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Domesticating Nature

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Book cover Metals in Past Societies

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Abstract

Subsequent to mining, the process of smelting ores to produce usable metal in a controlled atmosphere transformed products of nature-ores-into culture. Metal smelting was simultaneously a technological and sociocultural process. Because of disparities in the cultural inheritances of metallurgy in various parts of Africa, there too were significant differences in smelting apparatuses used. Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan and North Africa possessed similar furnace and bellows types which flowed from their interaction with the Middle East. In contrast, Sub Saharan Africa was remarkably different, and was characterized by a multiplicity of furnace forms for smelting both copper and iron. The iron smelting furnaces in the sub Saharan latitudes are greatly varied from bowl through low shaft to tall natural draught furnaces. Even within these types, bewildering variation exists which attest to the widest range of preindustrial furnaces ever known in the world. While the scale of production varied as a response to local and external demand and population pressures, the organization of production varied from attached specialists in Egypt to independent producers in Njanja South Central Zimbabwe. The process of smelting in sub-Saharan Africa was metaphorically linked to human reproduction such that smelting furnaces were explicitly embodied as female bodies. These metaphors of containment or embodiment were widespread in the general worldview of groups such as Shona peoples and were reflected by houses, granaries and even drums with anthropomorphic features. Smelting was associated with rituals and taboos and often medicines were used to neutralize evil forces. In areas such as Nepal the procreational paradigm was also strong in smelting while rituals and symbolism pervaded Indian bloomery iron production in the ethnographic record. African smelting is full of examples of innovation, improvisation and experimentation which make it an important case study of these processes in the entire world.

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    Shadreck Chirikure

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Chirikure, S. (2015). Domesticating Nature. In: Metals in Past Societies. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11641-9_4

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