Ancient Greek Metallurgy

Introduction

The history of civilization is in many ways linked to the story of the use of metals in antiquity. Although modern metallurgy has seen an exponential growth since the Industrial Revolution it is interesting that many modern concepts in metallurgy have their seeds in ancient practices that pre-date the Industrial Revolution. Metals were extracted and utilized in the past in stages progressing usually from the use of native metal, to those metals which could be smelted easily from ores, to those which were more difficult to smelt. The commonly used metals in antiquity include gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, zinc and mercury. This brief review takes a synoptic look at some aspects of the early use of metal in a global perspective. It throws light on some of the achievements of ancient Greek metallurgists. Its heritage in metallurgy, medicine, mathematics and astronomy is a matter of pride for Greek.

Analysis

General approach is to use recent evaluations of the ritual nature of Greek blacksmithing and apply this to the archaeological, pictorial and textual evidence of daimones. Its argues that discussions of Greek iron production have very much moved away from evolutionary models that view Greek smelting and smithing as static and universal. Rather, the process of smelting and smithing are now more commonly viewed from an emic perspective, with emphasis on changes through time and space, negotiation of roles between the sexes, recreation of cosmology and shifts in power. The variety of ritual behaviour, the range in the status of smith and the types of symbolic roles iron plays in the different Greek societies are seen to match the diversity in the functions of the Greek daimones (Pleiner, pp 34-272).

The extent to which we achieves this goal of situating the daimones in their cultural framework is in many ways ...