Elite Strategies and the Spread of Technological Innovation: The Spread of Iron in the Bronze Age Societies of Denmark and Southern Korea

I look at the process and speed of innovation spread, examining the economic aspects from the perspective of those who adopt the innovation. Defining innovation adoption as an investment which requires initial cost and risks, I argue that at the time of introduction of a new technology that is expected to have socioeconomic importance, elites of adopting societies try to avoid the initial cost and risks of adoption, actively intervening in the process of its spread. Thus, it is crucial to analyze the strategies and needs of elites, which strongly influence the speed of spread. One of these strategies is to change innovation's role by locating the innovation in a different realm of economy. Comparing the spread of iron technology in the Danish and southern Korean Bronze Ages, I demonstrate that differences in what elites needed to obtain through iron technology in different contexts critically affected the speed and process of iron spread into the two regions.     

试论楚国铁器的使用和发展

我国出土的早期铁器大都集中于楚国,目前出土的楚国早期铁器从上个世纪70年代的10余件增加到40余件,时代上限从春秋晚期上溯到了春秋中期。楚国最早的铁器发现在今鄂西,开始使用的铁器主要为农具,还有一些小型利器。至春秋晚期,楚国已有了锻造的铁器。楚国铁器,从战国初开始容器变大,刀剑变长,新器形大量出现。到战国中期,精工铁器和铜铁合铸的铁足铜鼎流行。楚国大约从春秋中期开始冶铁、用铁,到春战之交,社会已进入了铁器时代。     

5,000 years old Egyptian iron beads made from hammered meteoritic iron

The earliest known iron artefacts are nine small beads securely dated to circa 3200 BC, from two burials in Gerzeh, northern Egypt. We show that these beads were made from meteoritic iron, and shaped by careful hammering the metal into thin sheets before rolling them into tubes. The study demonstrates the ability of neutron and X-ray methods to determine the nature of the material even after complete corrosion of the iron metal. The iron beads were strung into a necklace together with other exotic minerals such as lapis lazuli, gold and carnelian, revealing the status of meteoritic iron as a special material on a par with precious metal and gem stones. The results confirm that already in the fourth millennium BC metalworkers had mastered the smithing of meteoritic iron, an iron–nickel alloy much harder and more brittle than the more commonly worked copper. This is of wider significance as it demonstrates that metalworkers had already nearly two millennia of experience to hot-work meteoritic iron when iron smelting was introduced. This knowledge was essential for the development of iron smelting, which produced metal in a solid state process and hence depended on this ability in order to replace copper and bronze as the main utilitarian metals.     

山东青州博物馆馆藏西汉时期铁戟表面特征分析

2006年,山东省青州市香山西汉墓墓道西侧的陪葬坑内出土了大量彩绘陶俑、陶器、铁器和铜器。其中,铁戟呈卜字形,严重锈结、矿化。该批卜字形铁戟的形体较小,应属冥器;铜柲帽截面为不规则的五边形,形制有别于汉代考古文献中记载的圆形或椭圆形铁戟柲帽。部分器物上残留有朽木漆鞘痕,或有缠绕物麻绳遗痕,或有织物遗痕。以往在出土青铜器上有时会发现一些织物的印痕,而在铜铁复合器上,此现象则较为罕见。本文采用三维视频显徽镜和激光拉曼光谱对铁戟表面残留遗痕进行了观察和分析,判明了残存遗物的叠压关系及织物结构。铁戟表面从里至外依次为:包覆铁戟的丝织物、髹漆木鞘、木鞘外裹缠麻。     

Chronicles of vadose zone diagenesis: cone‐shaped iron oxide concretions,Triassic Trujillo Formation,Palo Duro Canyon,Texas

Unusual cone‐shaped iron oxide concretions occur in the Late Triassic, lower fluvial sandstone member of the Trujillo Formation at Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas panhandle. In situ concretions are significant because they record both historical information about past processes that occurred within the geologic unit and present‐day information about the ability of the unit to conduct fluids. The dominant orientation of the concretions is cone‐apex up, body radiating down and out, with long axis perpendicular to bedding. Concretion morphologies are associated with the sedimentary texture and primary bedding structure of the host rock and the corresponding hydrologic regime (i.e. advection versus dispersion for iron‐transport behavior). Three lithofacies in the lower Trujillo member exhibit different cone forms. Field observations of cone orientation and morphology suggest vadose conditions for diagenetic precipitation of iron oxide cements, with timing potentially represented by the major pre‐Miocene unconformity.     

郑庄秦石料加工场遗址出土铁器的初步研究

为了解郑庄秦石料加工场遗址出土铁器的成分与制作工艺,采用了金相显微法和湿法化学分析对其中6件残铁器进行了取样分析。通过研究可知:这批铁器具有低锰、低硅的工艺特点,为生铁制钢。     

鲁山望城岗冶铁遗址的冶炼技术初步研究

本文通过对河南鲁山望城岗,台铁遗址出土和采集的冶铁遗物的综合分析,证明该遗址是个集冶炼、铸造和炼钢为一体的大型工场,持续时间较长,具体工艺表现为采用选好的褐铁矿在高炉中炼出生铁,然后铸成器物,存在脱碳制钢的处理工艺,并且在冶炼时可能使用了煤炭作为燃料。     

‘The sword that was broken …’: The detection of recycled iron in the archaeological record

Although the recycling of materials such as copper and glass is widely known and generally well understood within archaeological contexts, far less is known about the recycling of iron. Iron recycling is more complex than that of other metals for two reasons. First, normal manufacturing processes, which include forging several components to make a composite object, offer the opportunity to include recycled iron. Second, the material itself is more complex than Cu alloys. The alloys of Fe, depending primarily on C content, are very different in terms of properties and can be interconverted by (normally) removing C such as decarburizing cast iron to make wrought iron. Thus, recycling practices are potentially intimately combined with such processes. These factors, combined with the poor preservation of archaeological iron and the consequent reluctance to carry out extensive studies (which often require destructive analysis via metallography), mean that there are no clear criteria for identifying recycled iron. However, limited historical documentation suggests, at least indirectly, that such recycling was common. This paper is neither comprehensive nor definitive, but merely intends to promote discussion and awareness of iron recycling by hypothesizing several possible mechanisms and providing a few illustrative archaeological examples.