Advances in Archaeomaterials最新文献

Brass, which appears golden in color, used to be a valuable alloy in ancient times. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Chinese used special furnaces to smelt zinc for minting and exporting to overseas in large quantities. Archeological findings have revealed the overall structure of the zinc smelting furnaces at the Tongmuling site during the Qing Dynasty. In this study, computational fluid dynamics software was employed to simulate airflow fields within a furnace. Consequently, we observed that airflows were concentrated at the center of the lower chamber, after which they dispersed into the upper chamber through ceramic pads and finally were evenly distributed between the retorts. Increasing furnace height and improving thermal convection in the lower chamber helped increase the furnace temperature. The ceramic pads adjusted the airflow to ensure that temperature distribution in the upper chamber was uniform, and they supported burning in the upper chamber by preventing collapse. Compared with the heap smelting process recorded in Heavenly Creations and the large crucible furnaces used in modern times, zinc smelting furnaces at the Tongmuling site possess a unique structure. They serve as a link between preceding and subsequent technologies, offering important evidence for exploring the development of ancient Chinese zinc smelting technologies.

Scholars in a wide range of disciplines are interested in the casting techniques used to create the extraordinary bronze objects unearthed from the two pits of the Sanxingdui site. Although researchers have carried out a number of studies on this topic, many technical details remain unclear. This paper offers the first examination of bronze objects from the Sanxingdui site using industrial computed tomography (CT) and provides direct evidence for interpretation of the complicated casting process involved. We show that multiple pouring and various joining techniques were widely used during the casting of bronze objects from the Sanxingdui pits. The precast parts were mechanically connected with one another by the later pouring, which was the crucial technique for the casting of complicated objects. Representative features include the cast-on cramp device of the sun-shaped objects and the tenon connection with dowel found inside many branches of the bronze trees. This paper also describes evidence of core rods made of different materials, which is the earliest example of this technique in ancient China.

This paper assesses the relationship between metallurgy and social change in prehistoric Thailand. One model proposes that for about 15 centuries after circa 2000 BCE, peaceful village communities, being acquainted with copper-base metallurgy through contact with northern stimuli, cast small personal ornaments with little if any innovations in casting technology or social change. The introduction of iron likewise had little social impact. A recent review of three volumes proposing this paradigm supports it while criticizing an alternative, which sees the advent of bronze technology as a direct stimulus to the rise of states. Based on hundreds of new radiocarbon determinations that reveal that the first copper-base axes and ornaments date to circa 1100–1000 BCE, this paper describes how the first copper-base implements and ornaments coincided with a rapid rise of socially elite aggrandizers living at the choke point of a natural exchange route. But this lasted for only six to eight generations, with no enduring social impact. Nor did iron per se engender social change. Rather, a nexus of interacting stimuli involving climate change and an agricultural revolution led to the rapid rise of early states.

The wealth and diversity of decoration on Greek pottery continues to attract science-based attention. The availability of increasingly powerful analytical techniques has allowed the nature of the decoration to be investigated in ever-finer detail, down to the nano-particle level. Such work has gone hand in hand with replication experiments ranging from sourcing raw materials to experimental firing. As a result, there is a fuller understanding of the many material and other factors controlling the quality of a range of painted or coloured decorations, most notably black gloss, seen to best effect in the Black and Red Figure–style vases of Attic potters-painters in the sixth to fourth centuries BC. Light has also been shed on the manner in which a few of these craftspeople adapted established techniques to give special effects.

Reviewing the progress made on the decoration and firing of several pottery classes as well as other ceramics, such as terracotta figurines, this paper places this information into context in two ways. On the one hand, it covers the corresponding evidence for the decoration and firing of pottery of the Greek Neolithic and Bronze Age to chart diachronically the craft's technological development. On the other hand, it considers recent archaeological evidence for ceramic production.

The bodies of 12 examples of imperial yellow Chinese porcelain dating from the early sixteenth century to the early twentieth century have been studied by atomic absorption spectroscopy. The yellow lead glaze was reserved for imperial use, and these fine monochrome porcelains played important roles in imperial rites at the summer solstice and as court wares within Beijing's Forbidden City. The project's aim has been to understand more fully the technologies used to make imperial yellow porcelains, which were significant ceramics in the history and culture of imperial China.

This paper concerns the porcelain body material, particularly the nature and use of Jingdezhen's two prime body materials — porcelain stone (cishi) and kaolin (gaoling). The 12 samples studied span four centuries of imperial porcelain production and include a major change in kaolin usage at Jingdezhen in the early seventeenth century, when the proportions of kaolin used in fine porcelain bodies rose abruptly from some 20% to 50%. This study explores the natures of both prepared rocks and looks particularly at kaolin, about which some long-standing problems remain.

The earliest cast iron in China dates to the 8th century BC and pre-dates the earliest European evidence by about two millennia. The invention of cast iron smelting is closely related to the pre-existing and contemporary technologies of casting bronze and firing ceramics as well as the social and political context of early 1st millennium BC China. A series of early iron smelting furnaces were surveyed, excavated, and scientifically analysed. However, in order to understand how cast iron was initially produced, the evidence from one of the earliest production sites was digitally simulated. This modelling allowed different potential methods for the underlying production technology to be evaluated. The explanation for the invention of cast iron lies both in borrowing and developing of techniques found in other contemporary pyrotechnologies as well as a contemporary systemic philosophical approach.

The article is devoted to the Chinese mirrors found in the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia. The typology and chronology of mirrors is presented, the earliest of which dates back to the period of the Warring States, but most of them, dating back to the 1st century BC – 2nd century AD. In the complexes of the second half of the 1st century BC – the first half of the 1st century AD the number of Chinese items in Asiatic Sarmatia is increasing. They are represented, among others, by two mirrors of the Western Han type, which come from the Lower Volga and Don regions; they are not known in the South Urals. In the complexes of the second half of the 1st– the first half of the 2nd century AD the Chinese mirrors are much more common. As before, they are not known in the Urals, but they are also represented in the Kuban and Lower Volga, and especially in the Lower Don region. In the burials of the late Sarmatian period of the late 2nd – middle / second half of the 3rd century AD Chinese mirrors are relatively abundant in the Urals, where the mapping of finds allows us to distinguish two local groups (1 – South Urals: Lebedevka and burial grounds in the Ilek river basin; 2 - South Bashkiria, interfluve of the Sakmara and the Urals rivers, and the Trans-Urals), while further to the west – in the Lower Volga and Don regions, they generally ceased to fall, only two mirrors are known outside the South Urals – in Trans-Kuban and Central Ciscaucasia. The issue of deliberate damage to mirrors is specially considered.

Is it possible to consider the Chinese bronze mirrors as trade items? If we assume that they belonged to the items of trade along the Silk Road, then two conclusions following from the dating of the finds should be taken into consideration. Firstly, these mirrors were not distributed to the ancient centers of the North Pontic area and further to the territory of the Roman provinces. Thus, the way of the mirrors ended in the steppe. Moreover, starting from the second half of the 2^nd century AD (late Sarmatian culture) Chinese mirrors cease to fall to the west of the Urals – their finds are unknown neither in the Lower Volga region, nor on the Don. This means that the connection between the distribution of the Chinese mirrors and the functioning of the northern branch of the Silk Road is unlikely.