Christopher P. Thornton

Development of metallurgy in Eurasia

The authors reconsider the origins of metallurgy in the Old World and offer us a new model in which metallurgy began in c. eleventh/ninth millennium BC in Southwest Asia due to a desire to adorn the human body in life and death using colourful ores and naturally-occurring metals. In the early sixth millennium BC the techniques of smelting were developed to produce lead, copper, copper alloys and eventually silver. The authors come down firmly on the side of single invention, seeing the subsequent cultural transmission of the technology as led by groups of metalworkers following in the wake of exotic objects in metal.

Report on the First Iranian Prehistoric Slag Workshop

Abstract In December of 2006, a small workshop was held at the UCL Institute of Archaeology to bring together established and emerging scholars currently working on ancient Iranian metallurgy, most especially those focused on the production debris (i.e., slag, furnace lining, etc.). This paper presents a summary of that meeting in order to introduce these scholars to the wider archaeological audience, and to provide a basic idea of the sorts of questions being asked of, and the answers being received from, current scientific studies of these materials.

The Emergence of Complex Metallurgy on the Iranian Plateau

The Iranian Plateau was one of the heartlands of early copper metallurgy, yet it is also one of the least studied and least understood archaeometallurgical regions. Complex ore deposits combined with precocious technological know-how contributed to the development of an often unprecedented metallurgical tradition beginning in the Late Neolithic period and continuing through the Bronze Age. In this chapter, the development of metallurgy on the Iranian Plateau is juxtaposed against the better-known development of metallurgy in the Levant to show how different regions of Eurasia—even those connected through trade routes—maintained unique traditions. The evolution of metallurgy in one region cannot be used as a model for metallurgical development in another region unless direct technological transfer can be demonstrated.

SHIR-I SHIAN AND THE FIFTH-MILLENNIUM SEQUENCE OF NORTHERN IRAN

Abstract For decades, the fifth-millennium cultural sequence of northern Iran has not been well understood due to a dearth of radiocarbon-dated stratigraphic excavations in this region. Recent work by Anglo-Iranian teams in north-central Iran has done much to change this picture, but an in-depth study of the material culture—particularly the ceramics—from this research is desperately needed to sort out many of the chronological problems associated with the new radiocarbon sequence. In order to instigate this discussion, this article seeks to draw out the remaining discrepancies in the archaeological sequence of the fifth millennium in northern Iran, and to juxtapose them with a complete publication of the fifth-millennium site of Shir-i Shian in north-eastern Iran, based upon archival records in the University of Pennsylvania Museum. This enigmatic site, excavated in the 1930s by Erich F. Schmidt but never published, displays a material culture known from mid-late fifth-millennium sites in both northern Iran and southern Turkmenistan. As such, it provides a critical link between these two regions, and highlights many of the problems inherent with forming a unified chronological sequence for the fifth millennium BC.