Early Copper Metallurgy

Mineral soda alumina (m-Na-Al) glass is a common glass production group found around the Indo-Pacific region. In Iron Age Taiwan, its presence dates back to the early 1 st millennium AD. This research discusses m-Na-Al glass beads excavated from Iron Age sites in Taiwan. No production sites for m-Na-Al have been found, but microstructural analysis suggests m-Na-Al glass appears to originate around South Asia and is exchanged widely. SEM-EDS and EPMA were used to analyse red, orange, yellow, green and blue m-Na-Al glass. The microstructure of the glass shows the presence of plagioclase and alkali feldspar relics in the glass, suggesting a low manufacturing temperature. Copper-based colourants are identified in red, orange, blue and green glass, while lead tin oxide is used in yellow and green glass. It appears that various types of copper-containing raw materials were procured by craftspeople, and a self-reduction process for producing red and orange glass is tentatively proposed. Additionally, the microstructure of yellow glass reveals different colouring paths were used. These results increase our understanding of the selection of raw materials, and provide an impetus for further research on the cross craft interaction between glass and copper production.

The Old Kingdom of Egypt (Dynasties 4–6, c. 2600–2180 BC) is famous as a period of the builders of the largest Egyptian pyramids. It is generally accepted that the evidence on the use of copper alloy tools from this era is meagre. Martin Odler gathers the textual, iconographic and palaeographic evidence and examines Old Kingdom artefacts in order to revise this view on the use of copper alloy tools and model tools. Furthermore, he provides updated definitions of tool classes and tool kits, together with the context of their use. Besides rare specimens of full-size tools, the largest corpora of the material have been preserved in the form of model tools in the burial equipment of the Old Kingdom elite and were most probably symbols of their power to commission and fund craftwork. Moreover, the size and elaboration of the model tools were probably connected to the social status of the buried persons. The long-standing division in the Egyptological literature between full-size tools and model tools is questioned. The ancient sources also enable to show that the preservation of material culture from the Old Kingdom was largely dependent on a conscious selection made within the past culture, with completely different settlement and funerary contexts and a conspicuous absence of weapons. The volume is completed by co-authored case studies on archaeometallurgy of selected Old Kingdom artefacts in the collection of the Egyptian Museum of Leipzig University, on morphometry of Old Kingdom adze blades and on the finds of stone and ceramic vessels associated with the findings of so-called Old Kingdom model tools.

The book can be purchased here: http://www.archaeopress.com/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id=%7BDED38ACF-A714-4454-8448-4C8C91A92F43%7D

No es una casualidad que fuera el cobre el primer metal de interŽs ÒindustrialÓ para los artesanos prehist-ricos. A su disponibilidad en estado nativo en todas las regiones en las que se han encontrado manifestaciones de su temprano empleo hay que sumar las cualidades f'sicas de ser un metal doectil, maleable y relativamente blando, es decir, que se pod'a trabajar y darle forma con unos medios tŽcnicos nada complejos: bastar'an un simple yunque o durmiente de piedra y unos percutores tambiŽn de material l'tico, instrumentos ambos a los que estaba muy habituado el art'fice neol'tico, h ‡bil tallador de la piedra.

(German article with English abstract and figure captions)
During the summer of 2018, the German Mining Museum Bochum (DBM) and the Roman-Germanic Central Museum (RGZM) conducted copper ore smelting experiments at the Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology (LEA), RGZM in Mayen, Germany. The smelting experiments not only reconstructed a 4.000 year old smelting process, but also produced material that could then be used for scientific analysis. During the course of the experiments, copper metal was successfully produced. For each experiment, a detailed description of the set up and how they were carried out is given.
The goal of the project, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), is to improve the chemical-physical isotope measurement method used to determine the origin of raw materials for metal objects. For this purpose, it is necessary to determine whether and how copper isotope ratios change during the course of the high-temperature process. Following the experiments, the copper metal obtained will be used to investigate
whether the copper isotope composition is altered by the physical and chemical processes during copper production.

Preface ix Acknowledgements x List of contributors xi List of sites xii Introduction xiv PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND OVERARCHING STUDIES 1. Inventing the Final Neolithic 3 Colin Renfrew 2. Transformation and changes at the end of the Neolithic Kostas Kotsakis 3. Village nucleation and centralisation in the Later Neolithic of SouthEastern Europe: A long-term, comparative approach William A. Parkinson, William P. Ridge and Attila Gyucha 4. Greece in the 5th and 4th millennia B.C.: Researching the "missing" 4th millennium Ioannis Aslanis 5. The shadowy "proto-Early Bronze Age" in the Aegean John E. Coleman and Yorgos Facorellis 6. Casting doubts on metallurgy and the transition to social complexity: The evidence from the Aegean Maria Mina PART II. THE BALKANS 7. Settlement pattern changes during the Central Balkans Copper Age Aleksandar Kapuran, Aleksandar Bulatović and Dragan Milanović 8. Modelling the black box: Bulgaria in the 4th millennium BC Inga Merkyte 9. Possible approaches to tracing the fate of the population of the Varna, Kodjadermen-Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI and Krivodol-Sălcuţa cultures Petya Georgieva 10. Kozareva Mogila: A settlement and necropolis in the West Black Sea region 107 Petya Georgieva, Margarita Popova and Veselin Danov 11. The Chalcolithic settlement at Varhari: A production and trade centre in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains 120 Kamen Boyadzhiev and Yavor Boyadzhiev 12. The latest Late Chalcolithic settlement at Tell Yunatsite: Plan and architectural remains 128 Velichka Matsanova and Tatyana Mishina Contents vi 13. Late Chalcolithic cult tables from Tell Yunatsite, Bulgaria Stoilka Terzijska-Ignatova 14. Rethinking the absolute chronology of the SouthEastern Balkans in the latter half of the 5th and in the 4th millennium BC Mariusz Kufel and Łukasz Pospieszny 15. Graphite and carbon: Relative and absolute chronology between the Aegean and the Black Sea in the 5th millennium BC Agathe Reingruber 16. Lithic technology in the region between the Lower Danube and Marmara in the 6th and 5th millennia BC