Metallurgy
My interest in archaeometallurgy dates back to my undergraduate days, and I seriously considered a metallurgical topic as the subject of my dissertation research. I received training in the analysis of metallurgical remains first at MIT's Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology under Heather Lechtman, and then under Robert Maddin and John Merkel at Harvard, doing some small projects on Andean and Near Eastern copper-based artifacts.
My own metallurgical research has focused on the Mediterranean, and includes the excavation of a metalworking site at Nuraghe Santa Barbara (Bauladu) in Sardinia. The significance of the site lies in the metal workshop that we discovered in the village outside the nuraghe itself; the finds include scrap metal (bronze and lead), and the ceramic moulds, cores and crucibles used to cast a variety of objects including spearheads and the famous bronzetti, small human and animal votive figurines that are commonly found as offerings at Nuragic sacred wells. Bronze tools and weapons were cast in reusable stone moulds; at Santa Barbara we discovered only the broken ceramic cores used to make hollow spearheads for mounting on a shaft. Figurines and other objects with finer features were produced using the lost-wax process; at Santa Barbara we discovered fragments of some of the clay moulds which were broken open to release the casting.
The exploitation of Sardinian ore sources, indigenous metalworking, and the presence of Aegean-type ingots and artifacts in Sardinia are still controversial. Certainly metallurgy in Sardinia pre-dates any eastern Mediterranean influence, but I have argued that bringing copper oxhide ingots (well-known from the Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya shipwrecks) to an island rich in metal resources is NOT the same as bringing coals to Newcastle; they are refined products with inherent value to any village producing metal artifacts, and would naturally have been exchanged between seagoing merchants and islanders for provisions and other local goods. Stylistic and other influences between east and west are more apparent in the following centuries (ca. 1200-900 BC), and include similarities in Cypriot and Sardinian bronze figurines and other objects.
I have also been involved, with Miriam S. Balmuth, in the chemical analysis of Sardinian bronzetti in American museum
collections. Our preliminary conclusions are that typical but variable amounts of copper and tin were alloyed to make the
bronze figurines, and that lead and silver were rarely intentionally added. The presence of zinc (copper plus zinc = brass) is
highly problematic for pre-Roman figurines. I have done similar work on Iberian bronze figurines, in collaboration with Lourdes Prados Torreira.
Lastly, I have investigated an iron-working site near Siena in collaboration with Jane Whitehead and the Etruscan Foundation. Numerous iron smelting slag remains were discovered on the surface at the Ripostena site, many with concave surfaces formed when the slag was allowed to cool inside a circular furnace. The possibility that this was a pre-Roman smelting operation was exciting; however, AMS radiocarbon dating of charcoal fragments trapped in the interior of some slag samples produced Medieval dates.
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Send questions or comments to: R. Tykot