Travelling Women

Another female Bronze Age icon is now known to have travelled across Europe

The Bronze Age Egtved Girl was not from Denmark
Egtved Girl’s grave, from 1370 BC [Credit: The National Museum of Denmark]

Last year (2017) this story about the Skrydstrup Woman made the news. Strontium isotope analyses showed that she was not born in the same region where she was buried. Rather than coming from what is now Denmark, she started out life farther south in Bohemia. She was an honoured member of the community, buried in an oak coffin, wearing gold jewellery, and embroidered robes. Her hair was put up in an elaborate style, that would have required assistance. All of those items buried with her would have meant the sacrifice of objects that would have taken many days or even weeks of labour to manufacture. Analyses of her bones indicated she lived a healthy life and died from unknown causes when she was in her late teens. She arrived at Skrydstrup when she was about 14 or 16 years old.

New analyses was presented at the 14th Nordic Bronze Age Symposium in Oslo, Norway in June of 2017. The work of the Tales of Bronze Age Women Project (National Museum of Denmark) employed strontium isotope and other analyses to determine the mobility patterns of women in Bronze Age Europe.  The early results have determined that the Skrydstrup Woman travelled extensively and that the Egtved Girl did not make one trip from the Black Forest region of Germany where she was born, but made several trips between there and Denmark. The project continues to  explore how mobility patterns of prominent women could be a part of social and economic exchange and networking in the Bronze Age.

I can relate to these women.  By the time I was the age of these young women, I had travelled from where I was born in southern California to San Francisco, from there to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Milwaukee and Chicago, over a thousand miles from where I was born. As an adult I’ve lived in both North America and Europe. It used to be assumed that people in prehistory lived their lives in a single community, and if someone travelled long distances, it was assumed to be men. However, then as now, we see that people were mobile. This mobility not only brought an individual woman into a community, but also her way of life. She would have spoken at least one other language, a useful skill if her family were merchants. She might have brought other valued resources to her community, such as a new way of making pottery, new weaving patterns, or other skilled crafts. The objects from her home would have been seen as exotic, foreign, or rare.

The history of archaeology has been full of explanations for the movement of people. At times they were described as political conquests or invasions, the Beaker Folk, Anglo Saxons, Vikings… each generation of archaeologists give a new and different interpretation of the data we have. Were they marauding warriors replacing the local population, groups fleeing strife in their homeland, or peaceful settlers arriving with families? Or some of each? The evidence we have of social change in prehistory comes from changes in material culture: a new style of pottery, the introduction of a new technology, or changes in the way the deceased are dealt with. In some cases these cultural changes can be dated and tracked, allowing us to look at the progression of something, such as a craft techniques, from its origins and disbursement. However in tracking all the data on all these objects the humans sometimes get left behind. The bowls, beakers, and axes didn’t move themselves. People were travelling, carrying them, moving from one place to another. It makes sense, humans have been on the move since the beginning. From small bands in Africa, humans have spread out over the entire planet. We continue to move and migrate as groups and individuals to this day, bringing skills, languages, and ideas with us. Creativity, adaptability, and mobility are human strengths.

The Skrydstrup Woman puts a personal face on migration. We cannot tell the circumstances that led these women to travel across Europe to Denmark. What remains is that they travelled long distances in their lives, and not just going directly from where they were born to Denmark. Although  they have been an icon of Danish prehistory for years, both the Skrydstrup Woman and the Egtved Girl were immigrants. Their story has expanded now, and rather than a symbol of a single national identity, they represent the multicultural world of human prehistory.

The video below was produced by the Tales of Bronze Age Women project. It shows the processes used in the analyses of the women and some of the early discoveries of the project.

References

Abstracts from the 14th Nordic Bronze Age Symposium

National Museum Denmark The Woman From Skrydstrup 

National Museum Denmark, The Egtved Girl.

Person, C.P., 2015. A famous Danish Bronze Age icon turns out not to be Danish After All. ScienceNordic. 

Persson, C.P., 2017. Another female Bronze Age icon is now known to have travelled across Europe. ScienceNordic.

The Tales of Bronze Age Women Project Project Log 

The Tales of Bronze Age Women Project Webpage

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Originally posted on 19th April 2017

Forging Ahead!

January 2023

It looks like a crazy year of travel!

The year got off to a rocky start with me getting Covid while on a trip to Los Angeles. I’ve recovered and have a couple of months before I start the year’s journeys, and I am excited. It looks as if I’ll be busier than last year!

At the end of March I fly to Italy, where I’ll have a week in Modena to pick up my summer clothes and then fly to Northern Cyprus. I will spend the whole month of April there. The plan is to relax and see the country in the spring, but there’s a chance that I’ll be able to do some metalwork and give some lectures.

In May I head to Poland for the EXARC/EAC conference on experimental archaeology. Then it’s back to Italy to spend time with the family there, but at the end of the month I’ll head north to Germany for the Bronze Casting Festival, immediately followed by a trip to Latvia, where I’ve been asked to speak at a conference there.

Later in June, I’ll be in England for a couple of months where I hope to make some museum visits, help out with some workshops, and catch up with friends. In August I plan to go to Ireland and then head up to Belfast for the EAA Conference, where I’m co-chairing a session on experimental archaeology. From there, I head back to Northern Cyprus for the Vounous Symposium. I’ll spend a little more time in Italy before heading back to the US in the autumn.

Some of these workshops and travel expenses are covered by grants, but a lot of it is out of pocket for me. One of my sources of income is my Patreon Campaign. If you would like to support my work in experimental archaeology, please consider making a small monthly donation at https://www.patreon.com/archaeology Even a couple of dollars/euros/pounds a month really does help. Think of it as buying me a glass of wine after I’ve finished a day at a conference! Supporters do get benefits including postcards sent from all the places that I visit, early access to my podcast, In Small Things Considered, and special access to articles and publications that are exclusive to Patreon patrons. Special thanks go to those who support me on Patreon. You definitely are part of the excitement and fun of doing experimental archaeology!

2022 The Year in Archaeology and Conferences

2022 was an exciting year, full of archaeology, travel and travel mishaps, and exploring a world that had been closed off for two years.

In February, I finally got to work on the fellowship that was awarded to me through Historic Williamsburg and EXARC. I lived for a month in a cottage on the edge of the historic city and helped convert a jeweller’s lathe into a lapidary machine. For the final week, I was on display cutting gems in period costume, which was actually pretty comfortable. I wrote about the experience in an article for the EXARC Journal.

The year really got into gear in the spring when I landed in England and went to the Second Accidental and Experimental Archaeometallurgy Conference at the Ancient Technology Centre in Cranbourne. After two years of pandemic isolation in the US it was wonderful to be able to work with colleagues again. Before getting down to work, Fergus Milton took me over to Butser Ancient Farm to check out the new buildings. The site now has houses that range from the Mesolithic to Early Medieval and even includes a posh Roman house. Fergus is building his own dedicated metals workshop. I hope that I will get a chance to go down there and visit it when it is completed next summer.

The Archaeometallurgy conference was a great time. We constructed furnaces, laughed and joked, and shared information and stories about our respective fields of research. There were talks and presentations, a hog roast, and storytelling. Bronze was poured, iron smelted, and brass created. On Sunday the public came by to see the pyrotechnic action. They weren’t disappointed. I ended up spending more time talking to the public and explaining the event than actually working metal. That was a theme that continued through the summer.

In the end our furnaces were all destroyed and returned to the earth. By the time we left, there was little evidence that so much activity had been going on. To read more about it, here’s a link to my report in the EXARC Journal

I had a wild ride back up north with Ellie Blakelock and Vanessa Castagnino, laughing and talking the whole way. It was great to be in Sheffield again and going out into the Peak District with Gill and Ken. We checked for witches’ marks in the Tideswell Church, visited Bishop’s House, and I wandered around my old neighbourhood in Crookes.

I even got a little bit of excavating in at Castleton.

Digging at Castleton

We also made a trip down to Derbyshire to visit Calke Abbey. It has one of the few remaining 19th Century faceting machines. After my experience at Williamsburg, I was interested in seeing one of these in the flesh. Calke Abbey is an experience in itself. It’s an old manor house that was donated to the National Trust, who have kept everything in situ. Everything is in a jumble, and only the library seems to have been sorted out. The director moved the machine out where I could photograph every inch of it, while Gill wrote down measurements. We did get to see more of the place, although we never got to the upstairs. As it was, there was more taxidermy than many natural history museums, and the family seemed to have a particular interest in lapidary and rock collecting. The curator in my sorely wanted to sort things out and label them, but the place is just as the last residents left it with doll houses, tiger rugs, and even a palanquin chair. It’s truly a place of sensory overload. I just wished that we could have sat ourselves down in one of the comfy library chairs and pulled out a book. A cup of tea would also have been a lovely addition.

Dining room at Calke Abbey

In July I headed south and helped out with the Sedgeford Archaeological metals course, run by Ellie Blakelock. The Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (SHARP https://www.sharp.org.uk/ ) is a long term excavation and field school. In addition to excavating an entire medieval village, they run basic and specialist archaeology courses. Despite the unprecedented heat, we had a great time building a furnace, carving moulds, and casting. The final day was an open day so the public got to see the students in action. The students had a great time and cast a lot of jewellery and small objects while learning the basics of primitive casting techniques.

Cuttlefish moulds and casts

The summer heat took Britain by surprise. I got a ride to the Kings Lynn Train Station. I had tickets to go from there to London and then catch the Eurostar the next morning and get back to Italy. The heat was so extreme that the tracks buckled, meaning that no trains could get in or out of Kings Lynn. After waiting a few hours I was lucky to hitch a ride with a young woman whose dad gave us a ride to Ely, where we could get the next train to London. I got a decent night’s sleep at the hotel I booked and then was up at the crack of dawn to catch the first Eurostar back to the continent.

I had a great time relaxing in Modena. I spent a lot of time at the local library taking advantage of the wifi and air conditioning. I visited friends in Siena where we visited as many museums as we could pack into a weekend. I also had some great evenings knitting with friends and making squares for the Viva Vittoria Project. In February 2023 we plan to cover the Piazza Grande with an enormous blanket, all to raise awareness about violence against women.

There was a bit too much adventure at the beginning of August when I tried to get to the Bronze Casting Festival in Uelsen in northern Germany. The plan was to take the train up near Karlsruhe, meet Kevin Frank and then we’d drive the rest of the way. Except… a couple days before we were due to leave, Kevin came down with covid. I had to figure out how to get up there by train, starting from Karlsruhe. It was the high point for holiday travel in Europe, and Germany was offering 9 euro tickets to promote public transit. The trains were packed, and always running late. I missed so many connections and kept having to cobble together a new route and schedule at every station, straining my limited German language skills. It took almost exactly 24 hours, but I got there finally. I was exhausted and then found out that other participants had cancelled out due to Covid or other issues. That left me and Matthias Fischer to get things up and running, teach, and then demonstrate to the public on Sunday. The event was only a weekend, rather than a full week, so there was little time to get my brain together. But it was good to be back, and I enjoyed the event and seeing everyone after so long.

Then I faced the trip back down south. Knowing that it would still be insane, I arranged to spend the night at Kira and Tony’s place in Köln. What should have been an early evening arrival turned into me rolling in around 11 pm. Instead of sleeping, like any sane person would, we stayed up talking and drinking wine all night. I did get a little nap in before heading back to the station. I got there on time, only to find that the first train of the morning train was delayed. The trip back had about as many delays and rescheduling as the trip up. I was so glad to be back to Italy where, despite so many complaints, the trains do tend to run on time, or at least better than they do in Germany.

At the beginning of September I flew to Budapest to speak at the EAA (European Association of Archaeologists) conference. My paper was on examining the industrial waste from primitive non-ferrous metalworking, both in ancient and modern experimental contexts. I’m hoping to continue this project and have started to look for resources and ways to support the project. Meanwhile Budapest was beautiful. I only saw a small portion of the city, and spent most of one day at the museum. I definitely have to go back again.

Building in Budapest

Then it was back to Modena briefly. I had enough time to wash my clothes and repack my bags. Then I was off to North Cyprus for the Vounous Symposium.

My goal for this year was to replicate a set of pot bellows that were excavated at Enkomi, a Bronze Age site near Famagusta. Kevin was still out with covid and Chris couldn’t afford to come, so I was on my own again. Except that Vounous is a huge supportive community. I met Ergün Arda, a ceramic artist from Turkey who took time away from his work to make the bodies for the bellows. A ride was organized so I could go to the leather supplier to get the hides I needed for the tops of the bellows. Then we had a tense night hoping that the bellows wouldn’t crack during the firing. They turned out perfectly and everyone was fascinated by them. In the following days anyone who wanted to had the chance to use them. Again,  I didn’t get much in the way of casting or smelting done, but together we made an important piece of equipment that is closely related to the heritage of the site. During the symposium I finally started the Turkish language course that I’d been trying to get on for over a year. I dearly hope that I will be able to speak Turkish reasonably well by the time I return.

Pot bellow, waiting to be fired

I always hate to leave Vounous, but at least I was heading back to Modena. It’s a good place to relax and recharge. I got to spend some time with my cousin Paolo and enjoy the cooler weather. Then in early October I headed back north to Germany to Adventon, a medieval/Viking era open air archaeological park http://mittelalterpark.de/. Kevin has been building a metals workshop there, and originally he planned for an event to celebrate the completion of the workshop. Instead, a small group of us finished putting on the roof and getting most of the walls done. Even if we didn’t get any metalworking done, it was still a great time. The weather was good for the most part, and we had a great time drinking Turkish coffee, talking, and eating meals together.

Trimming shingles for the roof

At the end of Adventon, I had to return to the US. My allotted three months in the EU were up. Unfortunately, my late afternoon flight was changed to an early morning one, meaning I had to beg a ride from Kevin, and we had to get up at 4 am to get me to the airport on time. That was not appreciated by either of us.

Back in the US, I have been finishing up a lot of projects that have languished. Knives have handles now, and I finished a sickle that was a commissioned piece. I’m at the lathe as much as possible, and I’ve also joined a foundry where I can get casting done over the winter. I have some very cool projects in mind and a lot to do in the three months until I leave for Europe again at the end of March.

Next year is already filling up. I submitted an abstract for the EAC conference in Poland in April, and the EAA in Belfast in August. There’s the Bronze casting Festival and Adventon, and of course Vounous. Speaking of which, I’ve only been in Northern Cyprus in September and very much want to see it in the spring when it is green. I’m making plans to be there in April and maybe got some metalworking done while I’m there.

2022 was an exhausting year of missed connections and difficult travel, but it was all so worth it. After the two years of pandemic lockdown, seeing so many friends and people I love, being able to work again and teach, pour metal, all of that was the greatest gift I could have asked for. Here’s to 2023 and all the adventure, but maybe with better travel connections.

Pot bellows in action!

September 2022

I’m back from the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in Budapest. There were a lot of great sessions, and as always it’s impossible to see more than a fraction of what’s going on. This year the conference was a hybrid of in-person presentations and virtual. Every session had participants who joined in online. The sessions I attended went seamlessly, although it must have been tough for people on the west coast of the US who were giving their talks at 5 am Pacific Time. The poster sessions were also virtual. There were no printed posters. Instead touchscreens allowed viewers to select a session and see the posters. All of these innovations allowed for people to participate who would normally be unable to attend the conference. However, there were some people who I wish would have been able to make it, if only to have in person conversations. Still, the conference was inspiring and I came away with fresh ideas and seriously thinking about new projects.

Digital posters at the EAA

Budapest is beautiful and the National Museum there is world class. The displays and layout are outstanding. Many of them allow the visitor to walk around the object, or at least to be able to see them from more than just one angle. The objects themselves are truly worthy of the treatment they get. I spent an entire afternoon there and would willingly go again and spend more time.

But there’s no rest this week. I arrived back on Saturday and tomorrow, the 6th I fly out to North Cyprus for the Vounous Symposium. There will be two weeks of smelting copper and melting bronze, and maybe we’ll get back into making some faience.

National Museum of Hungary, Budapest

July 2022

The year continues, although the excessive heat has been a bit much, especially when working with hot metal!

The Accidental and Experimental Archaeometallurgy 2.1 Conference was a blast. It was great connecting with everyone again and getting some work done. Thanks to Vanessa Castignino who went all out to make the event a success. There was the usual friendly rivalry between the ferrous and non-ferrous people, with furnaces of all shapes and sizes. There will be a short review of the conference in the EXARC Newsletter, coming out soon.

After a relaxing time in Sheffield, where I actually got to do a few minutes of excavating, I headed down to Norfolk for Sedgeford’s Archaometallurgy day course. We had some great students and built a permanent bowl furnace, so we don’t have to start from scratch every year. We did try to smelt copper, but ironically the weather was too hot to continue bellowing, so we just couldn’t get the furnace hot enough without roasting the people pumping the bellows.

Right now I’m in Modena, Italy where the extreme temperatures continue. However, I am looking forward to a cool time in Uelsen, Germany where I’ll be at the Bronze Casting Festival. I plan to continue my experiments with self-draughting furnaces, and use my 3D printed pins as forms for some sand casting.

Later in August I’ll be presenting at the EAA Conference in Budapest, and then I just got word that the Vounous Symposium will be back for another year! I am so looking forward to seeing everyone in North Cyprus again. Last time we started making faience for the fun of it. Who knows what we’ll try this time, in addition to all the usual smelting and casting…

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2022 is finally picking up where 2020 left off. I’m back in England and this weekend I’ll be at the Historical Metallurgy Society’s Accidental and Experimental Archaeometallurgy 2.1 Conference. Next month I’ll be at Sedgeford for SHARP’s Metallurgy day course. Then in August, I’ll head up to Uelsen, Germany for the Bronze Casting Festival at the Bronzezeithof. At the end of August I’ll be speaking at the EAA Conference in Budapest. Plans are still afoot for heading down to North Cyprus in September, although I haven’t had official word about another Vounous Symposium. Fingers crossed, though. It’s an exciting event and one where we have two weeks to work rather than just a weekend.

It feels great to be on the road again, although hauling a suitcase full of bronze tools can get a bit tiring at times. Still, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything!

The Self-draughting Furnace in the Snow

Welcome to 2022 and Some Resolutions

Last year, in 2021 everything was cancelled… again. The world was put on hold for another year. We all got tired of waiting for the next shoe to drop, not realizing that it was a centipede that was dropping them. It was as if the promise we hoped for in 2020 was snatched away. Some people reacted with anger, but for me it was withdrawal. I checked out for a while. When I look back on all the stuff I did last year, it looks like I was insanely busy, but to me it felt as if I had been treading water, waiting for life to come back to some form of normal and leave the US behind.  Still, hope springs eternal. My fellowship at Colonial Williamsburg that’s been delayed three times is rescheduled to happen next April and with luck I’ll be back in Europe this summer.

I did get a furnace built last year. It’s self-draughting, so I didn’t even need a set of bellows. That was convenient and a real labour saver, but it brought home how much bronze casting is a communal event for me. I missed the camaraderie, the laughing, storytelling, and the intensity of working as a close-knit team. I never bought into the idea of the lone, itinerant Bronze Age metalsmith, unbound from the structure of society. As a metalsmith, I am pretty itinerant, but I am rarely alone, and there is always some sort of social structure. In the modern world it is much easier to do this sort of work alone, but that is essentially an illusion. I head over to the hardware store and buy bags of charcoal and order bags of clay to be delivered here, but in the Broze Age there would have been a lot more interaction to get the necessary supplies. If the people who dug the clay and burned the charcoal weren’t a part of my village or settlement, I would have had to negotiate how to get the supplies to where I was working. Likewise for the metal or ore. The Bronze Age was a world without a lot of easy transportation. Something we take for granted now.

These days it’s unfashionable to do New Year’s resolutions. People point out that there really isn’t anything special about the transition from December 31st to January 1st, it’s just an arbitrary date. It is an arbitrary date, but it’s also a long-standing tradition and there is a certain amount of power in traditions. 2021 was certainly a depressing year. Then New Year’s came and went. Compared to New Year’s Eve in Italy and England, there’s not much going on here even in a non-Covid year. It was a low point for me, and it came to the point where the only way was back up again. So, I did make resolutions. Small ones that will get bigger as I get back into the swing of things. It felt right. I feel as if I am getting back into the game and even if I don’t have a lot of energy, I’m acting as if I do. In the coming weeks I plan to put up a page of bronze casting moulds, similar to the page I made for textile tools. I’ll also write a full report on my self-draughting furnace, that amazingly seems to be holding up in the sub-zero weather here, and I’ll polish up and publish some old articles of mine. So, I’m back and hoping to make up for lost time.

 

Experimental Archaeology at Western Illinois University

On November 1-3, 2017 I was in Macomb, Illinois leading a bronze casting workshop at Western Illinois University. This was the first event of its kind for the University and few people there knew what to expect. While the archaeology program provides for a certain amount of flintknapping and some pottery done by students, there was no available program for the introduction of the method and theory behind experimental archaeology.

Professor Andrea Alveshere, a colleague of mine from the University of Minnesota and I discussed the possibility of my coming to give a short seminar and workshop. There wasn’t much in the way of funds for the project, so I agreed to come as long as my expenses and materials were covered. It was a program that both she and I very much wanted to introduce to the university.

I had a long train ride from St Paul to central Illinois, but enjoyed seeing the landscape. I arrived fairly late that evening and was taken to cabins on rural property now owned by the university. The land and cabins had been bequeathed to the university and they are a great resource. In addition to dorm-like cabins with bunk beds, bathrooms, and limited kitchen facilities, there is a dining hall with a complete kitchen. We made sure that there were supplies for coffee and breakfast and checked out the site where we would build the furnace.

The grounds around the cabin are level and grassy, and there was already a large firepit with picnic benches arranged around it. I met the site manager, and we chose a spot beyond the firepit where we could construct a small pit furnace. She was excited about the project and had no problems with holes being dug. She also liked the idea of the furnace being buried when we were done with it so that it could be excavated later.

We hit the ground running on Thursday. Andrea picked me up and we went to the university where I met students and staff in the art metals department. They were excited about participating in the project and were glad to provide us with supplies. The idea of primitive casting was fascinating to them and they looked forward to the event. I borrowed some tongs and other equipment from them, with more to be delivered the next day. While we spoke, one of the professors who teaches pottery came in. We needed clay, and I had to explain that we wanted his worst stuff, the stuff that’s scraped off tables that’s usually discarded or sent for recycling. He didn’t quite understand why we wanted the useless clay, but he said that we could have as much as we wanted.

After lunch we made a run into town for more supplies. We found bags of sand and proper lumpwood/natural charcoal at the local farm store for a reasonable price. The plan was to cast into cuttlefish bone since two days was not enough time to make moulds for lost wax casting. Andrea had ordered cuttlefish bone from a wholesaler, but unfortunately when the shipment of arrived it contained packages of aquarium gravel. So we were also scouring local pet stores for cuttlefish. Andrea contacted the company she ordered from and arranged an overnight delivery, but there were no promises that it would arrive in Macomb in time. The nearest FedEx office was in Peoria and it would have to go by post from there to Macomb.

We agreed to meet up at the site at 2:30 to build the furnace. When we arrived, a few students were already on site. I explained to them about clay mixing and the reasons we mix sand and dung with the clay. In the process they got a basic lesson about ceramic petrography, and early clay recipes.

Note the supports for the teapot stand inside. It was a well made and durable furnace.

By the time we were done they had a working knowledge of clay bodies and the physical experience of working with it as well. A hole was dug and then it was lined with clay. I explained about tuyeres and used a branch to construct a clay-lined hole that ran from the top edge to the base of the furnace. When I build a furnace I usually ask the students to decorate it in some way. Usually something is put above the hole where the tuyere comes in. While working, the students decided that the furnace should have a turtle head above the tuyere. A nice choice, since the glowing charcoal would make for an interesting turtle shell! While they worked on that, I made the platform (also known as teapot stands or perforated clay slabs) to place in the furnace. By 6:30 pm we had everything done. That was right on time since I needed to change clothes for my talks at 7 pm at the university.

Once I was cleaned up Andrea took me to the lecture hall. It was a great facility with a large wall-sized screen and auditorium seating. It was almost half full, which was good considering that it was a weekday evening and the subject was unfamiliar to most people. Despite that we drew attendance from the anthropology and art departments, in addition to members of the local archaeology society and members of the public who were not associated with the university.

I gave three short talks in succession with questions and answers after each one. These were all presentations that I’d previously given at conferences, all of which were about 15 minutes long. I started off with the one I gave in Oslo about the significance of mistakes and how they are preserved in metalwork. The second was about Minimum Tools Required, a portion of my PhD thesis that organised the chaîne opératoire of metalworking. The final talk was about excavating metal, based on the BAJR guide that I’d written. The questions were enthusiastic and despite there being little in the way of prehistoric metal in the region, there was interest in the subject. I did answer a couple questions about Lake Superior copper use among Native Americans. There is some debate as to how some of the copper objects arrived in central Illinois from northern Minnesota. Were finished objects traded by Native Americans, was the raw material transported and traded, or was the copper a chance find of raw material that had been redeposited in southern Illinois by glacial action? I hadn’t seen the objects, but typology might provide a part of the answer. At the end I spoke a little about what we would be doing the next day.

Afterwards Andrea and I returned to the furnace. Although it was still damp, I wanted to get it dry before casting the next day. We laid a little fire and sat talking late into the night. The presentation had been a great success and it looks as if it generated a lot of interest.

Friday I was scheduled to give a talk on experimental archaeology at noon. This was basically an introductory lecture about why and how experimental archaeology is done, along with the basic ground rules for doing experimental work. Word had gotten out and the room was filled to capacity. After the talk we headed back to the site and got to work. Because we hurried the process along last night there were a couple cracks in the furnace, but because it was set into the ground the cracks had little effect. The furnace was still warm from the previous night and I used a trusty pig scapula to scrape out the ash and leftover charcoal and then fit the platform in place. The fire was lit and after I had worked the bag bellows for a bit, the students took over. Every group I work with seems to have a different approach as to how to operate the bellows. I know that the way I do it, alternating pumps with one per hand, is difficult to coordinate for many people trying it the first time. Some people never quite get it and just pump both the bellows at the same time (affectionately known as the Cambridge Method). Here, the students teamed up and had one person per side, operating the bellows with both hands. They were surprisingly well-coordinated. The students were energetic and worked long sessions without tiring. At times I had to ask someone to give up their place to let another student try. I wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted to (including non-students who had come to see what was going on) had a chance at the bellows. The furnace took a bit longer to get the first crucible of metal melted than it normally does because of the frequent changes of personnel pumping the bellows, but we did get there. About an hour after we started Andrea got the call that the cuttlebone had arrived. Students were already carving moulds from what we had on hand. Now things were in full swing. I was grateful to the jewellery professor who took on showing the students how to prepare and carve the cuttlebone while I supervised the melts.

There were a few failures due to improper mould preparation. It gave me the opportunity to explain how easy it was to lose droplets of metal while casting and pointed out the debris that was getting trampled around the furnace, tell-tale clues that an archaeologist needs to look out for in a site that could be mistaken for a cooking pit. Every experience that day was a teaching moment. Both instructional and non-discursive. Repeatedly students told me that they had never known that there was such a thing as experimental archaeology, and that they were thinking about archaeology in a new way. A couple students who had not yet declared were suddenly thinking about the possibilities of having a major in anthropology.

The students wanted to keep going despite a large pot-luck dinner that had been prepared, so we all went to eat in shifts. When I took a break, people assured me that I wasn’t too soot covered, although I felt as if I had charcoal smoke in every pore. The head of the Anthropology Department came up and complemented me on my lecture. He was impressed by how I presented the information and noted the enthusiasm of the students. The potluck was also attended by members of the local archaeology society who aren’t formally a part of the university, but attend functions and often work with students on projects. We had a great time talking about local archaeology and experimental work.

After dinner we worked a little more, but it was long past the time that we could see well in the dark. We packed up as much as we could find and put it all in the cabin.

Blowing off the bits of charcoal before pouring. Always exciting!

I had the choice of leaving on Saturday or Sunday. I opted for Sunday because the train left at 7 am and I knew that Friday would be a late night. I told the students that if they were interested, we could continue casting on Saturday. I had no lectures or other plans, so we agreed on a 10 am start.

The next morning we had another good-sized group of students. The previous day there had been close to a couple dozen people in the afternoon and rarely fewer than a dozen visiting throughout the day and evening. Saturday was more relaxed, but still well-attended. Students made moulds and instructed new participants who hadn’t been there the day before. The more experienced ones were already taking on tasks like they were old hands at it.

Andrea was amused that this was supposed to be my day off, but instead it was another full day of casting. Some experimentation was done with hammering (using my bronze hammer and anvil) and other finishing work. One student was keen on textile archaeology, so she cast some beautiful spindle whorls. I also made some clay ones with her, using some of the scraps left over from building the furnace. Once dry, she’ll take them to the art department to see if she can get them fired there. I heard that they also do raku pit firing.

Clay, pewter, and bronze spindle whorls. experimental Bronze Age metallurgy meets textile archaeology!

Towards evening I needed to call it quits. I had an early start in the morning and needed to get things cleaned up and packed. The students reluctantly poured the last moulds and we got everything in order. The next day they would cover the turtle furnace with dirt and let it deteriorate. Left to itself, it should be covered in grass in a year. In a year or two it will be just as useful as a teaching tool for excavation.

The entire event was successful and exceeded our expectations. We had brought an entire new perspective on archaeology to the department, and the department heads were impressed. In my talk I had emphasised the value of programs like this not only for hands-on student learning, but also as a unique opportunity for public interaction with the department. Too often universities are segregated from the surrounding community leading to the local residents wondering what goes on there. Experimental archaeology programs, especially those performed out of doors, provide an opportunity for interaction and public participation, and even drawing on experience of people from outside the university. Andrea and I discussed the possibility of doing a longer workshop or even the possibility of an accredited short course. Now that the department has been given an idea of what can be accomplished, they might be more amenable to funding it.

These are ambitious ideas in a time when universities are hurting for money. I was glad to be a part of this mainly because I wanted to help Andrea introduce experimental archaeology to her students and colleagues. There was no budget for such an unknown project, but because we were keen on this, Andrea scraped what funds she could get at short notice and we put it together on a shoestring. I would love to pursue this and give students the full range of what an experimental archaeology course could offer, but that is for the university board to decide.

In the meantime, I would like to thank all the people who support my project on Patreon. They provided the opportunity for this seed to get planted and for students to have a unique experience that will benefit them in their careers as archaeologists. The contributions made through Patreon and PayPal go towards giving more people the opportunity to explore the world of material culture in a way they never realised before. If you’re interested in finding out more about my Patreon project or making a sustaining contribution please click on the link below.

The furnace at night

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Nobody’s Perfect: Contrasts in Craft session at the Nordic Bronze Age Symposium

June 2017


It was my pleasure to present a paper at the 
Nordic Bronze Age Symposium in Oslo . The conference focused on contrasts and connections in the Bronze Age. Presenters covered a wide range of topics from landscape, technology, social practices and materialities. 

The session that I participated in was titled Nobody is Perfect: Contrasts in Craft. I spoke about recognising the learning process by examining mistakes in metalwork. It was a great session and I hope that the research presented here will spur others to examine the flaws in objects to understand the processes of craft production.

Too often artefacts are selected for examination and display because of their perfection, but perfection can limit us. We see the end product but by the very process of achieving perfection the traces of the journey to mastery are erased. When we examine flaws, both minor and major, the world opens up.We can follow the movements of the artisan’s hands and see the sequence in which an object was made. We can see the choices made during production. Was there a flawed section of decoration because a master artisan was momentarily distracted, or was it because an apprentice was still awkward using tools? We can also question why the flaws remain; why the object survives, rather than having been destroyed or repaired.

The flaws, repairs, and mistakes all contribute to the object’s biography and allow us a glimpse of craft and decoration in ancient cultures. The papers presented in this session examined these and more subjects on mistakes in craft, and generated lively discussion.

Nobody is perfect: contrasts in craft – for the first time at an archaeological conference artists, craftspeople and archaeologists gathered together to discuss the potential of mistakes, failures and repair within material culture of the past. The results were stunning: mistakes, failures and repair can not only help to identify skill level and apprenticeship in craft, they also indicate the intention, the actual purpose of an artefact.” – Heide W. Nørgaard

Casting with Dr. Billy Mag Fhloinn

I’ve been honoured to cast alongside Billy on a number of occasions while we were both at Umha Aois events. His recent article for the Pallasboy Project: Art, Craft, Archaeology, and Alchemy talks about his experience in both experimental archaeology and craftsmanship.

Making bag bellows

 

Bag bellows might be the oldest form of bellows used. We don’t know for certain because they are made entirely of organic materials, and so none survive in the archaeological record.  Because they have the advantage of being portable, lightweight, and easy to make, this type of bellows are still in use for iron forging in parts of Africa and South Asia. When you make a pair, you can be as “authentic” as you want, using only wood and leather, or you can use more readily scrounged materials like vacuum cleaner hoses and pleather. There is a remarkable video of Kenyan metalsmiths using bellows made of cement bags here.

In addition to this tutorial, check out the Bellows Forum page where there are variations of bellows designs and some interesting variations.

Traditionally bag bellows are made of pliable leather and the usual description is that a single bellow is made from one goatskin. The bellows I describe here are made with upholstery fabric. At the time I made them, leather was too much for my budget. After they were sewn I gave them a good coating of linseed oil that made them both waterproof and airtight. I find it ironic that in the Bronze Age leather would have been readily available, but hand-woven fabric would have been exorbitant. So, these are my ostentatious display of wealth bellows.

How big the bellows you make will depend on what’s comfortable for you. I’ve used very large bellows and ones so small you’d think that they’d never produce enough air to get the job done, but they did remarkably well. What is important is that the size works for you. You’ll be sitting on the ground, or close to the ground (I like a log or a short tree stump with a bit of padding). Sit down on the floor and raise your arm with your elbows bent so that they are lifted a little over waist high. Try not to move with your shoulders. You’ll be pumping your arms up and down for hours, so it’s good to find a height that works for you so that you don’t wear your arms out. Measure that height or get a good idea of how high that is. Then you’ll want to add a few more inches because you want to have the bellows rest on the ground. If you lift them too high, the sides will collapse and you won’t be able to trap the air in them. You also want to add another few inches to wrap around the handles.

Besides the leather (or whatever material you choose) the other supplies you’ll need are heavy waxed thread or sinew, leather or sail needles (depending on the type of material you’re sewing). The handles are made of two straight branches about 3-4 cm (1-1 ½ inches) in diameter, or four boards 3 by .5 cm (1 by ¼ inch) the length will depend on how wide the top of your bellows are. If you use branches, they’ll have to be split lengthwise so that they have a semi-circular cross section. My bellows are about 16 inches wide.

Using your own measurements, adapt the pattern below, adding about 3 cm/1 inch for the seams around the edges, and enough at the top to wrap around the handles. You’ll also need some scrap to make loops for your fingers. The loops are more important than you realise. Getting them right will mean the difference between being able to work for hours, and giving up because you keep getting blisters or losing your grip.

The basic pattern for cutting out a pair of bag bellows.

Another useful detail is to sew a small triangle in the front of the bellows, just below the handles. Holger Lonze taught me this trick. It makes it much easier to open the bellows wider and get more air in.

The small triangle set into the front of the bellows. Note that I put in a couple stitches so that when the bellows close, the triangle folds inwards.

The other detail is the part at the bottom that sticks out. This is where the tuyere will fit. The size you make that will depend on the tuyere you make, and also how much air you want to push through to the fire. If it’s too narrow, you’ll be expending a lot of energy pushing air through a small space. Too large and you’ll be pumping furiously to get the volume of air through the tuyere. Mine is about 10 cm (4 inches) and tapers a little so I can fit different tuyeres to it in case I ever want to change it.

The other supply you’ll need is rawhide. Leather strips can work, but they aren’t as durable or tight as rawhide. The best source for rawhide I’ve found is the pet shop. Buy a rawhide chew bone for a dog and soak it in a bucket of water overnight. The rawhide will soften and you can untie the ends and unroll a nice sheet of rawhide. I cut it in a spiral so I have good, long pieces. While it’s wet, you can wrap it and tie it easily. Once it’s dry it shrinks to a hard, tight fit.

A close-up of where I tied the opening of the bellows to the tuyere

Cut out the leather or material and then stitch it with the outsides together so that when you turn it inside out, the raw edges will be on the inside. Don’t sew it all the way to the top. You want that extra selvedge to wrap around the handles. Make sure you fit the triangle in the front below the bottom edge of where the handles will be.

The next step was the hardest for me. It’s a bit of a pain. You need to wrap the upper selvedge of the bellows around the sticks and sew them tightly into place. If you’re using half-round branches, make sure the flat sides are on the inside so they meet and make a tight fit. Sew these in tight along the bottom of the sticks. It’s annoying if they wobble around.

The finished bag bellows. Note that the handle is towards the rear of the bellows.

Turn the bellows right side out and admire your work.

If you used branches, you might not need loops for your fingers. Try pumping them a bit and see if you can open and close them easily without them slipping out of your hands. The action is to open them while the top of the bellows is close to the ground, Lift them, close them when they are as high as you want to lift them, close the bellows and then push down. If you lose your grip, you might want to put loops on them. They are simple, just strips of the same material that your bellows are made from. Sew them so your hand will be about 1/3 to 1/4 of the way from the back. When the bellows open, the little triangle in front will allow the bellows to open in a “V” shape and allow you to trap more air. Having the loops toward the back means that you don’t have to open your hands as wide. Since I work with kids a lot, this was a consideration when I designed them. Also, I have small hands.

This shows the handle at the top of the bellows and how to hold the bellows open while using them

The loops should accommodate four fingers on one side and your thumb on the other. The handles will stretch over time, so I periodically have to stitch them again to tighten them up.

There now, try them out. If you feel any air leaks in the seams you can seal them with linseed oil. If you made your bellows from fabric, the easiest way to coat them is to hang them on a clothes line outside and slather the oil on with a paintbrush. It takes a long time to dry and smells pretty strong. It’s definitely something to be done outdoors. Keep in mind that it might take a day or two for the linseed oil to dry.

Now in order to work, you’ll need at least a short tuyere. If you’re not fussed, some steel tubing from a vacuum cleaner works fine. If you want a more Bronze Age look, you can make them from wood. I took a short branch and drilled a hole in it using a 2 cm flat bit (1 ½” spade bit in the US). The branches are about 1 cm or ½” wider than the bit. If you don’t have a bit or don’t want to use power tools, take a branch of the right thickness (about 4 cm or 3”) and split it in half. Carve out the centre and fit them back together using glue and rawhide.

Fit one end of your tuyere into the opening at the bottom of your bellows (you didn’t sew that shut, right?). Now take the wet, sloppy rawhide and wrap it tightly around the part of the bellows covering the tuyere. If your tuyere is made of split branches, keep wrapping so that it holds the halves of the branch together. Depending on the weather and humidity, it might take several hours for the rawhide to dry.

Once everything is dry, try them out. They’ll be a bit stiff at first and will need to be broken in. It takes a bit of practice to get the Open-Lift-Close-Push rhythm going, especially if you alternate hands. Once you get into it, it gets easier. Think of a cat kneading its paws.

Another tip is to get some thin willow twigs, about the size used for making baskets. Make them into hoops  that will fit inside the bottom of your bellows. It will help keep them open, especially if you have a tendency to lift them too high.

Next you’ll be wanting a “Y” shaped tuyere to connect the bellows together.

Making Tuyeres

Tuyeres are the tubes that bring the air from the bellows to the furnace. They can be made of wood, ceramic, PVC pipes, copper pipes, old vacuum cleaner tubes, really whatever you can come up with that will do the job. They are usually connected to the bellows, but in some cases they can just be set close enough that the air is delivered through them to the furnace. If you have a set of two bellows, the tuyeres are in a “Y” shape, with two ends connected to the bellows that connect to a single end going to the furnace.

Archaeologically there aren’t many remains of tuyeres. There are some fragments of tubular ceramic objects that had evidence of burning on the end. However, the best example is a wooden one recovered from a Danish bog. This was the same sort of “Y” shaped one described below.

Quick and easy: Tuyere #1

One of the problems of working with kids is that they are so fascinated with flames that they sometimes don’t realise that the bellows aren’t the part that supposed to be burning. So I’ve been working on making a couple of new sets of tuyeres.

Poor tuyere. Burnt to a crisp! I guess that it’s time for a new set.

I’m under a deadline for one set, so this will be a quick and easy version. I pulled a good sized forked branch from the woodpile and cut the ends so they were fairly even.  Then I got a 22 mm spade bit (in Britian it’s known as a flat bit). Then I just clamped it into a vise and drilled into the flat ends of the wood until the holes met near the centre. I removed the bark, rounded off and sanded the ends. I don’t want any bark that will work loose over time, or any sharp edges that will abrade the inside of the leather on the bellows.

Holes drilled. All that’s left is to attach it to the bellows.

I usually like one with a wider fork, but this will do in a pinch. It’s more important that the two ends are close to the same angle from the main trunk to minimise any kinks when connecting them to the bellows. The tuyere will be connected by leather tubes to the bellows and held in place by strips of rawhide. Skip down to the section on putting them all together for the details on that.

Note: Save that sawdust that you’re generating with all that drilling. It will come in handy for making moulds!

Larger and more labour intensive: Tuyere #2

The next one is another wooden tuyere for a new set of bellows I’m making. It’s larger, so the spade bit isn’t an option. Instead I cut the wood in half lengthwise and then carved out the inside with woodworking gouges. It’s all handwork, so it takes longer, but one advantage is that the diameter of the air holes isn’t limited to the size and length of the drill bit.

This is a section of a branched silver birch trunk with a good angle. Most of the bark is removed and the wood looks sound underneath. Time to slice it in half.

Once the branch was cut, I marked off where I would carve out the centre and went at it with chisels and gouges. I made the interior as smooth and as even as possible. However, I don’t smooth the surfaces that will be glued together. They already fit well and the rougher texture will help the glue bond. If you’re going for authenticity, you can use birch tar or other natural glues. If you’re pressed for time Gorilla Glue works very well. Other tuyeres I’ve seen are held together with leather and rawhide.

The insides of the tuyere are seen on the right. They’ve been carved out and are ready to be put back together again.

Another variation was made by Morgan Van Es, who hollowed out a “Y” shaped branch and then covered it tightly with leather. This is far easier than drilling holes or carving two pieces of wood and trying to fit them back together again. The tuyere definitely works!

Note the depression along the top of the tuyere. The tuyere is made from wood in which a deep groove was cut. Then the tuyere was covered in leather. Much less labour intensive and it delivers the air very well.

Ceramic and other Tuyeres

If your tuyere might be placed close to the furnace (as mine accidentally was), it would be a good idea to make a ceramic extension. This is just a tube made of the same ceramic you used for making the furnace or moulds. It can be fit to the end of your wooden tuyere with leather and rawhide, as described below, and the end can go straight into the furnace. The only problem I find with ceramic tuyeres is the possibility of them breaking when being transported or if someone steps on them.

At the Terramare Village in Montale, the tuyeres they use there have a 90 degree bend. The tuyere sits on the edge of a small, shallow furnace and blows air straight down onto the crucible. It’s an Early Bronze Age design and does get hot enough to melt bronze and copper. If you don’t have much space for a furnace this would be an ideal solution. It’s also worth experimenting with different types of furnaces to get an idea of how many solutions there are to the basic question of how to melt and cast metal.

There are some beautiful ceramic tuyeres in the Musei di Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza. They are from the Terramare culture that spread through the Po Valley in northern Italy.
Click on the thumbnail to get the entire photo.

At the EAA in Glasgow, I saw a poster showing the reconstruction of a beautiful horse-headed ceramic tuyere by Katarina Botwid of Lund University. This is similar to the right-angled ones they use in Montale. You can see the tuyere in action here.

I’ve also made tuyeres using the stems of Japanese knotweed. The stems are hollow, similar to bamboo, but much softer. The plants can get over an inch in diameter and several feet tall. The stems can be easily cut with a knife, small garden shears, or secateurs, and then the membranes between sections can be broken by poking a straight stick through them.

Note: Japanese knotweed is a controlled invasive species in Britain. Any fragment of stem, leaf, or root will take root and start a new plant. They are almost impossible to get rid of once started. When I find a large stand of knotweed, I strip off any leaves and excess stems and leave them there. If I need to trim off any more once I’m home, I put it in a plastic bag and then put it in the bin.

As I said earlier, tuyeres can be made of anything that will get the job done. If you don’t need to have that “authentic” Bronze Age look, you can quickly whip something together with PVC plumbing or copper piping. It wouldn’t be glamorous, but as long as any flammable or melt-able parts are kept away from the heat of the furnace, it should get the job done.

Putting them all together

The tuyere still needs to be connected to the bellows. I usually make tubes of leather that fit the tubes coming out of the bellows and the ends of the tuyere.This allows for some flexibility and gives you a bit more distance from the furnace.

A tight stitch and a decent amount of overlap will make these pretty airtight.

Then I tie them in place with wet rawhide. Once the rawhide is dry, they are about as secure as you can get. If the leather is soft, the tubes have a tendency to twist or collapse, so a nice solution is to get some green willow twigs and roll them into a spring. Fit them into the tubes before doing the final attachment and they’ll keep the leather tubes open and prevent them from twisting.

I also fit twisted willow hoops into the ends of the bellows to keep the leather from collapsing.

A willow hoop wrapped and tied with sinew or other cord will help keep tuyere tubes from collapsing.

Everything is fit together and tied with damp rawhide. Once the rawhide is dry, the bellows are ready to go.

 

A close-up of where I tied the opening of the bellows to the tuyere

By the way, if you have a hard time finding rawhide lacing, buy a rawhide dog chew. Soak it in a bucket of water overnight and then cut it into long strips while it’s still damp. If you don’t need all of it right away, let it dry out. Then when you need it again just soak it for a few hours and it will be nice and flexible again.

Casting Bronze in the Italian Bronze Age Way

In October 2015 I had the great adventure of doing some bronze casting with Il Tre de Spade (The Three of Swords) at the Archaeological Park and Open-Air Museum of the Terramare in Montale. The museum is located just south of Modena and recreates Bronze Age houses surrounded by a palisade and a marsh, appearing as it would have in the central and later phases of the Bronze Age there (1600-1250 BC). The museum hosts demonstrations and activities, along with a recreation of the original excavation.

The houses are nicely furnished, with well laid out areas for cooking, sleeping, food storage, and workshops. One house has a workbench for wood and antler working, and another area set aside for  weaving and textile crafts. The other has a metalworking workbench with stone anvils, moulds, bellows, and all the needed kit stored neatly on shelves and a work bench. Unlike the recreated roundhouses that are often seen in the UK, you can get a good idea about how the ancient people lived here and where they put their all the things they used in every day life.

I had been invited to join the casting demonstrations by Claude Cavazzuti, who is also a member of EXARC. He is one of Il Tre di Spade (along with Pelle and Scacco) , who were some of the first metalworkers at the museum after it opened several years ago. They do regular demonstrations (sometimes with hundreds of visitors per day) and also run workshops that introduce people to Bronze Age casting and metalworking with a focus on the  Middle and Recent Bronze Age (1700-1150 BC) of Northern Italy.

The furnaces there are small clay-lined trenches about 25 cm deep and 50 cm long, something that would be nearly invisible archaeologically and easily interpreted as a cooking hearth (and really, there’s no reason why they couldn’t be both). The furnaces heat up quickly and work efficiently. The charcoal is concentrated around the crucible with more warming beside it so that the fuel is hot before it gets raked around to cover the crucible.

The furnace. Not much to see here, and even less after a few thousand years!

My first new introduction was the bag bellows. They were larger than I have used in the past, and made of much heavier leather. They put out an enormous volume of air, and their size also allows the person pumping the bellows to sit on a low stool.  

The real challenge for me was the valve and the way the bellows open at the top. The bag bellows I’d used before have straight sticks in the handles that either open parallel to each other, or are hinged at the back to open like a “V”. These bellows have two sticks on both sides, so that they open into a diamond shape making another hinge where your hands hold the bellows. It took a little bit to get used to them and to figure out where best to position my fingers. I never did get it quite tight enough and could feel a bit of air blasting on the back of my arms, but they still  delivered a powerful amount of air. The tuyere was a large clay tube that curved downwards at a 90° angle, and was positioned so that it was directly above the crucible. This meant that the charcoal had to be moved frequently to keep the crucible covered. Without the layer of charcoal above, the air coming from the bellows would cool the metal in the crucible.

One nice innovation is that they put a large stone in the bottom of each bag. That prevents people who are new to bellowing from lifting them too high and causing the bags to collapse.

Casting in Stone and Sand

The crucibles are a flattened dish-shape, with some that were larger and a bit more of a bowl shape to hold more metal. They have a grooved tab on one side that is used as a handle, and have a small lip for pouring. The shallow design and lip cause the metal to pour more quickly and flow out in an arc, rather than almost straight down like the triangular bag-shaped crucibles used in Britain. It took a couple tries to get used to the trajectory of the metal in order to get all the metal in the pouring cups.

The shallow crucibles also mean that the pouring has to be done more quickly than with the deeper crucibles that I was used to.  Because they are wide open, the metal cools quickly, so there is little time for dragging out charcoal and skimming. As soon as the metal was molten, we gave it a quick stir with a stick, pulled the crucible out with the wet tongs, and poured the bronze into the mould while holding the stick across the top to keep the charcoal back.

The tuyere with the moulds set next to it to warm up. The small bowls are the crucibles. Note that they are used without lids.

The tongs they use are beautifully crafted from wood and cord. They are kept in a bucket of water to keep them from burning when holding the heated crucible. The entire organisation of tools and materials is efficient and elegant, and there is nothing that could not have been made from materials available during the Early Bronze Age.

Beautifully constructed wooden tongs

For this session we used the stone moulds that were on display in the house. The moulds were made of a very fine-grained local stone, the same that had been used by the Terramare circa 3500 years ago. The moulds were warmed next to the furnace and then strapped together with leather strips. We took turns bellowing and pouring. 

We cast sickles, knives, and daggers using the stone moulds. Later we moved on to using sand moulds. I borrowed one of the antler spindle whorls from the woodcarving house to see if I could try casting that as an experiment. It worked sort-of. It will take a bit of work to get finished up, but I think with a couple more tries we could have got it spot-on.

I was wearing my bronze torc bracelet that day and one of the new people wanted to try casting that. We used it as a model for a sand mould and after a couple tries, we got a cast that made a perfect duplicate.

Some of the replica tools and ornaments cast at the Terramare Museum

Casting a bronze sword

The museum was also performing public demonstrations that day. The main event was casting a sword using a sand mould. The sand they use is local, and perfect for casting. Commercial casting sand consists of fine sand mixed with dry bentonite clay. The sand from the Po River delta is exactly that, sand that has been reduced to almost a powder by erosion, combined with clay and silt that has been washed into the river (I encountered the same natural mixture in Albuquerque in the dry bed of the Rio Grande River Valley). The Po River sand leaves a much finer texture on the finished objects than the coarser commercial sand that I have used in the US and the UK. Looking at the quality of the sand, I was able to understand how different sands might affect the regional quality of casting, and might even have had value as a commodity.

The mould for the sword was made using the standard cope and drag method, with the pouring cup on the flat side of the sword, rather than pouring from the top. A large vent was also placed at the tip of the sword. Before casting, the mould was propped up at an angle. As the crowd gathered and settled onto benches under a marquee, Claude explained Bronze Age metalworking techniques, and then the sword was cast. The angle and the pour are calculated so that the metal cools just before it exits the vent hole at the bottom. Everyone was impressed and even more so when the perfectly cast sword was taken from the mould.

Often after the casting is done for demonstrations the bronzes are taken home and finished using drills and angle grinders, but not here. We had a relaxing time using wet sand on the hard, fine-grained anvil stones to grind off the flashing and excess metal. Some smaller stones that had a coarser texture could be held in the hand and used for working the inside curves and corners. I’d brought my small socketed hammer along and we used that to break off some of the excess metal. Between light hammering and patient grinding, the daggers were smoothed rather more quickly than I would have expected.

A nice flat anvil stone for grinding the flashing off of the dagger blade. There’s evidence from the originals from this area that the holes for rivets were punched rather than drilled, or cast in place. Other stones are used for coarser grinding. Note my hammer at the bottom. It came in handy for breaking off some of the flashing. A bit of time travel here since this is a replica of a Late Bronze Age hammer!

While we were casting, more tour and school groups came through to watch more casting demonstrations. School kids also had the opportunity to make their own copper bracelets. There was a square of tables set up with small stone anvils and hammerstones. Punches and chisels were available so they could decorate the strips of copper to make bracelets in patterns that would not have looked out of place in a Terramare village.

It was a great day, and one that was full of new experiences. It was particularly interesting to see how much variation there is in doing the same tasks and getting successful results. The different types of furnaces, moulds, bellows, and crucibles make for differences in how tasks are performed. Other small acts show variation between different metalworking groups. Tasks such as turning the crucible over to remove dross and leftover metal after casting was done into the furnace here, where in Ireland we have always done that on the ground next to the furnace. These are small things that could be seen archaeologically if excavation is done carefully, but also shows how customs and metalworking traditions develop with regional differences.

 

A special thanks to Il Tre di Spade, Claude, Pelle, and Scacco and the staff at the  Parco archaologico e Muse all’aperto della Terramare for inviting me to participate in casting. I would also like to acknowledge Markus Binggeli & Markus Binggeli who are masters of bronze casting and replicating ancient metalworking techniques. They are mentors of  Il Tre di Spade, and provide both inspiration and technical expertise for experimental archaeologists.

Useful links

If you’d like to learn more about the Early Bronze Age in the Modena area, the work of Il Tre di Spade, and the Terramare Open Air Museum in Montale you can find links below.

A film about the Terramare and Bronze Age metalworking (in English)

Il Tre di Spade also have a Facebook page.

 

EXARC: 9th Experimental Archaeology Conference, Dublin (IE)

17-18 January 2015

I missed the first day of the conference. Instead I was at my PhD graduation ceremony. It was a wild trip. I graduated with the full regalia of cap and gown, had a quick couple glasses of wine at the archaeology department’s reception, and then we hopped on a fast flight to Dublin for the EAC9 conference at University College, Dublin. The conference was a collaborative effort brought together by EXARC, UCD, and  the Irish National Heritage Park. It was a large conference with over 200 delegates, 20 papers, and 31 posters.

The Dublin University campus is huge and spread out, so we had a time trying to find the right building. I arrived just in time to deliver my paper and see the rest of the session. There were some interesting papers and posters given that explored the range of pyrotechnology in archaeology from cremation to glassworking and metalwork. In addition to the usual poster session, individual posters were given a ten minute presentation while being projected in the main hall. These included Jiří Hošek, Ryszard Kaźmierczak, Paweł Kucypera & Maciej Tomaszczyk (Nicolaus Copernicus University) with a presentation on steel carburising in a small shaft furnace, and Yuri Godino & Lorenzo Teppati Losè (University of Florence) presented a poster on their experiments on cupellating galena to produce refined silver.

I was also interested in the presentations on glassworking. There were two very different approaches to the subject with Marta Krzyżanowska & Mateusz Frankiewicz from Poland who spoke about producing Early Medieval lampwork type beads in an open hearth based on excavations in Ribe. Jonathan Thornton from Buffalo, New York spoke about replicating trade bead production based on evidence from Africa  using glass frit in a clay mould .

The presentations that discussed metal began with my presentation on inverse segregation and its influence on chemical analysis of objects cast in the Bronze Age. Padraig McGoran of Umha Aois presented a poster on his experiments that included problems and solutions in casting into open one piece moulds.

After that I was off to the university’s experimental grounds to help set up furnaces and get ready for casting. The centre boasts a Mesolithic house, along with metalworking furnaces in varying states of decay. There are separate areas set aside for flint knapping, firing pottery, and active metalworking projects. The members of Umha Aois had already started building a variety of furnaces that included ones heated from below, from the side, and another with a tuyere that had a 90 degree bend that blew the air directly onto charcoal covering a flat, pan-shaped crucible. I worked at a portable ceramic furnace that was brought to the site by Fiona Coffey. It was set up inside Billy Mag Floinn’s newly constructed traveller’s tent. Despite it being wind and waterproof, the flaps ventilated it well and we kept warmer than the others who were set up under a tarp outside.

A memorable birthday! Photo by Tríona Sørensen

At lunch I was presented with a birthday cake. Surprisingly no one had anything bigger to cut it with than a pocket knife. The only solution was to get one of Billy’s bronze swords and carefully slice it. It was a most memorable birthday.

Bronze objects that had been created by the members of Umha Aois were on display, including swords, horns, tools, spears, and stone moulds. We spent the day casting axes, jewellery, tools, and more. There was a constant flood of visitors and regular announcements were made when one of us was ready to pour. For most of the day it was standing room only. The casting events continued all afternoon and into the evening.

Rather than head straight back to Sheffield the next day, I had arranged to see the Bishopsland Hoard and a hammer from the Garden Hill Hoard at the National Museum. I’d hoped that I could see some moulds, and to have some colleagues also examine the objects. Unfortunately emails were crossed and I just got to see the hoard and hammer. However, that was fascinating in itself, and I spent hours measuring, weighing, drawing, and photographing every detail of the artefacts.

Events like this are exhilarating and exhausting. We all learn more every time we meet, and we  come away with new ideas as well as newly cast objects to finish up. This week I’ve been filing and polishing some of the bronze fibulae I cast and I still need to get to work on the replica I cast of the hammer from the Lusmagh Hoard. Meanwhile, there are more waxes and moulds to make to get ready for casting again.

Click on the link for more information about the conference EXARC: 9th Experimental Archaeology Conference, Dublin (IE) 

and here is a moment by moment twitter feed from the conference

Bellows Forum

Bellows are a bit of a mystery. We know they had to have existed in the Bronze Age, but the only physical evidence we have consists of fragments of tuyeres. An Egyptian painting from the Tomb of Rekhmire, from 1450 BC shows a man using pot bellows that are operated by hands and feet. There are also Chinese documents depicting the use of box bellows. But bellows, after blowpipes, are likely to be one of the earliest forms of delivering air to the furnace. Unfortunately they are also constructed of ephemeral materials.

Scene from the Tomb of Rekhmire. The man on the right is operating a set of pot bellows. The valve is opened when he lifts both his foot and pulls on the cord attached to the top of the bellows. The air is pushed out of the bellows when he steps down. These require a lot of coordination.

Until a set of bellows is uncovered preserved in a bog somewhere a lot is left to the imagination. How big or small could they be? How can the valves be altered to be more efficient? How heavy should the leather be? Should sturdiness trump suppleness? How are all the parts held together and made airtight? Bellows are one of the most essential pieces of equipment that we have for casting bronze and yet very little information is available about their origins, and we rely on information for their use and construction from the community of experimental archaeologists and reenactment groups.

Over the years I’ve seen many different shapes and sizes of bellows and always thought that a forum where bellows design and use could be discussed would be invaluable for people to share ideas and experiences.

I would like to invite others to share photos of the bellows they’ve made on this site. This could be a welcome forum for discussing the pros and cons of different designs, what worked, what didn’t. Of course any news of archaeological bellows or tuyeres discovered would add to the fun.

Bag bellows

To start, here are some photos of bellows made by Morgan van Es including a new set that were recently completed using the tutorial on this website. Morgan casts bronze at the Bronzezeithof Uelsen and Het Bronsvuur – The Bronze fire and is active on the web and Facebook discussing Bronze Age casting techniques.

Pump Bellows

 

I would welcome others to send in photos of their bellows, and not just bag bellows, any bellows that could be considered to fit in with what we know or can surmise from archaeology would be interesting for this forum.