James D. Muhly

The Coming of the age of iron

Development of iron metallurgy and technology. Studies on definite areas: Iran, Central Andes, Mediterranean, Europe, Western Iran, Africa, Southeast Asia. Comparison with lead and copper development.

Bronze Age World System Cycles [and Comments and Reply]

This essay explores the geographical extent of the world system and dates its cyclical ups and downs during the Bronze Age and, in a preliminary way, the early Iron Age. The scope of these twin tasks is exceptionally wide and deep: wide in exploring a single world system that encompasses much of Afro-Eurasia, deep in identifying systemwide conomic and political cycles since more than 5,000 years ago.

Distinguishing artifacts made of native copper

Various features considered to be diagnostic in the identification of native copper in artifact form are examined. Through analytical studies of unworked native copper, native copper artifacts and objects made of worked, smelted copper, it is determined that no adequate criteria exist for distinguishing artifacts of native copper from those of worked and recrystallized smelted copper of high purity.

Iron in Anatolia and the Nature of the Hittite Iron Industry

The development of the skills necessary for working in iron, making possible the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, has long been regarded as one of the major break-throughs in mans technological history. For Lewis Henry Morgan, writing in 1877, the smelting of iron ore was a development on a par with the domestication of animals (Morgan 1877:39): “The most advanced portion of the human race were halted, so to express it, at certain stages of progress, until some great invention or discovery, such as the domestication of animals or the smelting of iron ore, gave a new and powerful impulse forward.” The importance of the appearance of iron as a practical, utilitarian metal has usually been seen in terms of a military context. With iron it was possible to produce weapons not only superior to those of bronze but also much cheaper. These improvements made it possible to arm a large peasant infantry in order to challenge the military superiority of the chariot forces of the Late Bronze Age aristocracy, armed with bronze weapons.

Early Bronze Age tin and the Taurus

The sources of tin being exploited by the metalworkers of Early Bronze Age Anatolia remain to be identified. While K.A. Yener and P.J. Vandiver (Tin Processing at Goltepe, an Early Bronze Age Site in Anatolia, supra pp. 207-38) present very impressive evidence for some sort of mining and metalworking activity at Kestel and Goltepe, they fail to demonstrate that tin must have been the metal being sought after in these operations. Nor can it be shown that the general area of southeastern Anatolia was a significant center of bronze metallurgy during the third millennium. Even Egypt, with well-documented sources of tin, seems to have made little use of bronze before ca. 2000 B.C.

The Cape Gelidonya Shipwreck and the Bronze Age Metals Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract Controversy has surrounded the identification of the home port of the ship wrecked off Cape Gelidonya, Turkey. In an attempt to contribute further information pertinent to the solution of this problem, samples for metallurgical study were taken from eight of the copper ingots that were carried on the ship: four oxhide-shaped, two plano-convex, and two slab-shaped. Analysis of these samples shows that, with a single exception, the structure and composition of the ingots are little different from ingots found in Cyprus, Crete, Greece, and Sardinia. The inferences to be drawn from the metallurgical research are 1) that the ingots represented typical items of international trade and 2) that the home port of the ship and lading port of the ingots cannot be determined since the ship and crew were operating in the international sphere. It may also be surmised that at least a part of the Bronze Age trade was in the hands of private entrepreneurs.

Bronze Age Steel from Pella, Jordan

Recent studies of early iron artifacts from the eastern Mediterranean area show that we have incomplete knowledge of the skills possessed by ancient technologists. These studies, most of which are still in progress and therefore unpublished, reveal that steel was being produced on a regular basis by at least the 11th century B.C. in Cyprus (Maddin 1982) and the 10th century in Palestine (Stech-Wheeler et al. 1981), both areas in which there is only slight evidence for prior, Bronze Age iron usage. It is therefore of considerable importance for our understanding of the background of the Iron Age and of the transmission of technological information in ancient times to try to assess pre-Iron Age iron making in all areas of the eastern Mediterranean. Briefly stated, iron usage in the eastern Mediterranean is rare in the Bronze Age and increasingly common after 1200 B.C., when ethnic and political upheavals occurred that left their mark even on the major metals used. Invaders have been held responsible for introducing iron, a metal supposedly superior to the alloy of copper and tin bronze. Iron is not, however, stronger than bronze until it is made into steel, which in this area meant being left in the forge to absorb carbon for an extended period of time. Since the idea of the superiority of iron to bronze can be rejected on scientific grounds (C. Smith 1967: 40, fig. 39), shortages in the supply of tin, which had to be brought from great distances (Afghanistan, Spain, Cornwall, and Brittany are candidates for sources), as well as a less regular copper trade, have been cited as reasons for the change in the metal generally used. The earliest iron artifacts are rarely available for metallographic analysis, both because the iron is sometimes used with traditionally more valuable materials such as gold and silver (although iron was apparently considered to have equal value in some cases) and because they are often too corroded to repay analytical study. It is therefore fortunate that quite by accident an iron artifact (P67-145) of Middle Bronze Age date from Pella of the Decapolis, in Jordan, was analyzed at the University of Pennsylvania. This artifact, a small blade or point fragment, was found in Tomb 4, Plot A, of Area II, the East Cemetery. In the same tomb were several bronze toggle pins (R. Smith 1973:168-75, pls. 17-19), which were the original focus of the analytical study. Although the blade had not been published because it was incomplete and highly corroded, it was included in the tomb group studied. Routine investigation revealed it to be iron with a surviving core of metal, making it unusual in preservation as well as in date. The blade (fig. 1) was sectioned with a diamond cut-off wheel operating at slow speed and using a liquid coolant. The surviving core of metal, ca. 1.5 mm by 0.3 mm, was revealed in the sectioning (fig. 2). The section was mounted in thermosetting plastic between spring retaining rings and then ground and polished following standard metallographic procedures. The polished specimen was etched with a 2% Nital solution

Metalwork from Sardis : the finds through 1974

Introduction covers earlier expeditions and finds from as early as 1910; a brief synopsis is given of the Harvard-Cornell Expedition from 1958 to 1974. An explanation of the problems with determining the chronological and geographical distribution of the finds is offered. The Sardis metal industry in history is outlined; literary and archaeological evidence is cited, confirming the metallurgical and manufacturing activities that took place in Sardis as well as the imported metalwork. Individual chapters include literary and epigraphic sources; the catalogue of finds (which includes state of preservation and identifies items that have been subjected to analyses); metalwork from Sardis in Turkish, European and American collections; and chemical and metallurgical analyses of metal objects from Sardis. -- AATA

King Solomon’s Mines: A 20th Century Myth: Part Two of Two

Over the last twenty years, there has been a discernable increase in the number of scholars who have focused their research on metal production, working and use in antiquity, a field of study which has come to be known as ARCHAEOMETALLURGY. Materials scientists and conservators have worked primarily in the laboratory while archaeologists have conducted fieldwork geared to the study of metal technology in a cultural context with laboratory analysis as one portion of the interpretive program.