Download Free Ancient Society And Metallurgy Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Ancient Society And Metallurgy and write the review.

Focusing on Bronze Age societies in Central Eurasia and North China, this book presents a new scenario of early social evolution. Essentially it integrates the Marxist production-relation concept and the community concept into the Band-Tribe-Chiefdom-State scheme, and formulates the following three hypotheses: 1) The community is an autonomous agent in political, economic, and cultural spheres; 2) The nature of the early social evolution is that the inter-community differentiation at the tribal stage transforms into the inter-community stratification at the chiefdom and state stages; 3) Metal production as a form of economy is a major force that instigates the inter-community differentiation. In testing the three hypotheses, Bronze Age archaeological data from Central Eurasia and North China are subjected to detailed examination. The Central Eurasian societies and the Late Shang kingdom are all engaged in metal production yet they represent two disparate stages of social development, the tribal and state stages respectively. This contrast gives us an excellent opportunity to reflect upon the trajectory of early social evolution and the role of metal production in this process. Virtually the two bodies of materials supply a desirable testing ground for the three hypotheses raised above.
The third proposition is not entirely valid. In both Central Eurasia and the Late Shang kingdom, metallurgy does not explain social differentiation at all levels, but it does explain it in a general sense. In Central Eurasia it accounts for the inter-community differentiation at the cross-regional scale. Communities in the ore-rich sub-regions generally rank higher than those in the ore-deficient ones. Communities in the Eastern Urals sub-region, a sub-region blessed with the highly demanded polymetallic ores, accrue greater wealth than their counterparts in the other sub-regions by engaging in metal production and trade of copper ingots, and metal artifacts. In the Late Shang kingdom, the royal house maintains its supreme status by controlling bronze foundries and metalworking communities.
One of the leading Soviet archaeologists describes the development of ancient mining and metallurgy in the northern half of Eurasia. While the first traces of metallurgical activity date from between the seventh and the sixth millennium BC, significant mining developed only in the fifth millennium BC, in the northern Balkans and Carpathians. Metal producing centres were in these northern 'barbarian peripheral' regions rather than in the Near East and Asia Minor, areas traditionally associated with early classical civilization. Professor Chernykh describes successive periods of metallurgical activity in different regions: the Carpatho-Balkan Metallurgical Province of the Copper Age: the Circumpontic of the Early and Middle Bronze Age: and the Eurasian, European Caucasian, Central Asian and Irano-Afghan of the Late Bronze Age. He provides detailed information about the different groups of copper and bronze artefacts, their chemical composition, and their dispersion in time and space. He analyses the international metallurgical trade and division of labour and, finally, the collapse of the sociocultural systems in these metallurgical centres in the first millennium BC.
These conference proceedings cover topics including early metallurgy across Eurasia, bronze casting technologies in ancient China, ancient iron and steel technologies in Asia, and ancient metallurgical and manufacturing processes.
Gold. Copper. Iron. Metal working in Africa has been the subject of both public lore and extensive archaeological investigation. Here, four of the leading contemporary researchers on this topic attempt to provide a complete synthesis of current debates and understandings: Where, how, and when was metal first introduced to the continent? How were iron and copper tools, implements, and objects used in everyday life, in trade, in political and cultural contexts? What role did metal objects play in the ideological systems of precolonial African peoples? Substantive chapters address the origins of metal working and the technology and the various uses and meanings of copper and iron. An ethnoarchaeological account in the words of a contemporary iron worker enriches the archaeological explanations. This book provides a comprehensive, timely summary of our current knowledge.
This book concentrates on the social and economic effects that metals have had on community life and on wider historical developments. It gives a fascinating perspective proclaiming that the history of metals is the history of civilization; basing the text on the results of archeometallurgists and materials scientists and looking at the advancement of societies as a direct result of their new-found technology. The author's clear and lucid style prevents the book becoming aridly academic while he maps the course of ancient history through to medieval times and beyond, showing metal to be, ultimately, the key to history.
This book contains 23 studies on geology and mining in ancient Greece, the manufacture and metallurgy of ancient Greek coins and the analysis and conservation of these coins. The chapters collectively place numismatics within an interdisciplinary context.
The first in-depth study of the field in more than 20 years analyzes the role of various metals in the context of Greek economic life, politics, culture and art, traces the movement of metal from ore to finished objects, including works of art, and shows the relations between the regions where metals were extracted and the centres of metalworking, the structure of the workshops and the connections between them and the role of the workshops in economic life at different stages in Greek history. In doing so it adopts a multidisciplinary approach, defining the role of metals in the history of Greek society using the widest possible variety of sources: the excavated remains of workshops and hoards, archaeometallurgical finds; the results of studies of ancient mines and analyses of ancient metal objects; bronze plastics and jewelry, coins etc. The chronological span of the study is the 8th-1st centuries B.C., i.e. from the beginning of the main period of Greek colonization till the end of the Hellenistic era. The geographical scope of the work is the Greek oikumene. New to most scholars will be Treister's knowledge of objects and technologies in the eastern Greek and Roman world of the Northern Black Sea and Colchis. While this book does not pretend to be a definitive survey of the history of mining and metallurgy in the Greek world, it is a particularly useful interim report.
Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy by Charles Olden Bannister, first published in 1927, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.
This volume presents an attempt to argue the role of metals in the history of Greek society using the widest possible variety of sources: the evidence of ancient writers, epigraphical material and archaeological data: the excavated remains of workshops and hoards, archaeometallurgical finds; the results of studies of ancient mines and analyses of ancient metal objects: bronze plastics and jewelry articles, coins etc. The main task of this work is to analyse the role of various metals in the context of Greek economic life, politics, culture and art, to trace the movement of metal from ore to finished the objects, including works of art, to show the relations between the regions where metals were extracted and the centres of metalworking, the structure of the workshops and the connections between them and the role of the workshops in the economic life at the different stages in Greek history. The chronological frame of the study is the 8th-1st centuries BC, i.e. from the beginning of the Great period of Greek colonization till the end of the Hellenistic epoch. The geographical frame of the work is the Greek oikumere.