Year of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

Anthropology

Department or School/College

Anthropology

Committee Chair

Anna M. Prentiss

Commitee Members

Kelly J. Dixon, Christopher Palmer

Keywords

archaeology, archaeometallurgy, metallurgy, Iron Age, Viking Age, trade networks

Subject Categories

Archaeological Anthropology

Abstract

With the advent of lead isotope analysis in the 1960’s, metallurgic studies within archaeology have grown from their infancy of organizing artifacts into typological categorizations into their own sub-discipline of archaeology: archaeometallurgy. Archaeometallurgic researchers conducts muti-phase, chemistry-based, studies to determine provenance of source metal ores as well as microchemical and metallographic analyses to identify smelting and forging techniques, culminating in multidisciplinary studies which detect shifting commerce pathways and correlate them to periods of significant cultural change. The results of these studies have offered evidence for both verification and refutation of various previous hypotheses of cultural evolution through cultural transmission. Archaeometallurgy was only able to expand into its own sub-discipline of archaeology during the last 50 years, largely because of the incompatible research goals and technological limitations which marked the archaeological research of earlier periods. Archaeometallurgy is particularly necessary for Viking Age archaeological studies since the Nordic groups of that period all used iron, rarely recorded their own history, and the method by which these groups adopted iron metalworking technologies has been obscured by time and lack of reliable records. Current Viking Age archaeometallurgical research has already expanded archaeological understanding of that time period but has been impeded by a limited quantity of the necessary comparative ore microchemical data which is essential for accurate provenance determinations.

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© Copyright 2024 Marve William Nelson