Making a study of East Germanic iron smelting in the Roman period, this open access book gives an in-depth account of the development of metallurgy in the Przeworsk Culture. Its two main ironmaking centres - the Holy Cross Mountains and Masovia - were the largest iron production regions beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. Apart from serving local demand - where it was used for artefacts of many kinds, which are abundantly found in grave furnishings - a considerable part of Przeworsk Culture iron is likely to have been exported to other territories. Despite more than 60 years of research and scholarship on Przeworsk Culture iron metallurgy, this is the first book to carry out smelting slag and ore analyses using the most up-to-date methods available in archaeological science. More specifically, this study also applies a variety of statistical methods to the results of the elemental analyses of nearly 270 smelting slag and ore samples from its territory. Offering an overview of statistical approaches used in iron provenance studies and a detailed step-by-step research methodology, this book paves the way for future studies, including artefact provenance analyses using the latest archaeometric methods. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Research reported in this book was funded by the National Science Centre Poland. Open access was funded by Grzegorz Zabinski.

Autorentext
Grzegorz Zabinski is Associate Professor of Medieval Archaeology at Jan Dlugosz University, Poland. He is the author of Technology of Sword Blades from the La Tène Period to the Early Modern Age (2014). Marcin Wozniak is Head of Department of Archaeology of Mazovia at the Museum of Ancient Masovian Metallurgy, Poland.Jaroslaw Gramacki is Vice-Rector for Science and International Cooperation at the University of Zielona Góra, Poland.Artur Gramacki is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Zielona Góra, Poland.

Inhalt
List of Illustrations
Preface

Chapter 1. The Przeworsk Culture

Chapter 2. The Most Important Traits of Przeworsk Culture Iron Smelting
2.1. Previous Research
2.2 Origins of Iron Smelting in the Przeworsk Culture
2.3. Resources for Iron Smelting
2.4. Chronology of the Main Iron Smelting Regions of the Przeworsk Culture
2.5. Extent and Organization of the Main Iron Smelting Regions of the Przeworsk Culture
2.6. Bloomery Furnace Types and Organization of Smelting Sites
2.7. Iron Smelting in the Przeworsk Culture Beyond the Main Ironmaking Regions

Chapter 3. Research on Slag and Ore Samples From the Main Ironmaking Regions of the Przeworsk Culture
3.1. Previous Studies
3.2. Data and Their Characteristics
3.3. Analytical Methods
3.4. Data Processing and Variable Selection Methods
3.5. Selection of the Statistical Approach and the Data Transformation Method
3.6. Statistical Processing of the Data - Results and Discussion
3.7. Conclusion

Conclusion and Suggestions for Further Research

Notes
Bibliography
Index