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The topic of
early iron-metallurgy in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
encompasses both studies of the technology and archaeology of indigenous iron-production.
Some recent studies date the inception of iron metallurgy in Africa between 3000 and 2500 BCE.
Evidence exists for earlier iron metallurgy in parts of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Central Africa, possibly from as early as around 2,000 BCE.
Some evidence from
historical linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
suggests that the
Nok culture
The Nok culture (or Nok civilization) is a population whose material remains are named after the Ham village of Nok in Kaduna State of Nigeria, where their terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928. The Nok culture appeared in Nigeria ...
of
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
may have practiced
iron smelting
Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a ch ...
from as early as 1000 BCE. The nearby
Djenné-Djenno
Djenné-Djenno (also Jenne-Jeno; ) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Niger River Valley in the country of Mali. Literally translated to "ancient Djenné", it is the original site of both Djenné and Mali and is considered to be among ...
culture of the
Niger Valley
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languages[Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...](_blank)
shows evidence of iron production from 250 BCE. The
Bantu expansion
The Bantu expansion is a hypothesis about the history of the major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, which spread from an original nucleus around Central Africa across much of sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, t ...
spread the technology to Eastern and Southern Africa during 500 BCE to 400 CE, as shown in the
Urewe
The Urewe culture developed and spread in and around the Lake Victoria region of Africa during the African Iron Age. The culture's earliest dated artefacts are located in the Kagera Region of Tanzania, and it extended as far west as the K ...
culture of the
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after ...
region.
Iron has a number of advantages over copper, brass, wood, and stone. The use of iron ushered in an Iron Age in Africa, with the expansion of agriculture, industry, trade, and political power. In some African cultures, smelters and ironworkers are of low status because of the manual labor inherent in their work. In others, they are of high status because of the value of their wares.
Archaeological evidence for the origins and spread of iron production in Africa
Although the origins of iron working in Africa have been the subject of scholarly interest since the 1860s, it is still not known whether this technology diffused into sub-Saharan Africa from the Mediterranean region, or whether it was invented there independently of iron working elsewhere. Although some nineteenth-century European scholars favored an indigenous invention of iron working in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeologists writing between 1945 and 1965 mostly favored diffusion of iron smelting technology from
Carthage
Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...
across the Sahara to West Africa and/or from
Meroe on the upper Nile to central Africa. This in turn has been questioned by more recent research which argues for an independent invention.
The invention of
radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
in the late 1950s enabled dating of metallurgical sites by the charcoal fuel used for smelting and forging. By the late 1960s some surprisingly early radiocarbon dates had been obtained for iron smelting sites in both Niger and central Africa (Rwanda, Burundi), reviving the view that iron-making was independently invented by Africans in sub-Saharan Africa
as far back as 3600 BCE.
These dates preceded the known antiquity of ironworking in Carthage or Meroe, weakening the diffusion hypothesis. In the 1990s, evidence was found of Phoenician iron smelting in the western Mediterranean (900–800 BCE), though specifically in North Africa it seems to date only to the 5th to 4th centuries BCE, or the 7th century BCE at the earliest, contemporary to or later than the oldest known iron metallurgy dates from sub-Saharan Africa.
According to archaeometallurgist Manfred Eggert, "Carthage cannot be reliably considered the point of origin for sub-Saharan iron ore reduction." It is still not known when iron working was first practiced in Kush and Meroe in modern Sudan, but the earliest known iron metallurgy dates from Meroe and Egypt do not predate those from sub-Saharan Africa, and thus the Nile Valley is also considered unlikely to be the source of sub-Saharan iron metallurgy.
From the mid-1970s there were new claims for independent invention of iron smelting in central Niger and from 1994 to 1999 UNESCO funded an initiative "Les Routes du Fer en Afrique/The Iron Routes in Africa" to investigate the origins and spread of iron metallurgy in Africa. This funded both the conference on early iron in Africa and the Mediterranean and a volume, published by UNESCO, that generated some controversy because it included only authors sympathetic to the independent-invention view.
Two reviews of the evidence from the mid-2000s found technical flaws in the studies claiming independent invention, raising three major issues. The first was whether the material dated by radiocarbon was in secure archaeological association with iron-working residues. Many of the dates from Niger, for example, were on organic matter in potsherds that were lying on the ground surface together with iron objects. The second issue was the possible effect of "old carbon": wood or charcoal much older than the time at which iron was smelted. This is a particular problem in Niger, where the charred stumps of ancient trees are a potential source of charcoal, and have sometimes been misidentified as smelting furnaces. A third issue is the
weaker precision of the radiocarbon method for dates between 800 and 400 BCE, attributable to irregular production of radiocarbon in the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately most radiocarbon dates for the initial spread of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa fall within this range.
Controversy flared again in 2007 with the publication of excavations by Étienne Zangato and colleagues in the Central African Republic. At Oboui they excavated an undated iron forge yielding eight consistent radiocarbon dates of 2000 BCE. This would make Oboui the oldest iron-working site in the world, and more than a thousand years older than any other dated evidence of iron in Central Africa. Opinion among African archaeologists is sharply divided. Some specialists accept this interpretation, but archaeologist Bernard Clist has argued that Oboui is a highly disturbed site, with older charcoal having been brought up to the level of the forge by the digging of pits into older levels. Clist also raised questions about the unusually good state of preservation of metallic iron from the site. However, archaeologists such as Craddock, Eggert, and Holl have argued that such disturbance or disruption is highly unlikely given the nature of the site. Additionally, Holl, regarding the state of preservation, argues that this observation was based on published illustrations representing a small unrepresentative number of atypically well-preserved objects selected for publication.
At Gbabiri, also in the Central African Republic, Eggert has found evidence of an iron reduction furnace and blacksmith workshop with earliest dates of 896–773 BCE and 907–796 BCE respectively.
In north-central Burkina Faso, remains of a blast furnace near
Douroula
Douroula is a town in Burkina Faso. It is the county seat of Douroula Department in the province Mouhoun.
Near the town are ruins of a smelting furnace and evidence of ferrous metallurgy dating back to the 8th century BC. This is the oldest c ...
was also dated to the 8th century BCE, leading to the creation of the
Ancient Ferrous Metallurgy Sites of Burkina Faso
The Ancient Ferrous Metallurgy Sites of Burkina Faso () are a collection of ancient metallurgy sites across five locations in the Nord and Centre-Nord regions of Burkina Faso, used to extract iron from ore. The oldest of these structures are dat ...
World Heritage Site.
In the
Nsukka
Nsukka is a town and a Local Government Area in Enugu State, Nigeria. Nsukka shares a common border as a town with Edem, Opi (archaeological site), Ede-Oballa, and Obimo.
The postal code of the area is 410001 and 410002 respectively referr ...
region of southeast Nigeria (now
Igboland
Igboland (Standard ), also known as Southeastern Nigeria (but extends into South-Southern Nigeria), is the indigenous homeland of the Igbo people.
It is a cultural and common linguistic region in southern Nigeria. Geographically, it is divided b ...
), archaeological sites containing iron smelting furnaces and slag have been excavated dating to 750 BCE in
Opi (Augustin Holl 2009) and 2,000 BCE in
Lejja
Lejja is a community comprising 33 villages in Enugu State of South-Eastern Nigeria. It is populated by the Igbo people and located about 14 Kilometers from Nsukka. It is the location of a prehistoric archaeological site which contains iron smeltin ...
(Pamela Eze-Uzomaka 2009).
According to Augustin Holl (2018), there is evidence of ironworking dated to 2,153–2,044 BCE and 2,368–2,200 BCE from the site of Gbatoro, Cameroon.
In 2014, archaeo-metallurgist Manfred Eggert argued that, though still inconclusive, the evidence overall suggests an independent invention of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa. In a 2018 study, archaeologist Augustin Holl also argues that an independent invention is most likely.
While the origins of iron smelting are difficult to date by radiocarbon, there are fewer problems with using it to track the spread of ironworking after 400 BCE. In the 1960s it was suggested that iron working was spread by speakers of
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
The t ...
, whose original homeland has been located by linguists in the Benue River valley of eastern Nigeria and Western Cameroon. Although some assert that no words for iron or ironworking can be traced to reconstructed
proto-Bantu
Proto-Bantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Bantu languages, a subgroup of the Southern Bantoid languages. It is thought to have originally been spoken in West/Central Africa in the area of what is now Cameroon.Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (2 ...
,
place-names
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
in West Africa suggest otherwise, for example (Okuta) Ilorin, literally "site of iron-work". The linguist Christopher Ehret argues that the first words for iron-working in Bantu languages were borrowed from Central Sudanic languages in the vicinity of modern Uganda and Kenya, while
Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017) was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was a ...
argues instead that they originated in non-Bantu languages in Nigeria, and that iron metallurgy spread southwards and eastwards to Bantu speakers, who had already dispersed into the Congo rainforest and the Great Lakes region. Archaeological evidence clearly indicates that starting in the first century BCE, iron and cereal agriculture (millet and sorghum) spread together southward from southern Tanzania and northern Zambia, all the way to the eastern Cape region of present South Africa by the third of fourth century CE. It seems highly probable that this occurred through migrations of Bantu-speaking peoples.
Techniques
All indigenous African iron smelting processes are variants of the
bloomery
A bloomery is a type of metallurgical furnace once used widely for smelting iron from its oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron. Bloomeries produce a porous mass of iron and slag called a ''bloom ...
process. A much wider range of bloomery smelting processes has been recorded on the African continent than elsewhere in the Old World, probably because bloomeries remained in use into the 20th century in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, whereas in Europe and most parts of Asia they were replaced by the
blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric ...
before most varieties of bloomeries could be recorded. W.W. Cline's compilation of eye-witness records of bloomery iron smelting over the past 250 years in Africa is invaluable, and has been supplemented by more recent ethnoarchaeological and archaeological studies. Furnaces used in the 19th and 20th centuries ranges from small bowl furnaces, dug down from the ground surface and powered by
bellows
A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtigh ...
, through bellows-powered shaft furnaces up to 1.5 m tall, to 6.5m natural-draft furnaces (i.e. furnaces designed to operate without bellows at all).
Over much of tropical Africa the ore used was
laterite
Laterite is both a soil and a rock type rich in iron and aluminium and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas. Nearly all laterites are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content. They develop by ...
, which is widely available on the old continental
cratons
A craton (, , or ; from grc-gre, κράτος "strength") is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the uppermost mantle. Having often survived cycles of merging and ...
in West, Central and Southern Africa. Magnetite sand, concentrated in streams by flowing water, was often used in more mountainous areas, after
beneficiation
In the mining industry or extractive metallurgy, beneficiation is any process that improves (benefits) the economic value of the ore by removing the gangue minerals, which results in a higher grade product (ore concentrate) and a waste stream (tail ...
to raise the concentration of iron. Precolonial iron workers in present South Africa even smelted iron-titanium ores that modern blast furnaces are not designed to use. Bloomery furnaces were less productive than blast furnaces, but were far more versatile.
The fuel used was invariably charcoal, and the products were the bloom (a solid mass of iron) and
slag
Slag is a by-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and used metals. Broadly, it can be classified as ferrous (by-products of processing iron and steel), ferroalloy (by-product of ferroalloy production) or non-ferrous/base metals (by-prod ...
(a liquid waste product). African ironworkers regularly produced inhomogeneous steel blooms, especially in the large natural-draft furnaces. The blooms invariably contained some entrapped slag, and after removal from the furnace had to be reheated and hammered to expel as much of the slag as possible. Semi-finished bars of iron or steel were widely traded in some parts of West Africa, as for example at
Sukur on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, which in the nineteenth century exported thousands of bars per year north to the Lake Chad Basin. Although many African ironworkers produced steel blooms, there is little evidence in sub-Saharan as yet for hardening of steel by
quenching
In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece in water, oil, polymer, air, or other fluids to obtain certain material properties. A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as pha ...
and tempering or for the manufacture of composite tools combining a hard steel cutting edge with a soft but tough iron body. Relatively little
metallography
Metallography is the study of the physical structure and components of metals, by using microscopy.
Ceramic and polymeric materials may also be prepared using metallographic techniques, hence the terms ceramography, plastography and, collectiv ...
of ancient African iron tools has yet been done, so this conclusion may perhaps be modified by future work.
Unlike bloomery iron-workers in Europe, India or China, African metalworkers did not make use of water power to blow bellows in furnaces too large to be blown by hand-powered bellows. This is partly because sub-Saharan Africa has much less potential for water power than these other regions , but also because there were no engineering techniques developed for converting rotary motion to linear motion. African ironworkers did however invent a way to increase the size of their furnaces, and thus the amount of metal produced per charge, without using bellows. This was the natural-draft furnace, which is designed to reach the temperatures necessary to form and drain slag by using a chimney effect – hot air leaving the topic of the furnace draws in more air through openings at the base. (Natural-draft furnaces should not be confused with wind-powered furnaces, which were invariably small). The natural-draft furnace was the one African innovation in
ferrous metallurgy
Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ...
that spread widely. Natural draft furnaces were particularly characteristic of African savanna woodlands, and were used in two belts – across the Sahelian woodlands from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east, and in the ''Brachystegia-Julbenardia'' (miombo) woodlands from southern Tanzania south to northern Zimbabwe. The oldest natural-draft furnaces yet found are in Burkina Faso and date to the seventh/eight centuries The large masses of slag (10,000 to 60,000 tons) noted in some locations in Togo, Burkina Faso and Mali reflect the great expansion of iron production in West Africa after 1000 CE that is associated with the spread of natural-draft furnace technology. But not all large scale iron production in Africa was associated with natural draft furnaces – those of Meroe (Sudan, first to fifth centuries CE) were produced by slag-tapping bellows-driven furnaces, and the large 18th-19th century iron industry of the Cameroon grasslands by non-tapping bellows-driven furnaces. All of the large-scale iron smelting recorded so far are in the Sahelian and Sudanic zones that stretch from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east; there were no iron-smelting concentrations like these in central or southern Africa.
There is also evidence that
carbon steel
Carbon steel is a steel with carbon content from about 0.05 up to 2.1 percent by weight. The definition of carbon steel from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) states:
* no minimum content is specified or required for chromium, cobalt ...
was made in Western Tanzania by the ancestors of the
Haya people
The Haya (or Bahaya) are a Bantu ethnic group based in Kagera Region, northwestern Tanzania, on the western side of Lake Victoria. With over one million people, it is estimated the Haya make up approximately 2% of the population of Tanzania. His ...
as early as 2,300-2,000 years ago by a complex process of "pre-heating" allowing temperatures inside a furnace to reach up to 1800 °C.
These techniques are now extinct in all regions of sub-Saharan Africa, except, in the case of some of techniques, for some very remote regions of Ethiopia. In most regions of Africa they fell out of use before 1950. The main reason for this was the increasing availability of iron imported from Europe. Blacksmiths still work in rural areas of Africa to make and repair agricultural tools, but the iron that they use is imported, or recycled from old motor vehicles.
Uses
Iron was not the only metal to be used in Africa;
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
and
brass
Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...
were widely utilised too. However the steady spread of iron meant it must have had more favourable properties for many different uses. Its durability over copper meant that it was used to make many tools from farming pieces to weaponry. Iron was used for personal adornment in
jewelry
Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry (U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western ...
, impressive pieces of artwork and even instruments. It was used for coins and currencies of varying forms. For example, kisi pennies; a traditional form of
iron currency
Iron currency bars are regarded as being objects used by Iron Age people to exchange goods.
Materials
They were expensive objects, as it would take 25 man-days to produce 1 kilogram of a finished bar, consuming 100 kg of charcoal, usually ...
used for trading in West Africa. They are twisted iron rods ranging from <30 cm to >2m in length. Suggestions for their uses vary from marital transactions, or simply that they were a convenient shape for transportation, melting down and reshaping into a desired object. There are many different forms of
iron currency
Iron currency bars are regarded as being objects used by Iron Age people to exchange goods.
Materials
They were expensive objects, as it would take 25 man-days to produce 1 kilogram of a finished bar, consuming 100 kg of charcoal, usually ...
, often regionally differing in shape and value. Iron did not replace other materials, such as stone and wooden tools, but the quantity of production and variety of uses met were significantly high by comparison.
Social and cultural significance
It is important to recognize that while iron production had great influence over Africa both culturally in trade and expansion (Martinelli, 1993, 1996, 2004), as well as socially in beliefs and rituals, there is great regional variation. Much of the evidence for cultural significance comes from the practises still carried out today by different African cultures. Ethnographical information has been very useful in reconstructing the events surrounding iron production in the past, however the reconstructions could have become distorted through time and influence by anthropologist's studies.
L The control of iron production was often by ironworkers themselves, or a "central power" in larger societies such as kingdoms or states (Barros 2000, p. 154). The demand for trade is believed to have resulted in some societies working only as smelters or smiths, specialising in just one of the many skills necessary to the production process. It is possible that this also led to tradesmen specialising in transporting and trading iron (Barros 2000, pg152). However, not every region benefited from industrialising iron production, others created environmental problems that arose due to the massive deforestation required to provide the charcoal for fuelling furnaces (for example the ecological crisis of the Mema Region (Holl 2000, pg48)).
Iron smelters and
smith
Smith may refer to:
People
* Metalsmith, or simply smith, a craftsman fashioning tools or works of art out of various metals
* Smith (given name)
* Smith (surname), a family name originating in England, Scotland and Ireland
** List of people wi ...
s received different social status depending on their culture. Some were lower in society due to the aspect of manual labour and associations with witchcraft, for example in the
Maasai Maasai may refer to:
* Maasai people
*Maasai language
* Maasai mythology
* MAASAI (band)
See also
* Masai (disambiguation)
* Massai
Massai (also known as: Masai, Massey, Massi, Mah–sii, Massa, Wasse, Wassil or by the nickname "Big Foot" Mas ...
and
Tuareg
The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern A ...
(Childs et al. 2005 pg 288). In other cultures the skills are often passed down through family and would receive great social status (sometimes even considered as witchdoctors) within their community. Their powerful knowledge allowed them to produce materials on which the whole community relied. In some communities they were believed to have such strong supernatural powers that they were regarded as highly as the king or chief. For example, an excavation at the royal tomb of King Rugira (Great Lakes, Eastern Africa) found two iron
anvil
An anvil is a metalworking tool consisting of a large block of metal (usually forged or cast steel), with a flattened top surface, upon which another object is struck (or "worked").
Anvils are as massive as practical, because the higher th ...
s placed at his head (Childs et al. 2005, p. 288 in Herbert 1993:ch.6). In some cultures mythical stories have been built around the premise of the iron
smelter
Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including Silver mining#Ore processing, silver, iron-making, iron, copper extracti ...
emphasising their godlike significance.
Rituals
The smelting process was often carried out away from the rest of the community. Ironworkers engaged in rituals designed to encourage good production and to ward off bad spirits, including song and prayers, plus the giving of medicines and sacrifices. The latter were usually put in the furnace itself or buried under the base of the furnace. Examples of these date back as far as the early Iron Age in
Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
and
Rwanda
Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
(Schmidt 1997 in Childs et al., 2005 p. 293).
Some cultures associated sexual symbolism with iron production. Smelting was integrated with the fertility of their society, The production of the bloom was compared to human conception and birth. There were sexual taboos surrounding the process. The smelting process was carried out entirely by men and often away from the village. For women to touch any of the materials or be present could jeopardise the success of the production. The furnaces were also often adorned to resemble a woman, the mother of the bloom.
See also
*
Copper metallurgy in Africa Copper metallurgy in Africa encompasses the study of copper production across the continent and an understanding of how it influenced aspects of African archaeology.
Origins
Scholars previously believed that sub-Saharan Africans either did not h ...
*
Archaeology of Igbo-Ukwu
The archaeology of Igbo-Ukwu revealed bronze artifacts dated to the 9th century A.D. which were initially discovered by Isiah Anozie in 1939 while digging a well in his compound in Igbo-Ukwu, an Igbo town in Anambra State, Nigeria. As a result of ...
*
KM2 and KM3 sites
Kemondo Iron Age Sites or KM2 and KM3 are Early Iron Age complex industrial archaeological sites in Kemondo ward, Bukoba Rural District, Kagera Region, Tanzania, excavated by a team led by archaeologist Peter Schmid in the late 1970s and 1980 ...
*
Bantu expansion
The Bantu expansion is a hypothesis about the history of the major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, which spread from an original nucleus around Central Africa across much of sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, t ...
References
Bibliography
MetalAfrica: a Scientific Network on African Metalworking* Killick, D. 2004. Review Essay: "What Do We Know About African Iron Working?" ''Journal of African Archaeology''. Vol 2 (1) pp. 135–152
* Bocoum, H. (ed.), 2004, ''The origins of iron metallurgy in Africa – New lights on its antiquity'', H. Bocoum (ed.), UNESCO publishing
* Schmidt, P.R., Mapunda, B.B., 1996. "Ideology and the Archaeological Record in Africa: Interpreting Symbolism in Iron Smelting Technology". ''Journal of Anthropological Archaeology''. Vol 16, pp. 73–102
* Rehren, T., Charlton, M., Shadrek, C., Humphris, J., Ige, A., Veldhuijen, H.A. "Decisions set in slag: the human factor in African iron smelting". La Niece, S., Hook, D., and Craddock, P., (eds). ''Metals and mines : studies in
archaeometallurgy Archaeometallurgy is the study of the past use and production of metals by humans. It is a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological science.
Uses
Archaeometallurgical study has many uses in both the chemical and anthropological fields. Ana ...
''. 2007, pp. 211–218.
* Okafor, E.E., 1993. "New Evidence on Early Iron-Smelting from Southeastern Nigeria". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 432–448
* Kense, F.J., and Okora, J.A., 1993. "Changing Perspectives on Traditional Iron Production in West Africa". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 449– 458
* Muhammed, I.M., 1993. "Iron Technology in the Middle Sahel/Savanna: With Emphasis on Central Darfur". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 459–467
* Buleli, N'S., 1993. Iron-Making Techniques in the Kivu Region of Zaire: Some of the Differences Between the South Maniema Region and North Kivu. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 468–477
* Radimilahy, C., 1993 "Ancient Iron-Working in Madagascar". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 478–473
* Kiriama, H.O., 1993. "The Iron Using Communities in Kenya". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 484–498
* Martinelli, B., 1993, "Fonderies ouest-africaines. Classement comparatif et tendances", in ''Atouts et outils de l'ethnologie des techniques – Sens et tendance en technologie comparée, Revue Techniques et culture'', n
o 21 : 195–221.
* Martinelli, B., 2004, "On the Threshold of Intensive Metallurgy – The choice of Slow Combustion in the Niger River Bend (Burkina Faso and Mali)" ''in The origins of iron metallurgy in Africa – New lights on its antiquity'', H. Bocoum (ed.), UNESCO publishing : pp. 216–247
* Collet, D.P., 1993. "Metaphors and Representations Associated with Precolonial Iron-Smelting in Eastern and Southern Africa". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). ''The Archaeology of Africa Food, Metals and Towns''. London, Routledge, pp. 499–511
Further reading
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{{Three-age system
History of Africa
Science and technology in Africa
History of metallurgy
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Iron Age Africa
Iron Age