Technology and Culture

A daptation of Technology to C ulture andzyxwvutsrqpo E nvironm ent: Bloom ery Iron Sm elting in A m erica and A frica ROBERT B. GORDON AND DAVID J. KILLICK While technology always must be practiced in accord with the principles of physics and chemistry and with the natural resources available, there is usually sufficient latitude within these constraints for a given technique to be carried out in quite different ways to meet the goals of practitioners in different cultures. These goals will reflect values and preferences in the society where the technique is used. Often, these values and preferences are not explicit, and one way of discovering them is by studying the organization and practice of technology.1 When we want to compare technological accomplish­ ments in different cultures, or even at different times within our own culture, we need to take into account the intentions of the practitio­ ners since these may be quite different from those that we take for granted. Techniques that were actually sophisticated adaptations to a Dr . Go r d o n is at Kline Geology Laboratory, Yale University, and Dr . Kil l ic k is at the Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona. They thank Ross Allen, James Dawson, Morris Glenn, Gordon Pollard, and Richard Ward for making the results of their researches on the Adirondack bloomeries available, providing specimens, and arranging field trips, and Richard S. Allen for donating his extensive, well-documented collection of slag samples from New York State. Dr. Killick thanks Felix Msamba for conducting and translating the interviews with former ironworkers in Malawi and the Malawi Government Departments of Antiquities and of National Parks and Wildlife for their generous assistance. Field work in Malawi was supported in part by grant-in-aid 4263 of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, by Dissertation Improvement Grant BNS-8218416 of the National Science Foundation, and by a research grant from the Yale University Concilium on International and Area Studies. Laboratory research, field work in the Adirondacks, and preparation of this article were supported by grant DIR-880270 from the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the National Science Foundation. 'Anglo-American social anthropologists have, with few exceptions, failed to appre­ ciate that technology can be an excellent source of information about systems of beliefs and values. Much of the literature in this field is in French; for prominent examples, see A.-G. Haudricourt, La technology, science hum aine: Recherches d’histoire et d’ethnologie des techniques (Paris, 1988); and articles in the journal Techniques et culture.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3402-0003$01.00 243 244 hgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPON Robert B. G ordon and D avid J. K illick given physical and cultural setting may be dismissed as “primitive” by observers from other times or other cultures who have not discovered the practitioners’ objectives. In this article we focus on a technique that has been practiced in many different cultures over a long period of time. Bloomery smelting, the reduction of iron ore directly to solid metal with charcoal to make wrought iron, was in continuous use from the early second millennium b .c . until the middle of the 20th century. Bloomeries were operated on all the inhabited continents, with the possible exception of Australia.2 Almost from the time it was first used, iron has been a “people’s metal,” made for utilitarian purposes rather than as a symbol of wealth, power, or privilege. Iron metallurgy is a “sustaining technology,” that is, one that is fundamental to the subsistence of the members of the societies that possess it. The study of sustaining technologies gives us a more representative sample of the interplay of cultural and technical factors in a society than does the study of techniques such as glassmaking, bronze casting, and fine ceramics, where knowledge was often restricted to a small elite and their artisans. Bloom smelting is a difficult process to execute because specific chemical and physical conditions must be met if metallic iron is to be made. It is particularly interesting for cultural comparisons because the necessary conditions can be attained through...