Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Basquesmith (Ironworking technology and social complexity of rural comunities during the Early Medieval Ages)

Teaser

The situation in the Basque Country during Early Middle Ages (EMA) is in striking contrast with this traditional view of commoners during EMA who often represent the paradigm of the ‘Dark Ages’: impoverished and rather resource-limited (e.g. Fossier and Chapelot 1980) and...

Summary

The situation in the Basque Country during Early Middle Ages (EMA) is in striking contrast with this traditional view of commoners during EMA who often represent the paradigm of the ‘Dark Ages’: impoverished and rather resource-limited (e.g. Fossier and Chapelot 1980) and with scant or null access to iron metallurgy since this was an expensive technology only affordable to elites. On the one hand, there seems to be a steady production of iron which spanned for several centuries ‒at least from 3rd to 14th centuries AD‒ reaching its peak during the Early Medieval period (Alberdi and Etxezarraga 2014). On the other hand, seemingly the major potential consumers of that iron were not elites but a network of more than 300 farmsteads, hamlets and villages of rural condition whose habitants enjoyed an abundant and varied paraphernalia of all type of implements for everyday life such as farming, carpentry, clothes-fitting, cutlery, etc. (Larreina-Garcia and Quirós Castillo 2018).

The Basquesmith project aimed to investigate the engineering parameters behind the production of farming tools and common implements by examining the manufacture of artefacts, such as scissors, horseshoes, sewing needles, belt buckles and clasps, ladles, keys, etc. as well as by examining technical materials (e.g. slag) from both the smelting sites which presumably reduced the iron, as well as the few evidences rarely found at the farming sites where the artefacts were excavated. Equally, the project aimed to explore topics never addressed such as the origins and development of this smelting technology, its diachronic evolution and geographic spread, a comparison of end-products purportedly produced by a similar process, or the interplay between iron-makers in the mountains and iron-consumers in the valley.

To provide the first archaeometric approach to these questions a total of 102 implements were examined by metallography and 61 technical materials analysed by microscopy. The originality lies in the study on a range of objects that have rarely been examined, and excavated from rural settlements that stand out as equally unusual contexts against cemeteries, hoards and urban environments.
The scientific approach includes microanalysis by Optical Microscopy (OM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM-EDS) to describe and analyse materials and microstructures; and X-radiograph studies prior to metallographic analysis to assess the condition and to investigate the overall assemblage. For the technical materials, it also includes XRF and XRD microanalysis to obtain bulk chemical composition and mineral identification.

Work performed

A selection of 102 iron implements out of 567 from two rural settlements was considered to be submitted to metallographical studies. The selection criteria were chronological on the first place (7th to 11th centuries AD), and typological on the second (quotidian items were preferred to ornaments or weapons). Finally, the state and preservation of the item was a definitive criterion among the available candidates, and were systematically selected the ones which presented sound metal and whose integrity and preservation was not jeopardized by the sample extraction and posterior conservation. Prior to sampling, X-radiographs were obtained to assess the condition and to investigate the overall assemblage.
The samples were first examined in the as-polished state to investigate the distribution of slag inclusions and corrosion by SEM microscope. Once this task was completed, the blocks were re-polished to remove the gold coating and etched with nital to reveal objects microstructure and accomplish the metallographic analysis. In parallel 61 evidences of slag, furnace wall and ore from six different sites were analysed by microscopy (OM, SEM, XRF and XRD) to approach the chemical composition and mineral structure of the technical materials

Some preliminary results regarding few iron and steel implements from Zaballa were advanced in Larreina-García and Quirós Castillo (2018b). Essentially, the main conclusions of that paper are still in force: regardless of the chronology the majority of the assemblage (89 items) was forged from single pieces of low-carbon iron without posterior heat-treatment; cutting-edge tools were frequently cold-forged to enhance their hardness and durability; and composite tools, typically made by welding of steel onto an iron back, are scant in comparison. In all probability, the early medieval peasantry in Álava had access to a wide variety of common, iron-made implements, which were typically of modest quality but perfectly functional; higher quality pieces are less frequent. The items were occasionally repaired in the rural settlements, but were manufactured elsewhere while the iron was reduced by the indirect method in the nearby ironworks. The repetitiveness on the smelting and manufacturing technologies would suggest a common procedure if not a technological tradition which could spread several centuries.

Results have already been presented in international conferences, one at the very beginning of the project (XII Congreso Ibérico de Arqueometría, Burgos, Spain, October 2017), and other in the SAA annual meeting (Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 2019), and another paper has been published in Antiquity reports (Larreina-Garcia and Quirós Castillo 2018).
In addition, two more conferences are schedule in Hungary‒Archaeometallurgy in Europe, June 2019‒ and Spain ‒Archaeology of peasantry, October 2019, and two more papers with full results are in preparation.

Final results

The main aim of this research was to investigate the use of iron and steel in the construction of farming and household implements, and the blacksmithing techniques used, to gain an understanding of the early medieval iron economy in the Basque Country and Europe. There are several indications that iron implements were unusual in rural settlements and that if present they were of lower quality than those in urban context and cemeteries, and generally to those produced during the Roman period. Therefore, the data will be placed into the wider chronological framework to show if the types of iron used differed over time and space, as did the quality of the metals used and the manufacturing techniques. The preliminary data on items and technical materials rather suggest that iron commodities were largely affordable to commoners and that there was an active and varied iron items market, producing in different qualities. Due to the early ending of the project (4 months ahead schedule) some data is still to be processed. It is expected to accomplishes this reconstruction by late 2019, early 20120, concerning not only to Basque Country but also to wider scenarios in Europe contributing to better explain in EMA both the cycle of iron production and consumption as well as the peasant agency, which in all probability constituted the majority of the population, base of the society and the economic system.

Basquesmith is a really novel approach to EMA peasantry that challenges stablished paradigms such as the ‘Dark Ages’, and which is expected to contribute with new research frameworks strategies (practical and empirical) exportable to other rural contexts across Europe.