EMAP_2012_Report_6_1.pdf (7.3 MB) - The Heritage Council

Section 2: Early Medieval Craft-working
Matt Seaver
Introduction:
This section will examine various forms of early medieval industrial activity in greater detail.
This will consist of individual chapters on specific material, e.g. iron-working, non-ferrous
metal-working, etc., which will be accompanied by a series of tables outlining the types of
material found on various sites (Appendix 1). Although dealt with separately here, the range
of different crafts cannot be completely separated from their interlinked social and economic
context. The place of crafts in a social and economic world with a complex system for
reciprocation through render and clientship presents many challenges in theorising about how
they worked (Moreland 2010, 75-115). The mechanisms for acquiring or maintaining objects
have not been discussed here, nor has the question of who carried out the various production
steps, or whether tasks/knowledge were jealously guarded by a sub-set of society. Such
issues remain open to interpretation, and further work is necessary in order to more fully
understand the way in which industrial activity helped shape early medieval Irish society.
Chapter 2: Early Medieval Iron-working
2.1: Introduction
Scott (1991, 109), in his detailed overview, examined the evidence for iron-working from its
introduction during the early Iron Age until the end of the early medieval period. He was one
of the first to examine in detail the potential evidence for smelting, smithing and mining and
the artefacts and technology used behind these processes. Both Scott (1991, 157) and
Edwards (1990, 86) highlighted that previous metallurgical studies on early medieval sites
often failed to make a distinction between smithing and smelting furnaces, or failed to collect
slag in a systematic way. Knowledge of early medieval Irish iron-working has recently been
advanced by the published work of archaeologists examining the results of excavations on
settlement sites on a national basis (Comber 2008). The significant number of excavations of
early medieval settlements during the recent economic boom increasingly included specialist
contributions on industrial residues. This led to increased awareness of the importance of
sampling for these purposes. The metallurgical evidence from recent excavation schemes has
allowed discursive chapters by archaeologists and archaeometallurgists on regional patterns
of metalworking (e.g. Carlin 2008). These discussions were informed by a small group of
archaeometallurgists who have produced significant quantities of specilialist reports on
assemblages from a variety of early medieval site types (e.g. Photos-Jones (2008a-d, 2011,
Young 2003-12, Wallace and Anguilano 2010b). These are available within ‘grey’ literature
final reports, published volumes and a significant range of evaluations and reports some of
which are available online (e.g. http://www.sasaa.co.uk/sasaa%20projects.htm and
http://www.geoarch.co.uk/). This reporting is usually a two stage process with assessment of
the assemblage and if it is merited recommendations for scientific analysis which involves thin
sectioning of samples. Postgraduate synthesis work on the cultural context of metallurgical
production has also been produced in recent years which have taken into consideration some
of the recently excavated material (Williams 2010, 31-45, Dolan 2011). It is important to
acknowledge that distinguishing different stages of the archaeometallurgical process is only
really possible through macro and micro examination of the residues by a specialist with
reference to documented collections from experimental work. It also requires very detailed
recording of the structures and features involved. For this reason many earlier excavations
could represent the results of a range of processes. This chapter presents an outline of the
process of iron-working, the archaeological evidence for it and a discussion of how it was
integrated into early medieval Irish society.
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