use of historical and ethnographic data in understanding variation and improvisation in African metallurgical practices flags the potential utility of these sources in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Some nuance is however needed because it is simply naïve to assume that everything depicted in the history or ethnography has a parallel in the past and vice versa. Rather, the confluence of archaeology, history and ethnography becomes a pedestal for dialogue between different sources, subjects and ideas that is important for broadening our knowledge of global categories of metallurgical practice.

Analysis of the subjective and metaphorical value of weapons and tools in rock art and their contexts in prehistoric, protohistoric and traditional contexts throughout the world.

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the evolution of early metallurgy in the Balkans. It demonstrates that far from being a rare and elite practice, the earliest metallurgy in the world was a common and communal craft activity.