Principal Christine Shaw
Following the death of Tony Hamlin, the principal worker at BAF in this area, early in the year 2000, his 3rd report on the preparation of tin, which was in final preparation at the time of his death, was completed by R W Hedge and was published posthumously. It shows that, for the case of tin, some modification to his general theory is necessary. In particular, he concluded that copper-tin bronze was more likely to have been in significant use before tin itself. The problems associated with the production of both tin and copper-tin bronze are likely to have made them premium materials, in his view.
A new worker has come forward and new equipmenthas been set up. A programme of work was initiated in 2005 and is continuing in 2006.
This programme covers not just the discovery and exploitation of iron but necessarily started with the preceding discovery of copper, tin and bronzes which must have formed the foundation for the earliest work with iron.
The programme was initiated by an industrial research scientist, Tony Hamlin, with a background in metallurgy, whose studies of archaeological theories on this topic led him to consider they were ill founded, both practically, and, most importantly, theoretically. Most of his recorded and analysed work has now been reported in three monographs (List of publications and ordering details).
The work on site used several different kinds of postulated kiln, based initially on excavation evidence and interpretations current among archaeologists, but modified according to the experiences gained during experiment. Tony studied the influence of constructional and operational details on the outcome of smelting trials. Another important factor was the way in which ores are prepared, handled and admixed with associated materials e.g. charcoal, where present, and other materials, such as fluxes, during the smelting process, particularly in iron production. Work was undertaken on the topic of co-smelting, in the case of bronzes, since there is a debate as to whether this is possible or likely, both practically and theoretically. There is always that gap between postulating what can be done and the route by which such procedures were devined. Tony developed a working hypothesis for this.
The results have led to a firmly founded hypothesis, which is shown to relate to the thermodynamics for the reactions involved, that the ancient pottery kiln could lead to the production of copper. It is especially pertinent that the procedure for preparing glazes from ground ores is just that required to get the ore in a suitable state for release of the metal.
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Created 01 August 2001 - Updated 14 March 2006