Don't have much time this morning (gotta go to college!) but will at least
offer some beginning points. First, look to Robert Gordon and Patrick
Malone's fine book, The Texture of Industry, An Archaeological View of the
Industrialization of North America, 1994 ISBN 0-19-505885-2. Among other
things, Gordon is a metallurgist (working at Yale) with extensive
experience studying the products and byproducts of early metalmaking and
metalworking in this continent. Further, the book briefly describes an
experimental bloomery forge built by David Harvey of Williamsburg, also
published by Harvey ("Reconstructing the American Bloomery Process,"
Historic Trades 1 (1988): 19-37. Gordon also has a piece in an upcoming
issue of Journal of Archaeological Sciences, as well as one in the next
issue of IA, the Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, both
investigations of slag from early ironmaking contexts in New England.
Finally, talk to Gordon or some of the archaeometallurgists on
[log in to unmask], to help determine whether you're dealing with
bloomery slag or just slag from smithing operations. Without details about
context, quantity, morphology, and maybe contents, one cannot easily
distinguish the two.
Must run. I may post more later.
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Patrick E. Martin, Associate Professor of Archaeology
Director of Graduate Studies in Industrial Archaeology
Editor of IA, Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology
Department of Social Sciences, Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, Michigan 49931-1295 USA
Telephone (906) 487-2070 Fax (906) 487-2468 Internet [log in to unmask]
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