A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa
| Autor: | Eric Ndivhuwo Mathoho, Shadreck Chirikure, Foreman Bandama, Abigail Joy Moffett |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
010506 paleontology
Archeology 060102 archaeology Natural resource economics 06 humanities and the arts 01 natural sciences Archaeology Indigenous Anthropological study Iron Age visual_art Smelting visual_art.visual_art_medium 0601 history and archaeology Iron production Charcoal 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa. 51:234-256 |
| ISSN: | 1945-5534 0067-270X |
| DOI: | 10.1080/0067270x.2016.1177937 |
| Popis: | This study investigates the technology and sociology of indigenous iron production in Venda, northern South Africa, within a framework of ethnographies, historical documents and archaeometallurgical analyses. Investigations revealed that indigenous iron production in the study area, like elsewhere in southern Africa, was based on the direct process in which high-grade iron ores were reduced to metallic iron in charcoal fuelled low-shaft furnaces. The technology exploited at the sites under study used high-grade haematite and magnetite ores, which were extracted from open shaft mines within the vicinity of the smelting precincts. Although new furnace types appeared in the mid-second millennium AD, evidence suggests that the technology of iron smelting was relatively stable during the Early (AD 200-900) and Late (AD 1000 to 1900) Iron Ages. Iron smelting in this area was accompanied by rituals and taboos that connected the smelters to the living and the dead. A comparative study of such rituals and ... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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