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Early Metal Working in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of Recent Research*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Duncan E. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Nikolaas J. Van Der Merwe
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town

Extract

This paper is a review of the course of research during the past decade into the history of indigenous metal working in sub-Saharan Africa. It comprises three sections: a summary of the chronology of early metallurgy and the spread of metal working; a description of African metal working in terms of mining, smelting and smithing, with particular emphasis on recent interpretations of the iron-smelting technology; and a conclusion summarizing the main developments and some lines of future enquiry. A glossary of technical terms used in this paper is appended.

Type
Assessing African Archaeology
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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162 Friede and Steel, ‘Notes’.

163 van der Merwe, ‘Advent’; Herbert, Red Gold.

164 Ibid.

165 van der Merwe and Scully, ‘The Phalaborwa story’.

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214 Ibid.

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216 Rostocker and Bronson, Pre-industrial Iron, 138.

217 Ibid.

218 Ibid.

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220 Ibid. 276.

221 Ibid. 278.

222 The reduced pisolith illustrated in Fig. 1 of Killick and Gordon (“The mechanism of iron production’, 122), captioned ‘Kasungu, Malawi. Concentric shells of ferrite, pseudomorphous after a laterite pisolith, in slag of fayalite, glass and undissolved quartz’, is almost identical to those in Figs. 24.5c and 24.5d of Avery et al. (‘Metallurgy’, 278), captioned ‘Concentric formation of platelets into protonodules, Chulu ngʾ anjo’ and ‘Hollow nodule’ respectively.

223 Killick and Gordon, ‘The mechanism of iron production’.

224 Ibid. 120.

225 Ibid.

226 Ibid.

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