One or two points re Gromp,


Carl did not coin the term, it has been running about in the literature
for more than 15 years, Elizabet Nosek certainly used in the title of 
her paper for the Poland conference back in the early 1990's or perhaps
earlier. 

Secondly, I would like to reinforce Lee Saunders point.

	There is, I suspect, a lot more gromp around on early 
iron-working site than has been recorded. As some of my co-workers 
will know I have been using a small hand-held metal detector to survey 
all the metallurgical debris that comes my way. Using this, I have 
found that many of the lumps of what could have been hard-pan or 
bog-iron ore turned out to be gromp type material. This is only the 
material that has got as far a the labs. 

	Knowing the excavation conditions and soil types of these 
sites, the material recovered must have only been the tip of the anvil.
Most commercial excavations do have a not very good recovering 
rate for small scale debris, especially when it is the same colour and 
texture as the soil. Most of it comes from the sieved soil samples.

The recovery rates have been particular high on Post-Roman sites, where
the material has ranged from low carbon iron, through eutectoid steel 
to grey cast iron. May be this was because they were not returning the 
material to the furnace, or it may be to do with the way that the iron 
produciton site was orginally organized (the lack of separate smelting, 
fettling, and bloom forging areas on these small scale produciton 
site), or the way the excavation was organized.

	Another factor is the rate of corrosion of the material, as it 
often has higher carbon contents than the 'normal' metal together 
with a higher surface to volume ratio to bloom or artefact, it will 
tend to corroded very much faster than normal. Hence much of this 
material, if not returned to the furnace will return to ore. I seem to 
remember that Peter Crew was worry about a funny sort of flat irregular
slag from Bryn y Castell which did not fit in with any of the other 
sorts of material, eventually it was decided that this on the basis of 
the few crystals of iron remaining that this was gromp. 


Few archaeologists have the time to excavate iron-working and 
production sites as throughly as the Crews. But, the only way that we 
will get answer to questions such as what happened to gromp and other 
types of debris is by careful excavation of wide areas of the whole 
site, together with significant sampling rates of all relevant 
contexts, and then time to think and experiment. However, such an 
approach run counter to the present trends in archaeology, where costs 
have to be reduced to a minimum (see the IFA debate on Britarch). 
Even academic excavations seem to be under similar pressures, with the 
excavators 'hacking' through metal-working areas assuming that the 
speciallist will be able to reconstruct what was going on from an 
arbitary sample, having never seen the relevant contexts. Whereaas, 
when the speciallist are called on site, they can often provide 
information that will aid the excavator, often revealing features and 
artefacts that had been missed.

-------------------
microprobe
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