African Iron Age Smelting

[Bentiron1946]

http://tanzaniaheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Schmidt-and-Childs-African-Archaeological-Review-1985.pdf
This might be of interest to some of you, to others not so much, any way enjoy it as much as I did.

[ThomasPowers]

Thanks; I love this sort of stuff and am always happy to find another source on it!

[Frank Turley]

Thanks for the link. It bears study, which I did not do: I glimmed the article. In school, I majored in Sociology & Anthropology, with an emphasis on ethnology and to the exclusion of archeology. I now find that archeology holds my interest.

In the wonderful film, "Inagina the Last House of Iron" a smelt by Dogon tribesmen in Mali was filmed by Swiss anthropologists. The anthros were able to round up enough iron masters and smiths who remembered the process, and they filmed the production of some iron. There were several clay tuyeres around the furnace a little above grade. The draft was induced by heat within the furnace. I don't think that mention was made of the pre-heated blast that could result from the heat transfer to the tuyeres, but apparently this was the case as shown by the Schmidt & Childs' study.

When I first began the think about iron production in Europe, I always thought "bellows." Now I think induced draft (or natural draft), bellows, blowing engine, fans, cold blast, and pre-heated blast, All of the early technology is mind blowing, not to mention current B.O.P., electric furnace, and vacuum degassing. Wow!

[doc]

Yes it is if you choose to think that way.
Although its not a rewriting of history as it is a true picture. The premise that native Africans didn't have the ability to discover their iron age on their own is the result colonialist propaganda used to help subjugate the native populous. The wide range of styles and sizes of African smelting furnaces and the lack of few if any looking anything like early European or Eastern styles tends to lead one to believe in African authorship.
Why should it be any harder to think that Africans could develop a smelting process alone anymore than to think it was possible to do so in the middle east or Asia?

[Bentiron1946]

Gerald, I think if you read some of the more current literature on the subject that you will find that the iron age was an indigenous industry now that some of the "colonialist" mind set has been set aside in Sub-Sahara Africa. While it may it may still be found to have be influenced by outside forces after more detailed and new archeological investigations my research tilts me towards indigenous development just as the New World was on the cusp of the Bronze Age when it's development was arrested by the Spanish invasion.

[doc]

The discovery was made by anthropologist Peter Schmidt and metallurgy professor Donald Avery, both of Brown University. Very few of the Haya remember how to make steel but the two scholars were able to locate one man who made a traditional ten-foot-high cone shaped furnace from slag and mud. It was built over a pit with partially burned wood that supplied the carbon which was mixed with molten iron to produce steel. Goat skin bellows attached to eight ceramic tubs that entered the base of the charcoal-fueled furnace pumped in enough oxygen to achieve temperatures high enough to make carbon steel (3275 degrees F). [ibid]

While doing excavations on the western shore of Lake Victoria Avery found 13 furnace nearly identical to the one described above. Using radio carbon dating he was astonished to find that the charcoal in the furnaces was between 1,550 and 2,000 years old. [ibid]

This discovery was made in the 1970's. Although not definitive as yet it must be given serious thought as more research is done.

Enough said.

[Charles R. Stevens]

History is being "rewritten" all the time. Remember, "history is written by the victors". The history I was taught in school is vastly different from what is now supported by the evidence.
To include, the development of the saddle and stirup, roman roads, chariots, vikings in the new world, the Spanish conquest of the new world, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc.
The China and Rome eccentric veiw of history is flawed, remember they wer the victors.
The history of archiolagy is full of archioligests (and their paytrons) refusing to believe the evidence. So they either ignored it (the most comon error I think), misrepresented it or changed it (Victorian archioligests defacing statues of Ra, because he was depicted with a (keeping thi "G" rated) phallice.

[Bentiron1946]

"Are you saying you believe that sub-Sahara Africa,.................." From my studies, yes, however I suppose we are each entitled to our own interpretation of the available information.