furnace, kiln or oven

A case study of a practical experimental test. Through 2019, much was made in the popular press suggesting that during the Viking Age, exhumed human bone had been used in the chain of production from iron ore through to finished swords. Contradicting this, considerable experience with small scale direct reduction process bloomery iron smelting furnaces indicated that at least while creating the iron itself...

This article presents an experimental archaeology project that aimed to reproduce the Hellenistic Greek pottery production process. The project's main research questions were focused on understanding how locally available raw materials and climatic conditions influenced the production process and how the process created social networks with the local community...

Culinary culture has played an essential role in the configuration and interaction of human societies throughout history, shaping both individual and collective identities. Like the modern Mediterranean diet, Phoenician-Punic subsistence relied on cereals, often in the form of...

This experiment, undertaken over a 12-month period in 2015 at Norton Priory Museum in Cheshire, formed part of a pedagogic case study and an experimental archaeology project. Here eight Archaeology and 12 Ceramics students from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) researched, built, and fired a tile kiln using evidence from previous experimental archaeology projects on the site and other firing projects...

During the Bronze Age in Crete, agriculture, pottery production, metallurgy, textiles, architectural feats, trade, and other specializations flourished. Throughout habitation on Crete, pottery production was an area of craftsmanship and practicality from the end of the Neolithic to Mycenean and Iron Age. This experiment, however, relates to the Late Minoan I period in the geographical region of Mochlos...

The main objective of the research is to deepen our knowledge of how Iron Age combustion structures worked and were used by protohistoric communities living in the western Mediterranean...

The bowl furnace has been a somewhat neglected topic in the early history of iron making, often overshadowed in experimental work by the shaft furnace. This assessment attempts to re-evaluate the position of the bowl furnace in early iron-making - firstly by looking at how it is regarded in scholarly literature, and secondly, through an experimental reconstruction programme...

A common theory is that copper smelting first appeared in the Near East in close connection with the early pottery industry. However, copper smelting may well have been discovered many times in history and at many places. Our hypothesis is that copper smelting could have been discovered when the copper-bearing mineral malachite, accidentally or intentionally, was present in lime-burning kilns...

The development of effective bloomery iron smelting has progressed over the past decades from the first repeated experiments into documented, effective, methods. This progression has primarily been the work of often isolated individuals, many with great practical experience as artisans, but most often with little formal academic training. The overall result is a patchwork of recording methods and descriptions...

The material record for bloomery furnaces in Iron Age and Roman Britain is fragmentary and, because of this paucity of evidence, the reconstruction of the ceramic structures used in iron production is difficult. Experiments have nevertheless been carried out to ...