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A New Radiocarbon Chronology for Ancient Iron Production in the Meroe Region of Sudan

Humphris, JE; Scheibner, T; (2017) A New Radiocarbon Chronology for Ancient Iron Production in the Meroe Region of Sudan. African Archaeological Review , 34 pp. 377-413. 10.1007/s10437-017-9267-x. Green open access

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Abstract

Recent archaeometallurgical investigations in Sudan have provided 97 radiocarbon dates which are used here to present a new chronology for ancient iron production associated with the Kingdom of Kush. Understandings of the formation, stratigraphy and dating of metallurgical waste deposits are used to demonstrate that iron production was practiced in the Meroe area for more than 1000 years, potentially starting as early as the 25th Dynasty period. Likely dates for the emergence and ending of iron smelting are considered in relation to political, economic and socio-cultural developments. The value and potential of this new chronology are explored, for example, in terms of insights into scale of production over time and resulting indications of organisation and management of this ancient technology.

Type: Article
Title: A New Radiocarbon Chronology for Ancient Iron Production in the Meroe Region of Sudan
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/s10437-017-9267-x
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-017-9267-x
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Keywords: Meroe; Kush; Iron production; Chronology; Radiocarbon; Slag heap
UCL classification: UCL
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1576502
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