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This book provides a comprehensive history of the early development of extractive metallurgy, and has become the standard textbook for many students of ancient metallurgy. The author draws on historic documentary sources, laboratory investigation, archaeological discoveries and experimental replication from across the world to provide a comprehensive description of the mining and smelting of metals.
For millennia, technical advancement has been intimately linked with the production of metals and this work brings together evidence for the very inception of mining and smelting, showing that early techniques were often different from what had previously been believed. Interpretations and insights are given into many aspects from the very earliest metal production right through to the blast furnaces and high temperature distillation units which heralded the Industrial Revolution. There has been a considerable advance in archaeometallurgical research since this book was first published but the main statements remain valid and most of the more speculative judgements made at that time have been shown to be correct.
This paperback edition is an unchanged reprint of the original edition, published in 1995.
List of illustrations
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction, history and methological approaches
History of research into early metallurgy
Problems and potentials in archaeometallurgical studies
The development of early mining technology
Mining geology
Prospection
Mining
Some early mines
The mines of the developed Bronze Age
Mine systems of the Iron Age civilisations
Hydraulic mining
Native metals and their treatment
Native copper
Telluric iron
Meteoric iron
Gold
The platinum group metals in antiquity
The inception and development of metal smelting processes
The inception of metallurgy
The nature of the earliest smelting processes
Metal composition as an indicator of the smelting process
The inception and spread of metallurgy in Europe
The development and principles of the slagging process
The matte smelting process
Hydrometallurgy
The smelting process
Beneficiation
Roasting
Furnace types
Air supply
Fuel
Furnace operation
Refining
Lead and silver
Lead
Silver
Amalgamation: the extraction of silver from the dry ores with mercury
The production of silver from jarosite ores
The production of silver from argentiferous lead
Liquation
Iron and steel
Principal types of iron and steel
Processes of making iron and steel
The origins of iron and steel
Pattern welding
Crucible steel and the Damascus blades
The production of volatile metals and their alloys
Co-smelting and cementation
Production of arsenical copper
Brass
The production of metals by distillation
Zinc
Bibliography
Index