Roman double-layered crucibles from Autun/France: a petrological and geochemical approach

Eighteen double-layered crucible fragments found in an archaeological excavation site of the Lycée militaire (Autun/France), which dates to the Gallo-Roman period, were analysed with a series of classical mineralogical techniques in order to obtain knowledge about the raw materials of the individual layers. This work focuses on the usage of the crucibles as well as technical aspects of their production. The crucible fragments were studied by using petrographical (optical microscopy), elemental (SEM-EDS, EMPA, XRF-WDS) and mineralogical (XRD) techniques.     

Analysis of a protohistoric net from Shahi Tump,Baluchistan (Pakistan)

The fire that partly destroyed a 4th millennium BCE building at Shahi Tump in the Kech Valley of south-western Pakistan is responsible for the exceptional preservation by carbonisation of a net found on the burnt floor as a heap of entangled cords and knots. Macro- and microscopic observation has allowed a reconstruction of the techniques used to manufacture the net from a two-strand plied cord. The comparison of the phytoliths extracted from the archaeological net to those from a modern reference collection suggests the use of fibres that originate from the leaves of a local palm species: the desert palm or Nannorrhops ritchieana (Griff.) Aitch. Besides the technical and archaeobotanical aspects of the study, the paper discussed past and present uses of the desert palm in the arid regions of the Middle East as well as the possible utilisation (fishing, carrying etc.) of the protohistoric net.     

Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand

This paper concerns the identification and explanation of change in prehistoric extractive metallurgical behaviour in the Iron Age Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand. This metallurgical complex is amongst the largest in Eurasia and constitutes Southeast Asia's only documented pre-modern copper-smelting evidence. The two Iron Age smelting sites investigated, Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), provide a sequence of metallurgical consumption and production evidence from c. 500 BCE to c. 500 CE. The enormous quantity of industrial waste at these sites suggests they were probably major copper supply nodes within ancient Southeast Asian metal exchange networks. Seventy-six excavated samples of mineral, technical ceramic and slag from NPW and NKH were analysed in hand specimen, microstructurally by reflected-light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and chemically by polarising energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The analytical data were used to generate detailed technological reconstructions of copper-smelting behaviour at the two sites, which were refined by a programme of field experimentation. Results indicate an approximately 1,000-year trend of Valley copper smelters' improving technical proficiency from what may be an experimental phase of production in the mid-first millennium BCE. This amelioration in production was accompanied by a substantial increase in the human effort of copper extraction. This shift in local ‘metallurgical ethos’ is interpreted as a response to rising regional demand for copper in late prehistory.