Making Metal and Forging Relations
Ironworking in the British Iron Age
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9309723 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Melanie Giles (0000-0003-1815-3489, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 395-413 |
| Publication date | 2007-10-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Oxford Journal of Archaeology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0262-5253 • E-ISSN: 1468-0092 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-0092.2007.00290.x |
| OpenAlex | W2031605292 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 36 |
| References cited | 29 |
This article explores the social significance of metalworking in the British Iron Age, drawing ethnographic analogies with small‐scale, pre‐industrial communities. It focuses on iron, from the collection of ore to smelting and smithing, challenging the assumption that specialized ironworking was necessarily associated with hierarchical chiefdoms, supported by full‐time craft specialists. Instead, it explores more complex ways in which social and political authority might have been associated with craftwork, through metaphorical associations with fertility, skill and exchange. Challenging traditional interpretations of objects such as tools and weapons, it argues that the importance of this craft lay in its dual association with transformative power, both creative and destructive. It suggests that this technology literally made new kinds of metaphorical relationships thinkable , and it explores the implications through a series of case studies ranging from the production and use of iron objects to their destruction and deposition
Archaeology · Chiefdom · Craft · Forging · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Smelting · Sociology · Transformative learning · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Engineering · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History · Law · Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts
Iron Age Scotland
The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland
Homens de ferro? A deposição de ferramentas em sepultamentos bretões da Idade do Ferro
Roger Mercer, Native and Roman on the Northern Frontier
Alan Wilkins, Roman Imperial Artillery
Familiar Caves and Unfamiliar Landscapes
Ethnoarchaeological and Historical Methods
Prestation Economy’
Smelting Iron from Laterite
Coastal Cosmologies
Forging networks and mixing ores
The Organisation and Practice of Metal Smithing in Later Bronze Age Europe
Magical Places
Unity and Diversity in the European Iron Age
Socio-semiotics and the symbiosis of humans, horses, and objects in later Iron Age Britain
Context, Continuity, Correspondence, and Continental Connections
Iron, Landscape and Power in Iron Age East Yorkshire
The Social Production of Iron in First Millennium Bc Ireland
Social Change and Metalworking in the Early Iron Age
Routine Magic, Mundane Ritual
Beyond Elites
Pottery and the Visual World at Early Iron Age Hascherkeller, Germany
Early ironworking in Iron Age South India
On the Curious Date of the Rylstone Log-Coffin Burial
Roman Failure
Crafters of Kingship
The Iron Age Mirror Burial at Pegsdon, Shillington, Bedfordshire
Tracing invisible hearths and daily routines through carbonised plant remains and geochemical signals in an Early Iron Age smithy at Pungrt Hillfort, Slovenia
The ephemerality of prominence
Iron in the Nordic Bronze Age and Early Pre-Roman Iron Age – Visibility, Colour Contrasts and Celestial Associations
The Metalworker as Social Agent
Coins and Cosmologies in Iron Age Western Britain
Forged by bones
Technology, ritual and Anglo-Saxon agriculture
Cultures of infancy and capital accumulation in pre-urban Mesopotamia
Copper mining and the transformation of environmental knowledge in Bronze Age Britain
Iron, gender, and power
Art And Agency
Craft and the Kingly Ideal
The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology
Different Bodies, Different Minds
The contemporary theory of metaphor
The cultural biography of things
Ulysses' Sail
Land, Kinship Relations and the Rise of Enclosed Settlement in First Millenium B.C. Britain
Iron Age ‘Currency Bars’
Pits, Preconceptions and Propitiation in the British Iron Age
Pit Clusters and the Temporality of Occupation
Cemeteries and Settlement Patterns of the Iron Age on the Yorkshire Wolds
Technology, transformation and symbolism
A discussion of magic and medicines in East African iron working
Role the bones – from iron to steel
The archaeological interpretation of prehistoric metalworking
The faerie smith meets the bronze industry
Biographical Objects
Iron Technology in East Africa
Other Times, Other Places
Creativity of Power
Metaphor and Material Culture
Metals in society
Material metaphors
Growing Metaphors
| Unique citing works | 36 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,89 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2026 (20) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 35 |