The Culture and Technology of African Iron Production

Download or read book The Culture and Technology of African Iron Production written by Peter Ridgway Schmidt and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological and ethnographic investigations in western Tanzania in the 1970s revealed remarkable evidence for a complex and highly advanced iron technology that existed there several thousand years ago. Still, Western scientific and historical practice continues to obscure the history of iron technology and its accomplishments in Africa. Weaving together myth, ritual, history, and science, this work describes the systems of smithing and iron smelting, some of which arose 2,000 to 2,500 years ago. Revealing the world of African technological achievement, the contributors to this work demonstrate that iron production there is a socially constructed activity and that its cultural and technological domains cannot be understood separately.