Michael Weinert wrote:

>      My experience as a field archaeologist includes both this site and 19th c. farm sites here in the U.S..   My experience with slag is limited to recording the weights of all slag in a given unit's respective levels and discarding them.  By comparison with the forge areas on early 19th c. U.S. farm sites I've seen the area identified to me as a forge seems rather ephemeral.   Slag is found in various amounts throughout the site.  It has only been recorded in a subjective manner regarding it's presence and relative quanitity.  But I can recognize that there are more than one type of slag here, the more common containing plenty of iron oxides and the other being smoother, somewhat grey and relatively much less iron oxides.  So I think we might do something more here with the study of this technology.  The discovery last season of an ingot on the site has me wondering if a forge has actually yet to be located.
>      Can you refer me to another work that might get  me started on the study of slag?

If you have not already done so you should at least look at:

Gordon, Robert B.
 1982 The metallurgical museum of Yale college and nineteenth century ferrous metallurgy in New England.  Journal of Metals (JOM) 34:26-33.  The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, Warrendale, PA.
 1983 Materials for manufacturing: the response of the Connecticut iron industry to limited resources and technological change.  Technology and Culture 24:602-34.
 1988 Strength and structure of wrought iron.  Archeomaterials 2:109-137.
 1992 Industrial Archeology of American Iron and Steel.  IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, Vol. 18(1&2):5-18.  The Society for Industrial Archeology, NMAH, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
 1995 Material Evidence of Ironmaking Techniques.  IIA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, Vol. 21(2):69-80.  The Society for Industrial Archeology, Houghton, MI.
 1996 American Iron 1607-1900.  The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.
 1997 Process Deduced From Ironmaking Wastes and Artifacts.  Journal of archaeological Science 24:9-18.  Academic Press Limited, London, New York, and San Francisco.

Rostoker, William and Bennet Bronson
 1990 Pre-Industrial Iron: Its Technology and Ethnology.  Archeomaterials Monograph No. 1, Philadelphia.

Cleere, Henry, David Crossley, Bernard Worssam, and The Wealden Iron Research Group
 1995 The Iron Industry of the Weald.  2nd Edition, edited by Jeremy Hodgkinson.  Merton Priory Press, Cardiff.

Tylecote, R. F.
 1962 Metallurgy in Archaeology: A Prehistory of Metallurgy in the British Isles. Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., London.
 1986 The Prehistory of Metallurgy in the British Isles.  The Institute of Metals, London.
 1987 The early history of metallurgy in Europe.  Longman, London and New york.

There are also lots of articles in Historical Metallurgy that you might want to look at.

JH Brothers IV





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