Hi Matt,

There is a great deal of historical evidence from Mesopotamia documenting the routine recycling of metals in the 3^rd and 2^nd millennia BC. Moorey (Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries 1994) talks about the subject, and his 1971 study in the journal Iraq of the Loftus Hoard is a good example of the way old (and new) tools and implements were collected for re-use or recycling. Richard Zettler has also discussed similar evidence in two works:

 

Zettler, R.L. (1990) Metalworkers in the economy of Mesopotamia in the late third millennium BC. In Economy and Settlement in the Near East: Analyses of Ancient Sites and Materials (ed. N.F. Miller) MASCA research Papers in Science and Archaeology Volume 7.

 

Also pages 227-230 in R.L. Zettler, The Ur III Temple of Inanna at Nippur, BBVO 11, Dietrich Riemer, Berlin.

 

See also K. Reiter, 1999, Metals and Metallurgy in the Old Babylonian Period, in The Beginnings of Metallurgy (ed. A Hauptmann et al.)

 

There are lots of sources on this topic – these refs should give you a start.

 

Cheers,

Lloyd

 

 

Dear All,

 

I am collecting evidence; archaeological, metallurgical and ethnographic, for (or against) recycling of copper-alloys in antiquity.  I would be grateful for any suggestions of papers etc. that list-members may know of.

 

Dr. Matthew Ponting FSA

Lecturer in Science-based Archaeology

School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology

University of Liverpool

Hartley Building

LIVERPOOL L69 3GS

 

0151-794-4393

 

http://www.liv.ac.uk/sace/organisation/people/ponting.htm