In an article to !arch-metals, dated Sat, 14 Nov 1998, 17:21:14, David J
Killick <[log in to unmask]> writes
> No archaeological evidence of bellows
>was recovered by Schmidt's team. The only set of bellows from a
>archaeological site in sub-Saharan Africa that I know of is a set of
clay
>bellows pots recovered in situ from a furnace excavated by Peter
Shinnie
>at Meroe, and dated, I believe, to the 4th century AD.
I am surprised to hear from you that the Tanzanian bellows were wooden,
a point I am ashamed to have missed in reading Schmidt's book. Obviously
such bellows would leave hardly any archaeological trace, especially in
the tropics. I have seen numerous clay bellows pots, both in literature
and in museums in Zimbabwe, where they are still used in remote areas
for forging imported iron, so I am surprised that you quote only Meroe.
Pottery from the earliest sites which include pottery in Zimbabwe and
Gauteng, SA, include bellows, with their characteristic outlet jets,
showing that iron technology "arrived", whether by migration or
diffusion, around the same time as pottery. Dating of this event is very
unreliable, but may have been anywhere between 500BC and 500AD, so one
would expect to see clay pot bellows in East Africa in earlier
centuries.
--
Mike Yates Frome Somerset England
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