iron smelting in africa

BC in Nigeria, Niger, Tanzania and Rwanda (Childs and Killick 1993, 320). The others – copper, lead, silver, tin, iron and mercury – occur primarily as minerals, though copper is occasionally found in its native state in commercially significant quantities. When and how did iron smelting and forging technologies emerge in Africa south of the Sahara? Evidence of iron smelting in Africa that is at least 500 years older stands this conventional wisdom on its head. Iron was believed to have been the first metal to appear in the archaeological records (Childs and Killick 1993, 320). This chapter will use archaeo-metallurgical sites in today’s Hausaland in northern Nigeria, with their associated dating, to suggest an overall framework for major developments of iron-smelting … The substantial number of iron hoe blades found together outside the Great Enclosure confirms that locally forged tools enabled agriculture on a scale to feed many thousands. In what is now the heartland of Luba peoples, in southeast Democratic Republic of the Congo, a burial from the 8th to 10th century CE contained a pierced and richly engraved iron axe blade along with pins that likely once decorated its wood shaft. The pre-colonial states in Africa which fall into the African Iron Age flourished beginning about 200 CE, but they were based on hundreds of years of import and experimentation. This information would suggest that the Bantu spread iron working from East Africa up … , “ More Evidence for an Advanced Prehistoric Iron Technology in Africa,” Journal of Field Archaeology 10 (1983), 428, 432 –34Google Scholar; Goucher, Candice L., “ Iron Is Iron ‘Til It Is Rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting,” JAH 22 (1981), 180 CrossRef Google Scholar; Rustad, John A. Privacy | Copyright | 202.633.4600 | africa.si.edu. For a while, the most contentious issue in African archaeology was whether or not iron smelting was invented in Africa. Their complex philosophical and religious systems help them understand the perils and purposes of life. The burial may be an early example of a cultural concept in central Africa that equates kings and blacksmiths. However they came to be known to African artisans, iron technologies were quickly adopted and adapted, and large-scale production of iron occurred in several ancient locations. Early Iron Smelting In • Central Africa More than 2,500 years ago the people near Lake Victoria began smelting iron in tall furnaces that produced a remarkable heat. Women’s Initiative at the National Museum of African Art, Johnnetta Betsch Cole Fund for the Future. "African Iron Age - 1,000 Years of African Kingdoms." The earliest known iron objects are from African archaeologist David Killick (2105), among others, argues that whether ironworking was invented independently or adopted from European methods, the African experiments in ironworking were a marvel of innovative engineering.Â, The earliest securely dated iron-smelting furnaces in sub-Saharan Africa (ca. In Africa, unlike Europe and Asia, the Iron Age is not prefaced by a Bronze or Copper Age, but rather all the metals were brought together. The conical tower may have symbolized tribute in grain and the king’s ability to feed his people; in shape it resembles the granaries still used by Shona peoples in southern Africa. Although there is little known about iron smelting in Africa, most experts agree that the first smelting of iron took place about 500BC or even earlier. As human beings, we like our tools. To inspire conversations about the beauty, power, and diversity of African arts and cultures worldwide. Iron pins resembling those found in the Kamilamba grave are called vinyundo (“little anvils”); they adorn a variety of ritual objects and assure community prosperity through the transformative powers of iron. Only a few individuals were buried with rare items such as the ceremonial axe and anvil. South Africa & Electric smelting •South Africa has a plentiful coal supply •Many large coal-fired power stations built from 1960s to 1980s. The effort falls into three sections. Southern Dispersal Route: When Did Early Modern Humans Leave Africa? Roastingthe carbonate and sulfide minerals in air converts them to oxides. Taken from: Iron metallurgy along the Tanzanian coast by Bertram B. Mapunda in Southern Africa and the Swahili world. This essay will argue for the independent discovery of iron smelting technology in sub-Saharan Africa based on discoveries made in Western Africa. Once the raw ore was smelted, the metal was separated from its waste products or slag, and then brought to its shape by repeated hammering and heating, called forging. Around 3500 years ago, certain populations around the Mediterranean began systematically smelting iron, leading to a millennia-long period of human history k… These blade forms were probably also used as currencies. In the period from 1400 to 1600, iron technology appears to have been one of a series of fundamental social assets that facilitated the growth of significant centralized kingdoms in the western Sudan and along the Guinea coast of West Africa. Slowly the iron smelting practice spread to South Africa and Central Africa. 400–200 BCE) were shaft furnaces with multiple bellows and internal diameters between 31-47 inches. Copyright © 2021 Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. The National Museum of African Art remains temporarily closed. and Blast Furnace: Mafa Iron Smelting Technology in North Cameroon', African Archaeological Review 7, 1989,183-208 Killick 1996 D. Killick, On Claims For "Advanced" Ironworking Technology in Precolonial Africa', in: P. R. Schmidt (ed. Its transition from Stone Age to Iron … From this beginning, African metallurgists developed an astonishing range of furnaces, both smaller and larger, from tiny slag-pit furnaces in Senegal, 400–600 cal CE to 21 ft tall natural draft furnaces in 20th century West Africa. African Iron Age - 1,000 Years of African Kingdoms. National Museum of African Art - Smithsonian Institution. Iron smelting, and other smelting is still used today in certain parts of Africa. The prominent role of blacksmiths in Bamana society derives from their expertise in ironworking technologies, herbal medicines, and management of relations with the supernatural. The advantages of iron over stone are obvious—iron is much more efficient at cutting trees or quarrying stone than stone tools. Were they disseminated with early migrations and trade? Bloomery furnaces are fundamentally different from blast furnaces, which are continuous processes, which run for weeks or even months without interruption and are more thermally efficient. Â. The origins of iron smelting in Africa: A complex technology in Tanzania (Research paper in anthropology) Iron use appeared in small trading towns such as Akjoujt and Tichitt, and iron smelting appeared south of the Sahara in Ghat, Gao and the Lake Chad region. Today, Great Zimbabwe is the site of the most extensive ruins in Africa south of the Sahara. Between the 6th and 7th centuries, iron smelting practices made it all the to the Sudan region, then onto West African areas. The stuff of legend. Contemporary iron age furnaces in Europe (La Tène) were different: the furnaces had a single set of bellows and had internal diameters between 14–26 inches. Many spoke a form of Bantu; many forms of geometric and schematic rock art are found throughout south and eastern Africa. Iron in Africa : General Overview: Africa is rather large, and the smelting of iron took place there for at least 2500 years. The second source of technical information in Central Africa was probably the middle valley of the Nile, where the city of Meroe had been an early industrial site with a huge charcoal industry and great piles of iron slag surrounding its furnaces. The importance of blacksmiths is stressed in Bamana oral traditions, including the well-known 14th-century Sunjata Epic, which describes the founding of the ancient Empire of Mali (different from today’s republic of Mali). Archeologists once thought that knowledge of making iron had arrived in northern Africa by the first millennium BCE, later spreading to the south, but more recent research has pushed the advent of iron production farther back in time. Bamana smiths lead the powerful Kòmò initiation association, which teaches its members to marshal exceptional energies called nyama to address the personal, social, and spiritual concerns people face in life. Sambava a small town on the north-east coast of Madagascar. Khotan - Capital of an Oasis State on the Silk Road in China, Nok Art Was Early Sculptural Pottery in West Africa, The Domestication of Sesame Seed - Ancient Gift from Harappa, Chronology of the Medieval Swahili Coast Traders, Hallstatt Culture: Early European Iron Age Culture, Decisive Evidence for Multidirectional Evolution of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa, From Kin to Great House: Inequality and Communalism at Iron Age Kirikongo, Burkina Faso, Ceramics and the Early Swahili: Deconstructing the Early Tana Tradition, Invention and Innovation in African Iron-Smelting Technologies, Power and Agency in Precolonial African States, 5,000 Years Old Egyptian Iron Beads Made from Hammered Meteoritic Iron, The African Iron Age is traditionally marked as between about 200 BCE–1000 CE. Â, African communities may or may not have independently invented a process to work iron, but they were enormously innovative in their techniques.Â. ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/african-iron-age-169432. Their residences were probably surrounded by the elliptically shaped Great Enclosure, shown here from inside. Photograph of the excavated burial known as Tomb 7 at Kamilamba. The region in and around today’s Nigeria contains some of the highest concentrations of ancient iron-smelting in Africa (Gaucher, 1981; Darling, 1986; Okafor, 1993; Quéchon, 2000; Eze-Uzomaka, 2009; Clist 2013; de Barros, 1913). Among Luba living in the region today, anvils are both forging tools and royal regalia. Archeologists once thought that knowledge of making iron had arrived in northern Africa by the first millennium BCE, later spreading to the south, but more recent research has pushed the advent of iron production farther back in time. Hirst, K. Kris. The earliest iron artifacts in … This essay covers Iron Age up to the end of the first millennium CE. This suggests a tribute system through which taxation of small production sites met the demand for iron at Great Zimbabwe. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Iron Age is an important period in Africa that is often met with diffusion theories, on whether or not iron began there. The circled areas highlight the axe blade and pins (above the figure’s bent knees) and the anvil (beside his skull). "Iron in Africa" is thus not a topic that can be covered with some breadth and depth in just a few pages. Dogon peoples live in Mali on the remote edge of the Sahara, where farming is precarious due to sandy soil and scarce rains. Most were permanent, but some used a portable shaft that could be moved and some used no shaft at all.Â, Killick suggests that the huge variety of bloomery furnaces in Africa was the result of adaptation to environmental circumstances. The East, Central and Southern Africa were inhabited mostly by Bantu speaking people. The African Iron Age, also known as the Early Iron Age Industrial Complex, is traditionally considered that period in Africa between the second century CE up to about 1000 CE when iron smelting was practiced. The earliest iron artifacts in the world were beads made by the Egyptians about 5,000 years ago. During the time period between the 7th and 8th centuries BC, the first iron smelting process took place in Ethiopia, Africa. Later groups built hilltop settlements such as that at Bosutswe, large villages like Schroda, and large monumental sites like Great Zimbabwe. 8th century CE; Kingdom of Ghana, Kumbi Selah. Of the seven metals known in antiquity, only gold occurs regularly in native form in the natural environment. The Early Iron Age smelting sites discovered are generally characterized bythepresence ofsmelting slag andsometimes ::tlsooftuyere remains andpiecesofiron ore. in African iron smelting, with each iron worker impro- vising off a preexisting repertoire of techniques much, I suppose, like a jazz musician improvising off a stand- Great Zimbabwe’s stone walls, erected without mortar, celebrated the status of the city’s elite rather than serving defensive purposes. Smelting in Africa has a varied and widespread history. Iron smelting and forging technologies may have existed in West Africa among the Nok culture of Nigeria as early as the sixth century B.C. Hitherto stone had been the strongest material around for making tools and weapons. Attention is paid to the the diffusion versus independent discovery debate surrounding iron smelting in Africa. Next to the skull of the buried man was a forged iron anvil. Were these technologies invented and developed in one or several sub-Saharan locales? Dated to AD 1300. Hirst, K. Kris. Of special interest in this brief history of iron smelting is that the Bantu spread it to Sub-Sahara Africa. From the 2nd century CE to about 1000 CE, ironworkers spread iron throughout the largest portion of Africa, eastern and southern Africa. That the iron smelting in the film was occurring as … In some processes were built to be fuel-efficient where timber was scarce, some were built to be labor-efficient, where people with time to tend a furnace were scarce. idence for an Advanced Prehistoric Iron Technology in Africa," journal Field Ar- of chaeology 10(1983), 428, 432-34; Candice L. Goucher, "Iron Is Iron 'Til It Is Rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting," jAH 22(1981), 180; John A. Rustad, "The Emergence of Iron Technology in West Africa… They built a cylindrical clay furnace and used charcoal and a hand-operated bellows to reach the level of heating for smelting. INTRODUCTIONThe purpose of this study is to investigate how and why iron smelting furnaces exhibit style. What we do know is that iron smelting was established in Nigeria, central Niger and southern Mali by around 500-400 BC, spreading to other parts of West Africa by 1000 AD. The oxides, in turn, … This video by Christopher D. Roy depicts the ancient iron smelting technology of African community. The Nok Civilization, which is the oldest known iron based culture in sub–Saharan Africa is discussed, followed by the Igbo ukwu bronze objects, Ife Art and Benin Art. Radiocarbon dates has shown that the iron smelting furnaces dated ‘to the interval 500-1000 cal. Her work has appeared in scholarly publications such as Archaeology Online and Science. The earliest smelting in sub-Saharan Africa dates to the 8th century BCE in Ethiopia.Â, 2nd millennium BCE: West Asians invent iron smelting. Kòmò encompasses a triangle of power: blacksmith leaders, power objects including masks and altars, and wilderness spirits. To work iron, one must extract the ore from the ground and break it into pieces, then heat the pieces to a temperature of at least 1100 degrees centigrade under controlled conditions. Grave goods at Kamilamba also included pottery, iron tools, and iron and copper jewelry, the latter probably traded from the Katanga Copperbelt to the south. The authors unravel the workings of this ancient technology by Francis Van Noten and Jan Raymaekers In the early 1950's people of the Bahunde tribe in southern Zaire African Iron Age people used a bloomery process to smelt iron. Buried evidence. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/african-iron-age-169432. Today traditional smelting has all but died out, and the industry was initially affected by the importation of cheap European iron at the turn of the century. (2021, February 16). Gold, ivory, and glass bead working and international trade were part of many of the societies. The waste product (or slag) may be tapped from the furnaces as a liquid or may solidify within it. Reserve margin of 55%. Iron production, use, and exchange defined social and political hierarchies, as confirmed by findings at the archaeological sites of Campo in Cameroon (dating to the 2nd–4th century CE), Kamilamba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (8th–10th century CE), and Great Zimbabwe (13th–14th century CE). Two areas of sub-Saharan Africa have emerged as candidates for areas where iron smelting could have developed, the Western Africa region around the Niger-Nigeria border or north-western Tanzania. Hirst, K. Kris. K. Kris Hirst is an archaeologist with 30 years of field experience. To view the status of the Smithsonian’s other museums and Zoo, visit si.edu/museums. So, whether the technology was invented in Africa or not is not a big concern because we would expect that Arabs … Iron smelting was linked to royalty in several other kingdoms in Africa. So, the materials used to create those tools are a useful way to categorize societies over time. Iron smelting and forging technologies have existed in African societies between about 1000 and 500 B.C.E. A major iron smelting site (14 iron smelting locations) was found 6km from the town. Because no large slag mounds have been found at or near the site, iron production likely occurred throughout the area. "African Iron Age - 1,000 Years of African Kingdoms." Although smelting was most intensively focused in regions where all the necessary components of a smelt were plentiful—iron ore, ceramic, fuel, and water—frequent occurrences of small-scale, local iron production mean that iron slag and associated remains are common finds on archaeological sites across Africa. Section through a Mafa iron smelting furnace in the Mandara Mountains, Cameroon, showing the length of the vertical tuyère at the beginning and end of the smelting process. But iron smelting technology is a smelly, dangerous one. This goal stems from a broader question conceming why a great diversity of iron smelting furnaces exists in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the Bantu-speaking area. ThoughtCo. I apologize right away for many major omissions and mistakes. With the exception of a site in Mauritania known as Grotte aux Chauves-souris, where, starting in 1968, French archaeologists found copper tools and furnaces dating from 800 to 200 B.C., and another in Niger called Cuivre II, excavated by French archaeologists in the 1980s and dating from slightly earlier, researchers have yet to find evidence of copper smelting before iron smelting anywhere in West Africa. In addition, the metallurgists adjusted their processes according to the quality of the available metal ore.Â. These minerals are primarily carbonates, sulfides, or oxides of the metal, mixed with other components such as silica and alumina. The origins of iron smelting in Africa: A complex technology in Tanzania (Research paper in anthropology) [Schmidt, Peter R] on Amazon.com. Indeed, Kòmò is a daunting thing of the bush, brought into civilized spaces by ironsmiths. Rendering of axe blade with wood handle ornamented by pins (based on artifacts at Tomb 7, Kamilamba) 
, Detail of iron axe blade and pins at Tomb 7, Kamilamba. smelting sitesfromtheEarly Iron Age,lasting fromthe 4th century A.D. tothe 11th century A.D., have been found inSouth Africa. In the 13th and 14th centuries CE, when it was the principal city of a major state, its population exceeded 10,000 inhabitants. For example, the Chifumbaze in the 5th century BCE were farmers of squash, beans, sorghum, and millet, and kept cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens. Most contemporary scholars believe that Africans began smelting iron from local ores about 2,500 years ago, but details remain debated. I enlisted my curious friend Skip, and together we've built two furnaces, and sweated through many trials. The African communities who made iron varied in complexity from hunter-gatherers to kingdoms. Bloomery is a batch process, in which the air blast must be stopped periodically to remove the solid mass or masses of metal, called blooms. When and how did iron smelting and forging technologies emerge in Africa south of the Sahara? Great Zimbabwe: The African Iron Age Capital, World History Timelines - Mapping Two Million Years of Humanity, Wootz Steel: Making Damascus Steel Blades, Kilwa Kisiwani: Medieval Trade Center on Africa's Swahili Coast, Yeha: Saba' (Sheba) Kingdom Site in Ethiopia. Key Takeaways: African Iron Age The African Iron Age is traditionally marked as between about 200 BCE–1000 CE. 8th century BCE: Phoenicians bring iron to North Africa (Lepcis Magna, 8th–7th century BCE: First iron smelting in Ethiopia, 7th–6th century BCE: First iron smelting in Sudan (, 5th century BCE: First iron smelting in West Africa (Jenne-Jeno, Taruka), 5th century BCE: Iron using in eastern and southern Africa (Chifumbaze), 4th century BCE: Iron smelting in central Africa (Obobogo, Oveng, Tchissanga), 3rd century BCE: First iron smelting in Punic North Africa, 30 BCE: Roman conquest of Egypt 1st century AD: Jewish revolt against Rome, 1st century CE: Iron smelting in southern and eastern Africa (Buhaya, Urewe), 2nd century CE: Heyday of Roman control of North Africa, 2nd century CE: Widespread iron smelting in southern and eastern Africa (Bosutswe, Toutswe, Lydenberg, 9th century CE: Lost wax method bronze casting (. For long conventional academic wisdom had it that the iron age started in southwest Asia in 1500 BC and spread to the rest of the world, including Africa, from there. https://www.thoughtco.com/african-iron-age-169432 (accessed March 20, 2021). Numerous precolonial polities blossomed throughout the continent during the first millennium CE, such as Aksum in Ethiopia (1st–7th centuries CE), Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe (8th–16th c CE), the Swahili city-states (9th–15th c) on the eastern Swahili coast, and the Akan states (10th–11th c) on the western coast.Â. From our first genetic ancestors who started using sticks and stones to get things done to today's tweens who are using digital technology to slowly take over the world, human populations have always been defined by their tools. In January of 1998, inspired by accounts of traditional iron smelting in Africa, I decided to see if I could make some iron myself. Iron tribute. Power was cheap. A mound in the Ejuona square surrounded by slags at the base.
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