The Early Iron Age in the Interlacustrine Region: The Diffusion of Iron Technology

Noten, Francis Van

doi:10.1080/00672707909511263

Cited by 46 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Guthrie 1948;Oliver 1966;Heine et al 1977). On a more limited geographical scale, with a tighter focus on metallurgy and with a higher resolution of archaeological data, van Noten refined this discussion, and contested Phillipson's hypothesis with an emphasis on the EIA of the southern Great Lakes (van Noten 1979). Detailed descriptions of newly excavated EIA furnace sites in Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC were compared with the technologies of the interlacustrine region and Meroë, building upon detailed discussions as to the origin of these early east African iron technologies, and whether knowledge of iron production had diffused from the north or was invented independently (e.g.…”

Section: Metallurgical Research In Azania: the First 25 Years 1966-1990mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making metals in East Africa and beyond: archaeometallurgy inAzania, 1966–2015

Iles

Lyaya

2015

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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Over the course of the last 50 years, the field of archaeometallurgy has grown dramatically, becoming firmly established within the realm of archaeological science.The archaeology and ethnography of African metallurgy has made a major contribution to this field, providing valuable information on the impressive range of raw materials and techniques that past metal producers and metalworkers used, as well as providing important insights into the socio-cultural settings that these technologies operated within. This paper summarises the role that Azania played in communicating some of this research, and charts the development of African archaeometallurgy through Azania's pages. KeywordsMetal production, metalworking, iron, copper, Sub-Saharan Africa Metallurgy in eastern Africa: a brief summaryMetals served a variety of roles within African societies, ranging from the functional and the decorative, to the symbolic and the communicative. The process of winning metal from an ore is a difficult procedure, reliant on the procurement of high-quality ores, ceramics and fuels, and the application of complex technical knowledge. It is a resource-hungry and time-hungry technology, which runs a high risk of failure, but when it succeeds it almost miraculously transforms stone into a substance with a new set of material properties. Perhaps for these reasons, rituals and symbolism often accompanied the activities surrounding metal production and metalworking, manifest in the items used to create or manipulate metal (furnaces, medicines, bellows, tuyères and tools) or the songs, movements and behaviours associated with the processes themselves. By studying the objects and the processes used to make them, the broader

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Section: Metallurgical Research In Azania: the First 25 Years 1966-1990mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making metals in East Africa and beyond: archaeometallurgy inAzania, 1966–2015

Iles

Lyaya

2015

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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“…Leakey et al (1948;see also Hiernaux 1960;Van Noten 1979) recorded Urewe ceramics, Chapman (1967) defined Kansyore (see also Pearce and Posnansky 1963), and Louis Leakey (1931) described the 'Stone Bowl culture', which later became a sub-facet of the Pastoral Neolithic. Such a qualitative approach is not surprising; these practitioners were shaped by a broadly culture-historical school of thought that sought to map culture units through material culture distributions.…”

Section: Ceramic Classificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeological ceramics from eastern Africa: past approaches and future directions

Ashley

Grillo

2015

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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Ceramics are an essential part of the Holocene archaeology of eastern Africa and the development of increasingly complex typologies has rightly played a key role in our understanding of chronology and social identity. However, this focus on taxonomies can also be restrictive, as we lose sight of the communities who made and used the ceramics in our endless search to classify and re-classify ceramics. Focusing on ceramics from the Great Lakes and Rift Valley (Kansyore, Pastoral Neolithic and Urewe), we critique past approaches to ceramic analysis, and suggest future studies should better recognise their social role. We end with a case study of Kansyore ceramics, emphasising function and use.

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“…Rwanda, Burundi and north western Tanzania (Maquet 1965;Raymaekers & Van Noten 1986;Van Grunderbeek et al 1983;Van Noten 1979, has provided some of the earliest evidence for iron technology in sub-Saharan Africa. The metallurgical practitioners constructed conical/cylindrical furnace shafts made of bricks (in part decorated), over a pit filled with vegetation into which slag drained throughout the process Van Grunderbeek et al 1983).…”

Section: Archaeometallurgical Investigations Of Iron Production Tradimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Age (MacLean 1994/5;Reid 1994/5;Stewart 1993;Sutton 1993;Van Grunderbeek et al 1983;Van Grunderbeek 1992;Van Noten 1979. The Early Iron Age is traditionally associated with Urewe ceramics across much of the broader Great Lakes region (Ashley 2005, forthcoming;Hiernaux & Maquet 1960;MacLean 1994/5;Posnansky 1961;Reid 1994/5;Stewart 1993;Van Grunderbeek 1988Van Grunderbeek et al 1983).…”

Section: Chronological Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Archaeometallurgical Investigation of Iron Smelting Traditions in Southern Rwanda

Humphris

2012

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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The Early Iron Age in the Interlacustrine Region: The Diffusion of Iron Technology

Cited by 46 publications

References 18 publications

Making metals in East Africa and beyond: archaeometallurgy inAzania, 1966–2015

Making metals in East Africa and beyond: archaeometallurgy inAzania, 1966–2015

Archaeological ceramics from eastern Africa: past approaches and future directions

An Archaeometallurgical Investigation of Iron Smelting Traditions in Southern Rwanda

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