This book seeks to communicate to both a global and local audience the key attributes of
pre-industrial African metallurgy such as technological variation across space and time
methods of mining and extractive metallurgy and the fabrication of metal objects. These
processes were transformative in a physical and metaphoric sense which made them total social
facts. Because the production and use of metals was an accretion of various categories of
practice a chaine operatoire conceptual and theoretical framework that simultaneously
considers the embedded technological and anthropological factors was used. The book focuses on
Africa's different regions as roughly defined by cultural geography. On the one hand there is
North Africa Egypt the Egyptian Sudan and the Horn of Africa which share cultural
inheritances with the Middle East and on the other is Africa south of the Sahara and the Sudan
which despite interacting with the former is remarkably different in terms of technological
practice. For example not only is the timing of metallurgy different but so is the
infrastructure for working metals and the associated symbolic and sociological factors. The
cultural valuation of metals and the social positions of metal workers were different too
although there is evidence of some values transfer and multi-directional technological cross
borrowing. The multitude of permutations associated with metals production and use amply
demonstrates that metals participated in the production and reproduction of society. Despite
huge temporal and spatial differences there are so many common factors between African
metallurgy and that of other regions of the world. For example the role of magic and ritual in
metal working is almost universal be it in Bolivia Nepal Malawi Timna Togo or Zimbabwe.
Similarly techniques of mining were constrained by the underlying geology but this should not
in any way suggest that Africa's metallurgy was derivative or that thecontinent had no
initiative. Rather it demonstrates that when confronted with similar challenges humanity in
different regions of the world responded to identical challenges in predictable ways mediated
as mediated by the prevailing cultural context. The success of the use of historical and
ethnographic data in understanding variation and improvisation in African metallurgical
practices flags the potential utility of these sources in Asia Latin America and Europe. Some
nuance is however needed because it is simply naïve to assume that everything depicted in the
history or ethnography has a parallel in the past and vice versa. Rather the confluence of
archaeology history and ethnography becomes a pedestal for dialogue between different sources
subjects and ideas that is important for broadening our knowledge of global categories of
metallurgical practice.
