Archaeometallurgy Course 2013

This weekend was a weekend of firsts for me as I participated in the fantastic Archaeolmetallurgy course at Butser Ancient Farm run by Fergus Milton and Simon Timberlake as part of my CPD (continued professional development). Even as an Experimental Archaeologist working in THE place for experimental archaeology it never harms to improve your skill set.
The course was a four day course running from the Friday to the Monday and involved learning the basics of metallurgy, the background and use of Archaeometallurgy and then the practical stuff of building furnaces and smelting metal ores into pure metals. Archaeometallurgy is something that often takes place on the farm and there is a group of dedicated smelters and metal workers who come along and demonstrate their skills and learn more about ancient metal.

The first day was started with a meet and greet with introductions being made between all the participants. We had a wide variety with archaeologists and enthusiasts alike including one all the way from California and two Dutch students! With a great mix of people and introductions done it was time for a morning of lectures.
These lectures took place in our fantastic new Janus center which lent its self well to the occasion and we learnt all about the process of smelting metals (predominately copper and tin) and also the history and development of Archaeometallurgy and the use of Experimental Archaeology within the field.

After lunch it was time for the practical stuff! Time to make the varies sundries and paraphernalia that we would need to smelt our own metals. In teams of three we made our own tuyeres, crucibles, lids and collecting dishes (multiples of each just in case they broke, which we were assured they would!). These were all made from either crank clay or from locally sourced clay which required mixing with chopped straw and sheep dung!!!!!!!

  

The end of the day saw the three different teams building different types of furnaces, the bowl furnace, a bank furnace and my team the post hole furnace (I say my team but it has to be said I had little to do with the furnace construction as I had snuck off by this point!).

The second day dawned and all my class mates and I appeared eagerly knowing that today we would get to do some practical smelting with all the bits and pieces we had made the day before. Before this could happen though we had another lecture and then had to make our own bellows. The bellows we made were bag bellows. It took great skill and care to stitch together the leather to make them but Peter in my team was a natural and before long they were made and after lunch we could start our first smelt.

Our first smelt was an attempt to get copper from the ore malachite. This required an hour and a half at the bellows!! That's a lot of work, but I  have always been told I am full of hot air so I managed to struggle through and saw the entire 90mins out!. It was now home time before we could open our furnace to see if we had succeeded...........................

................... and succeed we did! The next morning came and we opened up the furnace with baited breath to find that we had made copper! Not only had we made copper but we made more copper than was thought possible! A great day for newbie copper smelters!

The next couple of days saw us try different smelting techniques and materials with varying degrees of success. In our next copper smelt we in fact made even more copper than we did in the first one! I believe the word used was 'impossible'! but not for long!. We smelted tin and mixed it with the copper to make bronze (which is being analysed by BAE systems), we also tried to cast our bronze but met with limited success as our techniques was not smooth enough.

There really was so much going on in this course that it is difficult to go into much detail without writing pages and pages and pages. All that really needs to be said is that it was a great experience, I learnt a lot and met great people. I would like to thank the Friends Of Butser Ancient Farm and Fergus for giving me the opportunity to take part and to all my fellow classmates who helped make the course that much better!