Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Metals: From Ore Mining and Metal Production to Their Impacts in Human Life and Environment
Content:
The investigation of metals, from ore extraction to object production, has always been multidisciplinary. Understanding ore extraction requires knowledge of mining archaeology and geology; metallurgy utilises evidence from material sciences and chemistry, including isotopic analysis to provenance metal sources and to reconstruct technological processes; palaeoenvironmental approaches, through palaeopollution reconstruction, provide diachronic information on past mining and metallurgy and their impact on the landscape, and metal studies on human and animal remains provide a direct link with sociological aspects of metal use, medical treatments or cosmetics. The combination of these approaches enables a better understanding of the metal operational chain and the reconstruction of the human behaviours behind them. It also contributes to answering questions about the social interactions around metal production and exchange, regarding the weight of metal production in ancient economies, and in relation to the environmental and socio-economic imprints on territory, as well of their impact in human lives. Each specialist brings part of the story and articulating them all together can be challenging.
This regular session attempts to build a bridge among all the approaches frequently used for the study of metals. There are no geographical or chronological limits to the contributions although we welcome multidisciplinary approaches that encourage a wider view of the full metal operational chain and a reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of multidisciplinary approaches applied to the study of metals.
The type of questions we want to address in this session are for example: How the aforementioned approaches can be combined to gain a better understanding of the extraction and use of ancient metals? Do palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data share a common narrative? To what extent the information generated for geological surveys is useful for the study of ancient metals? What was the impact of metals on human health and in archaeological soils?
Keywords:
Metal studies, Experimental Archaeology, Mining Archaeology, Metallurgy, Palaeopollution, Human-animal remains
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Noemí Silva-Sánchez (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Xose-Lois Armada (Spain) 1
Emmanuelle Meunier (France) 2,3
Olalla López-Costas (Spain) 4
Tim Mighall (United Kingdom) 5
Affiliations:
1. Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit), CSIC
2. CRBC, Université de Bretagne Occidentale
3. CReAAH, Université de Rennes
4. Ecopast, Cretus, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
5. School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen
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