HMS Day Meeting: 19th-century Ferrous Metallurgy, 18th April 2008

Venue
The spring day meeting of the Historical Metallurgy Society was held at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.

Organiser
The Day Meeting was organised by Anna Badcock
Email: a.badcock@sheffield.ac.uk.

Information
The spring workshop provided a forum to discuss recent and ongoing investigations into all aspects of archaeometallurgy. This year, the theme was 19th-century ironmaking. The development of coke blast furnaces into the early 19th century is quite well understood, but what about the archaeology and archaeometallurgy of hot blast, and particularly the massive 19th century development of the forge and foundry sectors - how do we best approach excavation and analysis on these sites? And how do we understand the often 'difficult' evidence that we uncover? 20-minute papers were presented, with plenty of time for general discussion about current approaches, new discoveries, scientific techniques, and archaeological fieldwork.

Due to a technical problem it was not possible to see David Cranstone's slides on the day. You can download an Adobe Acrobat file which contains both slides and texts from here.

You can download a poster.

Programme

Rod Mackenzie ARCUS
Time for a new paradigm - excavating large-scale metalworking sites

Paul Belford Ironbridge
Er... I wonder what all these brick flues are for? (and other questions)

Dan Atkinson Headland
The Govan Ironworks at Dixon's Blazes, Glasgow

Martin Stockwell YAT (to be confirmed)
Excavations at Saville St, Sheffield

Effie Photos-Jones
Excavations at Monklands, Lanarkshire

Helen Gomersall WYAAS
Whose idea was this, exactly? - Development Control Decisions and Iron-working sites

Chris Ball
Hawley Collection Beware of the pitfall! Some issues with historical & documentary sources

David Cranstone
Govan, Maesteg, Swalwell - different sites, same problems?