> Benoit Mille wrote:
>
> > But the Maghreb is missing. Does anybody know something on copper alloys
> > from the Maghreb at that period ?
>
> There is almost no data for the Maghreb for copper metallurgy in the Islamic
>
> period. My PhD student Martha Morgan is just beginning work on the iron and
> copper excavated from al-Basra (Morrocco, 6th-8th centuries AD) but has no
> chemical analyses yet.
>
> One can however infer something about the composition of Islamic copper
> alloys
> in North Africa from analyses conducted on materials from the Sahara and the
>
> Sahel. This applies especially to brasses, as to our knowledge brass was not
>
> made south of the Maghreb until the European colonial era. Indeed my PhD
> student Tom Fenn and I (following a suggestion originally made by Paul
> Craddock) are doing a systematic survey of copper alloys in well-excavated
> sites in the Sahel to date the beginnings of the trans-Saharan caravan trade
>
> between the Maghreb and the Sahel.. We have made electron microprobe
> analyses
> of about 100 pieces so far, most from Senegal and Mali, but also a few
> pieces
> from Niger (excavations of Grebenart at Marandet) and Burkina Faso
> (excavations of Breunig). Tom will also be doing lead isotope analyses of
> many of these pieces.
>
> We can't release this data yet, but you can find published analyses in the
> following:
>
> C. Vanacker (1979) Tegdaoust II: Recherches sur Audaghost. Fouille d'un
> quartier artisanal. Nouakchott: Institut Mauritanien de la Recherche
> Scientifique.
>
> L. Garenne-Marot (1993) Archeologie d'un Metal: Le Cuivre en Senegambie
> entre
> le X et le XIV siecle. Universite de Paris I: These pour le Nouveau
> Doctorat. (Excuse lack of accents)
>
> Be aware in using these data that the chronological placement of many of
> these
> artefacts is open to question. French archaeologists working on the Islamic
> era in Africa have usually excavated by horizontal rather than natural
> levels and have failed to develop coherent pottery sequences that might aid
> them in dating levels and in recognizing disturbed areas. This is a major
> problem with the Tegdaoust material, and also with the important site of
> Sincu
> Bara (Sinthiou Bara) in Senegal - to which Thilo Rehren gave you a reference
>
> earlier. Many of the copper alloys from Sincu Bara that were analysed by
> Garenne-Marot come from an area of the site that was massively disturbed.
> Subsequent stratigraphic excavations provide a revised chronology - see
> S.K.
> McIntosh and H. Bocoum, New perspectives on Sincu Bara, a first millennium
> site in the Senegal Valley, African Archaeological Review 17(1):1-44, 2000.
>
> Dave Killick
>
>
>