Iran, a country rich in mineral resources, has a long history of metal working. Copper objects first appeared in the 7th millennium BC and in the following millennia, copper became the material of choice for the production of many objects. Artefacts of iron began to appear in the mid 2nd millennium BC and by the mid 1st, iron had replaced bronze for most uses, but the reasons for this change remain unclear. This thesis seeks to examine the transition from bronze to iron metallurgy from a new angle. By looking at changes in copper-based metallurgy between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, it attempts to better understand the context in which iron metallurgy developed. To that end, the results of previously published chemical analyses of over 5000 copper-based objects from Iran and neighbouring regions and the lead isotope analyses of about 380 objects were assembled in a database. The tin, arsenic, nickel, antimony and silver concentrations in particular are studied. The data is divided into 16 metal groups based on the absence or presence of the latter four elements. The study of the main groups allows us to describe interesting new patterns of metal movement and recycling. It appears that before the end of the Bronze Age, a number of copper sources and/or trade routes from both east and west declined, leading to a reliance on more local sources for copper and tin in the Iron Age. The practice of recycling from the 3rd millennium BC onward is also evidenced. Overall, it seems that iron appeared within a thriving bronze industry, with a good access to metal resources and a developed understanding of the possibilities offered by copper (alloying, recycling, mixing…). Was it then the more ‘permanent’ nature of iron that attracted the ancient metal-workers and led to its advent?

A review of archaeometallurgical studies carried out in the 1980s and 1990s of early medieval (c. AD410-1100) iron knives revealed several patterns, with clear differences in knife manufacturing techniques present in rural cemeteries and later urban settlements. The main aim of this research is to investigate these patterns and to gain an overall understanding of the early medieval iron industry. This study has increased the number of knives analysed from a wide spectrum of sites across England, Scotland and Ireland. Knives were selected for analysis based on X-radiographs and contextual details. Sections were removed for more detailed archaeometallurgical analysis. The analysis revealed a clear change through time, with a standardisation in manufacturing techniques in the 7th century and differences between the quality of urban and rural knives. Analysis of cemetery knives revealed that there was some correlation between the knife and the deceased. Comparison of knives from England, Dublin and Europe revealed that the Vikings had little direct impact on England's knife manufacturing industry, although there was a change in manufacturing methods in the 10th century towards the mass produced sandwich welded knife. This study also suggests that Irish blacksmiths in Dublin continued their 'native' blacksmithing techniques after the Vikings arrived. Using the data gathered a chaîne opértoire of the iron knife was re-constructed, this revealed that there was a specific order to the manufacture process and decisions were not only influenced by the cost of raw materials, the skill of the blacksmith and the consumer status, but also by cultural stimulus.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar as possibilidades que a arqueometalurgia coloca à disposição da arqueologia, inseridas em uma série de métodos que, diante do estudo de uma variada amostra de materiais, permitem a aproximação do conhecimento das diversas facetas implicadas na compreensão da atividade metalúrgica e o desenvolvimento de interpretações sobre o papel e o significado do metal na sociedade e na economia das comunidades do passado. De acordo com esta abordagem interdisciplinar, o presente trabalho apoia-se no estudo de objetos metálicos encontrados no Arraial de São Francisco Xavier da Chapada, sítio arqueológico localizado no Mato Grosso, inserido no contexto da mineração colonial do século XVIII e, formado, quase que em sua totalidade, por escravos. Aprofundando uma visão direcionada ao estudo arqueometalúrgico do acervo resgatado, através de procedimentos de análise metalográfica, técnica bastante útil para a caracterização de estruturas metálicas, este trabalho busca identificar aspectos ligados à matéria-prima usada no processo de confecção, detalhes das técnicas de produção dos artefatos metálicos estudados e características estruturais dos mesmos, na tentativa de estabelecer inferências sobre o cotidiano local, a relação da metalurgia com a escravidão, o sistema de abastecimento de mercadorias e seus diálogos com o Império Português. / This study aims to present the possibilities that archaeometallurgy can provide to archeology, entered into a series of methods that, on the study of a diverse sample of materials, allow the approximation of knowledge of the various facets involved in understanding metallurgical activity and developing interpretations of the role and significance of metals in the society and economy of the communities of the past. According to this interdisciplinary approach, this work relies on the study of metal objects found in the Arraial de São Francisco Xavier da Chapada, archaeological site located in Mato Grosso, placed in the context of eighteenth-century colonial mining and formed almost in its entirety, by slaves. Deepening a vision directed to the study of the archaeometallurgical collection rescued, through metallographic analysis procedures, useful technique for the characterization of metal structures, this study seeks to identify aspects of raw material used in the process of confection, details of the production techniques of the metallic artifacts studied and its structural characteristics, in an attempt to make inferences about the everyday place, metallurgy relationship with slavery, the system of supply of goods and its dialogues with the Portuguese Empire.

Ce projet s’intéresse à un objet particulier : l’armure. Celle-ci, dont la fonction première était de protéger le combattant, s’est adaptée entre le XIIIe et le XVIIe siècle aux bouleversements qu’ont connu les pratiques de guerre et l’organisation des armées dans cette période. L’armure pouvait aussi avoir une autre fonction, celle de distinguer socialement son porteur. Ainsi, à la fin du Moyen Âge l’armure est à la fois un objet de grande consommation et d’usage courant mais également un produit de luxe. Sa fabrication, dominée par différents centres de productions internationaux comme les villes Milan et Nuremberg, demandait un savoir-faire spécifique pour travailler et mettre en forme le métal.Dans le but d’éclairer d’une part les techniques et savoir-faire anciens, d’autre part la circulation et les échanges dans l’espace européen, ce projet aborde l’étude de l’armure par sa matérialité, en mettant en œuvre une approche archéométallurgique. Un corpus spécifique, de plus d’une centaine d’objets, caractéristique de l’évolution de l’équipement défensif des combattants mais également des grands centres de production européens a ainsi été constitué. L’analyse du métal a permis de déterminer la nature des matériaux employés ainsi que les techniques de fabrication de ces objets. L’étude des inclusions non métalliques a quant à elle permis de discuter de l’origine géographique du métal utilisé pour la fabrication des pièces.De façon générale, les résultats ont montré l’emploi d’alliages de natures variées, parfois très hétérogènes pour réaliser les plates d’armures. Néanmoins en moyenne le métal employé possède une dureté proche de celle d’un acier homogène à 0,4-0,5% de carbone. Les alliages trempés de dureté élevée demeurent très minoritaires dans le corpus étudié. Des spécificités ont néanmoins été relevées, comme l’utilisation d’un matériau spécifique, associant plusieurs feuilles de métal aux propriétés différentes qui pouvait offrir à l’armure de meilleures propriétés défensives. Les informations acquises ont également permis d’étudier les pratiques mises en œuvre par les armuriers que ce soit pour la fabrication d’une armure complète, la production massive de pièces en « série », ou issues d’un même atelier. Les résultats relatifs à la nature et au travail du métal nous ont ainsi amené à questionner le rôle du maitre armurier qui signait les objets et la signification de cette signature pour un atelier. / The project focuses on a specific object: armor. Between the 13th and early 17th centuries, war practices have undergone major changes, both on the technological level, as well as the organizational one. Accordingly, defensives arms were adapted to the new needs in order to protect their owners. Armor was also in some cases a mark of social distinction. Thus, at the end of the Middle Ages, armor was both an object for everyday military use, massively produced, and a luxury attire. Its fabrication was dominated by several prestigious European centers of production like Milan and Nuremberg and required specific technical skills to shape the metal.In order to shed light on some of the techniques and ancient skills, along with the circulation and exchanges in the European space, this project addresses the study of armor through its materiality, by implementing an archeometallurgical approach. A specific corpus of over a hundred artefacts was collected, characteristic of the evolution of the defensive equipment of the fighters but also of the great European centers of production. Physicochemical analysis of the metal can decipher its nature and reveal the technical skills of the craftsmen. Non metallic phases analysis has allowed to test hypotheses on the provenance of the materials employed.Overall, the results showed the use of alloys of varying nature, sometimes highly heterogeneous, to realize the plates of armor. However, on average the metal employed has a hardness close to a homogeneous steel with 0.4-0.5% carbon. Hardened alloys of high hardness remain very minor in the studied corpus. Specificities were nevertheless noted, such as the use of a specific material, combining several sheets of metal with different properties that could offer better defensive properties. The information acquired also allowed to study the workshop practices implemented by the armorers, whether for the manufacture of a complete set of armor, the mass production of "serial" pieces, or those originating from the same workshop. The results relating to the nature and hammering of the metal have led us to question the exact nature of the intervention of the master armorer who signed the artefact and the significance of the signature of a workshop.

This thesis focuses on late Early Bronze Age metal objects from funeral context from the site Kalinkaya-Toptastepe, dated to the late 4th and 3rd millennium BCE. The site yielded a large number of metal objects from EBA necropolis of the southern slope of Toptastepe, offering an ideal closed assemblage for an archaeometrical analysis to reveal the metalworking technologies of an early small rural community of Central Anatolia. First archaeometrical analysis applied on these objects, however, revealed unexpectedly high amounts of Zinc, which turned out to be not an intentional alloy, but modern contamination due to the electrochemical cleaning, carried out in the 1970s. A second analysis has carried out after cleaning the metal objects with micro-sandblasting technique, to remove the artificial Zn contamination. The accumulated data provided us with important insights into the metal consumption and alloying traditions of a late EBA village community in Central Anatolia, showing the earliest conscious alloys were being applied in small hamlets of the EBA as well. It has been apparent that any pre-Iron Age metal object, revealing Zn in its chemical composition can not be considered as early brass, but clearly a result of modern, ill-advised cleaning application.

The aim of this thesis has been to investigate and interpret late Iron Ageand Early Medieval traces of non-ferrous metalworking on the islandGotland, Sweden. Gotland was not, based on the archaeological record, anintegrated part of the common Scandinavian culture. Instead a local,endemic cultural expression had developed; a seclusion which lasted forcenturies despite the islands central position in the Baltic Sea. In thepast, key elements for the understanding of local settlement- and burialpractices as well as the local material culture were mainly recovered andreported by local farmers. A specific category of such finds – so-called‘bronze slag’ is discussed and partly reinterpreted in the first study ofthis thesis. Two further studies treat different aspects of metalworkingand metalworkers – one discusses common archaeological notions ofScandinavian workshops, production sites and metalworkers from a criticalperspective while the other mainly focuses on the Gotlandic finds frommetal-detector surveys carried out over the last 35 years. Based on whereand to which extent, both from a quantitative and a qualitative point ofview, these finds occur a hierarchical classification into four sub groupsis presented – ordinary farm sites with traces of non-ferrous metalworking,workshop sites, potential workshop sites and last, extrovert harboursettlements. A fourth study presents an attempt to evaluate the usefulnessof magnetometry in delimiting extant traces of high-temperature crafts,such as metalworking. The last study of the thesis presents an attempt touse trace elements analysis of skeletal lead in human bone to identifypotential non-ferrous metalworkers. As the wearing of endemic Gotlandic jewellery appears to have been centralin the manifestation of the local identity it is argued that themetalworking artisans played a crucial role in defining how this identitywas signalled and displayed via the jewellery and dress-related metalobjects. It is further suggested that these artisans might have played animportant role in upholding the local economy before the advent of localminting. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 5: Manuscript.</p>

Este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar as possibilidades que a arqueometalurgia coloca à disposição da arqueologia, inseridas em uma série de métodos que, diante do estudo de uma variada amostra de materiais, permitem a aproximação do conhecimento das diversas facetas implicadas na compreensão da atividade metalúrgica e o desenvolvimento de interpretações sobre o papel e o significado do metal na sociedade e na economia das comunidades do passado. De acordo com esta abordagem interdisciplinar, o presente trabalho apoia-se no estudo de objetos metálicos encontrados no Arraial de São Francisco Xavier da Chapada, sítio arqueológico localizado no Mato Grosso, inserido no contexto da mineração colonial do século XVIII e, formado, quase que em sua totalidade, por escravos. Aprofundando uma visão direcionada ao estudo arqueometalúrgico do acervo resgatado, através de procedimentos de análise metalográfica, técnica bastante útil para a caracterização de estruturas metálicas, este trabalho busca identificar aspectos ligados à matéria-prima usada no processo de confecção, detalhes das técnicas de produção dos artefatos metálicos estudados e características estruturais dos mesmos, na tentativa de estabelecer inferências sobre o cotidiano local, a relação da metalurgia com a escravidão, o sistema de abastecimento de mercadorias e seus diálogos com o Império Português. / This study aims to present the possibilities that archaeometallurgy can provide to archeology, entered into a series of methods that, on the study of a diverse sample of materials, allow the approximation of knowledge of the various facets involved in understanding metallurgical activity and developing interpretations of the role and significance of metals in the society and economy of the communities of the past. According to this interdisciplinary approach, this work relies on the study of metal objects found in the Arraial de São Francisco Xavier da Chapada, archaeological site located in Mato Grosso, placed in the context of eighteenth-century colonial mining and formed almost in its entirety, by slaves. Deepening a vision directed to the study of the archaeometallurgical collection rescued, through metallographic analysis procedures, useful technique for the characterization of metal structures, this study seeks to identify aspects of raw material used in the process of confection, details of the production techniques of the metallic artifacts studied and its structural characteristics, in an attempt to make inferences about the everyday place, metallurgy relationship with slavery, the system of supply of goods and its dialogues with the Portuguese Empire.

Active pendant près d’un millénaire, la métallurgie du bronze khmère se distingue par une remarquable continuité et par la production aussi bien d’images sacrées que d’objets les plus divers et le plus souvent cultuels. Cette tradition métallurgique sera appréhendée dans le cadre de notre thèse à travers l’analyse d’une période de production spécifique comprise entre la fin du XIe et le début du XIIIe siècle, celle-ci ayant l’intérêt d’avoir fourni la plupart des vestiges en bronze jusqu’ici conservés. Sans négliger les approches "classiques" généralement retenues pour étudier les bronzes khmers, ce travail aura pour principal objectif de caractériser les savoir-faire techniques alors maîtrisés par les bronziers angkoriens. Après un nécessaire ancrage historique au sein d’un royaume khmer dominé par la dynastie de Mahīdharapura et par plusieurs grands centres politico-religieux dont Yaśodharapura / Angkor, la production étudiée sera présentée dans ses grandes lignes sous deux angles complémentaires, typologique et fonctionnel. L’épigraphie khmère sera ensuite sollicitée afin de fournir des premiers éléments quant aux pratiques et aux savoirs métallurgiques attestés au cours de l’époque angkorienne, à la fois pour le bronze, ou saṃrit en vieux khmer, et pour d’autres métaux. Un corpus raisonné de 167 statues et objets en bronze, issus de plusieurs collections muséales et soumis à diverses techniques d’examen et d’analyse, aidera enfin à reconstruire les séquences de travail de la chaîne opératoire présidant à la réalisation d’un bronze. Parmi celles-ci, les pratiques de fonte, bien documentées grâce aux résultats apportés par de récentes analyses élémentaires, feront l’objet d’un développement particulier. / Active for almost a millennium, Khmer bronze metallurgy is characterized by a remarkable continuity and by the production of sacred images as well as of objects of the most varied kind, but usually for ritual practices. This metallurgical tradition will be considered in the framework of our thesis through the analysis of a specific period of production that lies between the late eleventh and early thirteenth century, the latter having the advantage of providing the most numerous bronze remains conserved thus far. Without neglecting the "classical" approaches generally used to study Khmer bronzes, this work will serve primarily to characterize the technical know-how then mastered by Angkorian bronze craftsmen. After a necessary anchorage in history in a Khmer kingdom dominated by the Mahīdharapura dynasty and several major political and religious centers including Yaśodharapura / Angkor, the studied production will be presented in two complementary perspectives, typological and functional. Khmer epigraphy will then be solicited to provide the first elements on metallurgical knowledge and practices attested during the Angkorian period, both for bronze, or saṃrit in Old Khmer, as well as for other metals. An annotated corpus of 167 images and objects in bronze, from several museum collections and subject to various technical examinations and analyses, will finally aid in rebuilding the workflows of the chaîne opératoire governing the production of a bronze. Among these, foundry practices, well-documented by the results provided by recent elemental analyses, will be the object of deeper study.

After carbon, phosphorus is the most commonly detected element in archaeological iron. The typical phosphoric iron range is 0.1wt% to 1wt%P. The predominant source of phosphorus in iron is the ore smelted. Around 60% of economic UK rock iron ore formations contain over 0.2%P. Under fully reducing conditions, both in liquid-state (cast iron) and solid-state bloomery smelting (direct reduction) processes, such rock ores would be predicted to produce phosphoric iron, and bog iron ores even more so. Ore-metal-slag phosphorus ratios for bloomery iron are derived here, by means of: laboratory experiments; full-scale experimental bloomery smelting; and analysis of remains from three Medieval and two Late Roman-Iron Age iron production sites in England and the Netherlands. Archaeological ore, slag, metal residues (gromps), and iron artefacts were analysed by metallography, SEM-EDS, EPMA, and XRD. The effects of forging and carburising on phosphoric iron were studied by experiment and artefact analysis. The ore to slag %P ratio for solid-state reduction was determined to range from 1:1.2 to 1: 1.8. The ore to metal %P ratio varied from 1:0.2 to 1:0.7 ¿ 1.4, depending on furnace operating conditions. Archaeological phosphoric iron and steel microstructures resulting from non-equilibrium reduction, heat treatment, and mechanical processing are presented to define the technology of early phosphoric iron. Microstructures were identified by a combination of metallography and chemical analysis. The phosphoric iron artefacts examined appear to be fully functional objects, some cold-worked and carburised. Modern concepts of 'quality' and workability are shown to be inapplicable to the archaeological material.

A review of archaeometallurgical studies carried out in the 1980s and 1990s of early medieval (c. AD410-1100) iron knives revealed several patterns, with clear differences in knife manufacturing techniques present in rural cemeteries and later urban settlements. The main aim of this research is to investigate these patterns and to gain an overall understanding of the early medieval iron industry. This study has increased the number of knives analysed from a wide spectrum of sites across England, Scotland and Ireland. Knives were selected for analysis based on x-radiographs and contextual details. Sections were removed for more detailed archaeometallurgical analysis. The analysis revealed a clear change through time, with a standardisation in manufacturing techniques in the 7th century and differences between the quality of urban and rural knives. Analysis of cemetery knives revealed that there was some correlation between the knife and the deceased. Comparison of knives from England, Dublin and Europe revealed that the Vikings had little direct impact on England¿s knife manufacturing industry, although there was a change in manufacturing methods in the 10th century towards the mass produced sandwich welded knife. This study also suggests that Irish blacksmiths in Dublin continued their ¿native¿ blacksmithing techniques after the Vikings arrived. Using the data gathered a chaîne opértoire of the iron knife was re-constructed, this revealed that there was a specific order to the manufacture process and decisions were not only influenced by the cost of raw materials, the skill of the blacksmith and the consumer status, but also by cultural stimulus.