User:GenevieveRobinson

Historical Context
Metals and metal working had been known to the people of modern Italy since the Bronze Age. By 86 BC, Rome had already expanded to control an immense expanse of the Mediterranean. This included nine provinces radiating from Italy to its islands, Spain, Macedonia, Africa, Asia, and Greece, and by the end of the Emperor Constantine’s death, the Roman Empire had grown further to encompass parts of Britain, Egypt, Germany, Dacia, Noricum, Judea, Armenia, and Thrace (Shepard 1993). As the empire grew, so did its need for metals.

Central Italy itself was not rich in metal ores, leading to necessary trade networks in order to meet the demand for metal from the Republic. Early Italians had some access to metals in the northern regions of the peninsula in Tuscany and Cisalpine Gaul, as well as the islands Elba and Sardinia. With the conquest of Eturia in 275 BC and the subsequent acquisitions due to the Punic Wars, Rome had the ability to stretch further into Transalpine Gaul and Iberia, both areas rich in minerals. At the height of the Roman Empire, Rome exploited mineral resources from Tingitana in north western Africa to Egypt, Arabia to North Armenia, Galatia to Germania, and Britannia to Iberia, encompassing all of the Mediterranean coast. Britannia, Iberia, Dacia, and Noricum were of special significance, as they were very rich in deposits and became major sites of resource exploitation(Shepard 1993). .

There is evidence that after the middle years of the Empire there was a sudden and steep decline in mineral extraction. This was mirrored in other trades and industries, and the economic decline appears to have been penultimate to the Fall of Rome itself. While many theories have been made about what ultimately lead to the dissolution of the Roman Empire, it was more likely a combination of many factors, including: restlessness of ‘barbarian’ people on the peripheries, faults in administration of outer provinces, and increased taxation of provinces to fund decadence in Rome itself(Shepard, 1993).

Metal Types Used
The first metal artefacts that archaeologists have identified have not been tools or weapons, but used in ornamental functions such as jewellery and other objects which denote wealth and prestige. These early metal objects were made of the softer metals; copper, gold, and lead in particular, as the metals themselves could be crushed to beneficiate the metal, hammered into sheets,  and softened by minimal heat (Craddock, 1995). While technology did advance to the point of creating surprisingly pure coppers, most ancient metals are in fact alloys. Alloys are the synthesis at the molecular level of metals. It is important to note that an ore does not necessarily constitute an alloy; ore is a collection of minerals and alloyed metals. As metallurgical technology developed (hammering, melting, smelting, roasting, cupellation, moulding, smithing, etc.), more metals were intentionally included in the metallurgical repertoire. By the height of the Roman Empire, metals in use included: Gold, Silver, Copper, Tin, Lead, Zinc, Iron, Mercury, Arsenic, Antimony (Healy 1978). As in the Bronze Age, metals were used based on many physical properties: aesthetics, hardness, colour, taste/smell (for cooking wares), timbre (instruments), aversion to corrosion, weight, and countless other factors. Many alloys were also possible, and were intentionally made in order to change the properties of the metal e.g. the alloy of predominately tin with lead would harden the soft tin, allowing for a lead pewter which would prove its usefulness as cooking and tableware.

Sources of Ore
See Table: Sources of Ore. Iberia or modern Spain was one of if not the richest Roman province in case of mineral ore from around the first century BC (Healy 1978). Containing deposits of the more widely utilised metals (Gold, Silver, Copper, Tin, Lead, Iron, and even Mercury), it was extremely wealthy in resources. The Romans realised this, and there is evidence of large scale mining and processing in the region. From its acquisition during the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome, Iberia continued to produce a significant amount of Roman metals (Healy 1978, Shepard 1993).

Similarly, Britannia was also very rich in metals. Significant studies have been made on the iron production of Roman-Britain; iron use in Europe was popularised by the Romans, so there is a tendency to believe that the technique used in Britain was not natively discovered, but part of the exchange of ideas between the cultures through Roman occupation (Aitchison, 1960). It was the importance placed on iron by the Romans throughout the Empire which finished the shift from the few cultures still using primarily bronze into the Iron Age.

Noricum is the ancient site of modern Austria. Exceedingly rich in gold and iron ore, Pliny, Strabo, and Ovid all lauded its bountiful deposits. Iron was its main commodity, but alluvial gold was also prospected. The province itself had be assimilated into the {{Roman empire|Empire]] through prolonged peaceful contact from 181 BC when the Romans colonised Aquileia, a major trading centre between the two nations. By 15 BC, Noricum was officially made a province of the Empire, and the metal trade saw prosperity well into the fifth century AD (Shepard 1993, Healy 1978). Some scholars believe that the art of iron forging was not necessarily created, but well developed in this area and it was the population of Noricum which reminded Romans of the usefulness of iron (Aitchison, 1960). For example, of the three forms of iron (wrought iron, steel, and soft), the forms which were exported were of the wrought iron (containing a small percentage of uniformly distributed slag material) and steel (carbonised iron) categories, as pure iron is to soft to function like wrought or steel iron (Sim 1999, Aitchison 1960). Dacia, located in the area of Transylvania, was conquered in 107 AD in order to capture the resources of the region for Rome. The amount of gold that came into Roman possession actually brought down the value of gold (Shepard 1993). Iron was also of importance to the region. Taken by military might, the unfortunate difference between the mines of Noricum and Dacia was the presence of a slave population as a workforce. However, nearly two centuries after the conquest of Dacia, the Romans withdrew and the people, having adapted to the Roman culture, continued in a version of Romanisation (Shepard 1993).

Technology
The earliest metal manipulation was probably hammering (Craddock 1995, 1999), where copper ore was pounded into thin sheets. Beneficiation, or the process of ’making better’ could be carried out on the ore (if there were large enough pieces of metal separate from mineral) or after melting, where the prills of metal could be hand picked from the cooled slag. Melting beneficiated metal also allowed early metallurgists to use moulds and casts to form shapes of molten metal (Craddock 1995). Many of the metallurgical skills developed in the Bronze Age were still in use during the Roman times. Melting--the process of using heat to separate slag and metal, Smelting--using a reduced oxygen heated environment to separate metal oxides into metal and carbon dioxide, Roasting--process of using an oxygen rich environment to isolate sulphur oxide from metal oxide which can then be smelted, Casting--pouring liquid metal into a mould to make an object, Hammering--using blunt force to make a thin sheet which can be annealed or shaped, and Cupellation--separating metal alloys to isolate a specific metal--were all techniques which were well understood (Zwicker 1985, Tylecote 1962, Craddock 1995). However, the Romans provided few new technological advances other than the use of iron and the cupellation and granulation in the separation of gold alloys (Tylecote 1962).

While native gold does occur naturally without the inclusion of mineral content, the ore itself normally will have small amounts of silver and/copper within. The Romans utilised a sophisticated system to separate these precious metals. The use of cupellation, a process developed before the rise of Rome, would extract copper from gold and silver, or an alloy called electrum. In order to separate the gold and silver, however, the Romans would granulate the alloy by pouring the liquid, molten metal into cold water, and then smelt the granules with salt, separating the gold from the chemically altered silver chloride (Tylecote 1962).

While Roman production became standardised in many ways, the evidence for distinct unity of furnace types is not strong, alluding to a tendency of the peripheries continuing with their own past furnace technologies. In order to complete some of the more complex metallurgical techniques, there is a bare minimum of necessary components for Roman metallurgy: metallic ore, furnace of unspecified type with a form of oxygen source (assumed by Tylecote to be bellows) and a method of restricting said oxygen (a lid or cover), a source of fuel (charcoalvia wood or occasionally peat), moulds and/or hammers and anvils for shaping, the use of crucibles for isolating metals (Zwicker 1985), and likewise cupellation hearths (Tylecote 1962).

Production of Objects
Romans used many methods to create metal objects. Like Samian ware, moulds were created by making a model of the desired shape (whether through wood, wax, or metal), which would then be pressed into a clay mould. In the case of a metal or wax model, once dry, the ceramic could be heated and the wax or metal melted until it could be poured from the mould] (this process utilising [[wax is called the “lost wax“ technique). By pouring metal into the aperture, exact copies of an object could be cast.  This process made the creation of a line of objects quite uniform.  This is not to suggest that the creativity of individual artisans did not continue; rather, unique handcrafted pieces were normally the work of small, rural metalworkers on the peripheries of Rome using local techniques(Tylecote 1962).

There is archaeological evidence throughout the Empire demonstrating the large scale excavations, smelting, and trade routes concerning metals. With the Romans came the concept of mass production; this is arguably the most important aspect of Roman influence in the study of Metallurgy. Three particular objects produced en mass and seen in the archaeological record throughout the Roman Empire are brooches called fibulae, worn by both men and women (Bayley 2004), coins, and ingots (Hughes 1980). These cast objects can allow archaeologists to trace years of communication, trade, and even historic/stylistic changes throughout the centuries of Roman power.

Social Ramifications
Slavery When the cost of producing slaves became too high to justify slave labourers many mines throughout the empire around the second century, a system of indentured servitude was introduced for convicts. In 369 AD a law was reinstated due to the closure of many deep mines; Hadrian had previously given the control of mines to private employers, so that workers were hired rather than working out of force. Through the institution of this system profits increased (Shepard 1993). In the case of Noricum, there is archaeological evidence of freemen labour in the metal trade and extraction through graffiti on mine walls. As a province, many men were given Roman citizenship for their efforts contributing to the procurement of metal] for the [[Empire.  Both privately owned and government run mines were in operation simultaneously (Shepard 1993).

Economy From the formation of the Roman Empire, Rome was an almost completely closed economy, not reliant on imports save the odd exotic prestige item. The resources needed to sustain the Roman Empire were internally found; however, the empire still supported trade with foreign non-Roman cultures (Shepard 1993). Through the recovery of Roman coins and ingots throughout the ancient world (Hughes 1980), metallurgy has supplied the archaeologist with material culture through which to see the expanse of the Roman world.