Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Basquesmith (Ironworking technology and social complexity of rural comunities during the Early Medieval Ages)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2017-09-01 al 2019-08-31
The Basquesmith project aimed to investigate the engineering parameters behind the production of farming tools and common implements by examining the manufacture of artefacts, such as scissors, horseshoes, sewing needles, belt buckles and clasps, ladles, keys, etc. as well as by examining technical materials (e.g. slag) from both the smelting sites which presumably reduced the iron, as well as the few evidences rarely found at the farming sites where the artefacts were excavated. Equally, the project aimed to explore topics never addressed such as the origins and development of this smelting technology, its diachronic evolution and geographic spread, a comparison of end-products purportedly produced by a similar process, or the interplay between iron-makers in the mountains and iron-consumers in the valley.
To provide the first archaeometric approach to these questions a total of 102 implements were examined by metallography and 61 technical materials analysed by microscopy. The originality lies in the study on a range of objects that have rarely been examined, and excavated from rural settlements that stand out as equally unusual contexts against cemeteries, hoards and urban environments.
The scientific approach includes microanalysis by Optical Microscopy (OM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM-EDS) to describe and analyse materials and microstructures; and X-radiograph studies prior to metallographic analysis to assess the condition and to investigate the overall assemblage. For the technical materials, it also includes XRF and XRD microanalysis to obtain bulk chemical composition and mineral identification.
The samples were first examined in the as-polished state to investigate the distribution of slag inclusions and corrosion by SEM microscope. Once this task was completed, the blocks were re-polished to remove the gold coating and etched with nital to reveal objects microstructure and accomplish the metallographic analysis. In parallel 61 evidences of slag, furnace wall and ore from six different sites were analysed by microscopy (OM, SEM, XRF and XRD) to approach the chemical composition and mineral structure of the technical materials
Some preliminary results regarding few iron and steel implements from Zaballa were advanced in Larreina-García and Quirós Castillo (2018b). Essentially, the main conclusions of that paper are still in force: regardless of the chronology the majority of the assemblage (89 items) was forged from single pieces of low-carbon iron without posterior heat-treatment; cutting-edge tools were frequently cold-forged to enhance their hardness and durability; and composite tools, typically made by welding of steel onto an iron back, are scant in comparison. In all probability, the early medieval peasantry in Álava had access to a wide variety of common, iron-made implements, which were typically of modest quality but perfectly functional; higher quality pieces are less frequent. The items were occasionally repaired in the rural settlements, but were manufactured elsewhere while the iron was reduced by the indirect method in the nearby ironworks. The repetitiveness on the smelting and manufacturing technologies would suggest a common procedure if not a technological tradition which could spread several centuries.
Results have already been presented in international conferences, one at the very beginning of the project (XII Congreso Ibérico de Arqueometría, Burgos, Spain, October 2017), and other in the SAA annual meeting (Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 2019), and another paper has been published in Antiquity reports (Larreina-Garcia and Quirós Castillo 2018).
In addition, two more conferences are schedule in Hungary‒Archaeometallurgy in Europe, June 2019‒ and Spain ‒Archaeology of peasantry, October 2019, and two more papers with full results are in preparation.
Basquesmith is a really novel approach to EMA peasantry that challenges stablished paradigms such as the ‘Dark Ages’, and which is expected to contribute with new research frameworks strategies (practical and empirical) exportable to other rural contexts across Europe.