Description
Book SynopsisThe purpose of this study is to recuperate the history of African iron technology.Through a cross-cultural and comparative approach, it reveals both changes and significant continuities in the symbolism that conferred meaning to iron smelting over two thousand years in East and Central Africa. North America: Indiana U Press
Trade ReviewLike the act of iron smelting itself, this important book can be understood and used on many levels: as a technological reference on a vanished craft; as a reference tool for archaeologists to analyse and explain the evidence of ironworking; as a study of the role ritual and belief play in technological process of recent societies; and - more challenging, more problematic - the use of this to understand symbolism and cognition in the earlier societies of the African Iron Age. -- Robin Derricourt * AFSAAP *
With archaeologists increasingly emphasizing the need of looking at a geographically broader range of case-studies and of integrating archaeology, anthropology and history, Schmidt's book comes at a highly appropriate time. -- Peter Mitchell, Lecturer in African Archaeology, Oxford University
Table of ContentsRemaking knowledge about African iron technology; historical and cultural contexts - excavating history, myth and ritual; ethnoarchaeology and experiment in iron technology; ethnoarchaeology and bricolage - engaging iron smelting; a technological model of the Haya process; comparative models - forging a history of Haya iron smelting; dynamic models for an archaeology of iron technology; models for the interpretation of space - smelting and forging; an archaeology of African iron symbolism; reading ideology in the archaeological record; a history of landscape transformation - bringing the past up to the present.
