The origins of iron metallurgy in Africa

UNESCO Publishing

2004

240 p.

Memory of peoples

9789231038075

The iron industry is a benchmark of civilization and is underpinned by a whole body of tried and tested concepts. Until recently sub-Saharan Africa was regarded as a mere recipient of this technology which was supposed to have come from the Middle East by way of North Africa and the Valley of the Nile. The theory that sub-Saharan Africa borrowed its iron technology from other cultures is no longer tenable. The fact is that the continent invented and developed its own iron metallurgy as far back as the third millennium B.C. The work of the specialists – archaeologists, historians, ethnologists, sociologists and metallographical engineers – presented in this book bears witness to the energy of the research now being carried on in relation to African iron and steel metallurgy. Not only does it give a clearer picture of the origins and development of metallurgy throughout the continent, it also throws light on its technological features and the social, economic and cultural repercussions of this progress. The attention focused by UNESCO on the study of iron metallurgy in Africa is intended inter alia to rescue from oblivion the contribution made by African metallurgists – smelters and blacksmiths – to the technical heritage of humankind.

Английский