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The topic Iron metallurgy in preindustrial sub-Saharan Africa encompasses both studies of the technology and archaeology of indigenous iron production, and also an understanding of the role that iron production played in African societies before European colonization of the subcontinent. == Archaeological evidence for the origins and spread of iron production in Africa == Although the origins of iron working in Africa have been the subject of scholarly interest since the 1860s, it is still not known whether this technology diffused into sub-Saharan Africa from the Mediterranean region, or whether it was invented there quite independently of iron working elsewhere.〔Alpern, S. B. (2005) Did they or didn’t they invent it? Iron in sub-Saharan Africa. ''History in Africa'' 32:41-94.〕 Although some nineteenth-century European scholars favored an indigenous invention of iron working in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeologists writing between 1945 and 1965 mostly favored diffusion of iron smelting technology from Carthage across the Sahara to West Africa, or from Meroe on the upper Nile to central Africa, or both.〔van der Merwe, N. J. 1980. The advent of iron in Africa. In ''The Coming of the Age of Iron'', eds. T. S. Wertime, J.D. Muhly, pp. 463-506. New Haven: Yale University Press.〕 The invention of radiocarbon dating in the late 1950s made it possible to date metallurgical sites in sub-Saharan Africa (since the fuel used for smelting and forging was always charcoal) and by the late 1960s some surprisingly early radiocarbon dates had been obtained for iron smelting sites in both Nigeria and central Africa (Rwanda, Burundi). This led some scholars to state that iron was independently invented in sub-Saharan Africa〔Trigger, B. G. (1969). The myth of Meroe and the African Iron Age. ''International Journal of African Historical Studies'' 2 :23-50.〕〔Diop, C.A. (1976). L’usage du fer en Afrique. ''Nyame Akuma'' 53:93-95.〕 These conclusions were premature, for there was no firm evidence at that time for the antiquity of ironworking in either Carthage or Meroe. Evidence of early Phoenician iron smelting in the western Mediterranean (900-800 BCE) was not found until the 1990s〔Descoeudres, E. Huysecom, V. Serneels and J.-L. Zimmermann (editors) (2001) ''The Origins of Iron Metallurgy: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on The Archaeology of Africa and the Mediterranean Basin/Aux Origines de la Métallurgie du Fer: Actes de la Première Table Ronde Internationale d’Archéologie (L’Afrique et le Bassin Méditerranéen''). Special Issue of the journal ''Mediterranean Archaeology'' (volume 14)〕 and it is still not known when iron working was first practiced in Kush and Meroe in modern Sudan. From the mid-1970s there were new claims for independent invention of iron smelting on central Niger〔Quéchon, G. and J.-P. Roset (1974). Prospection archéologique du massif du Termit (Niger). Cahiérs ORSTOM, Série Sciences Humaines 11:85-104.〕〔Grébénart, D. (1985). ''La Region d'In Gall-Tegidda n Tesemt (Niger), Programme Archéologique d'Urgence 1977–1981. II: Le Néolithique Final et les Débuts de la Métallurgie.'' Niamey: Institut de Récherches en Sciences Humaines (Études Nigeriennes, no. 49).〕〔Paris, F., A. Person, G. Quéchon and J.-F. Saliège (1992). Les débuts de la métallurgie au Niger septentrional (Aïr, Azawagh, Ighazer, Termit). Journal de la Société des Africanistes 62:55-68.〕 and from 1994–1999 UNESCO funded an initiative "Les Routes du Fer en Afrique/The Iron Routes in Africa" to investigate the origins and spread of iron metallurgy in Africa. This funded both the conference on early iron in Africa and the Mediterranean〔Descoeudres at al. 2001 (above)〕 and a volume, published by UNESCO, that has generated much controversy because it included only authors sympathetic to the view that iron was independently invented in Africa.〔Bocoum, H. (ed.) 2004 ''The Origins of Iron Metallurgy in Africa: New Light on Its Antiquity – West and Central Africa''. Geneva:UNESCO〕 Two major reviews of the evidence were published in the mid-2000s.〔Killick, D.J. (2004) Review Essay. What do we know about African iron working? ''Journal of African Archaeology'' 2(1):97-112.〕〔Alpern 2005 (above)〕 Both authors concluded that there were major technical flaws in each of the studies claiming independent invention. Three major issues were identified. The first was whether the material dated by radiocarbon was in secure archaeological association with iron-working residues. (Many of the dates from Niger, for example, were on organic matter in potsherds that were lying on the ground surface together with iron objects). The second issue is the possible effect of "old carbon" - wood or charcoal much older than the time at which iron was smelted. This is a particular problem in Niger, where the charred stumps of ancient trees are a potential source of charcoal, and have sometimes been mis-identified as smelting furnaces. A third issue is the inherent lack of precision of the radiocarbon method itself in the range from 800 to 400 BC, which is attributable to irregular production of radiocarbon in the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately most radiocarbon dates for the initial spread of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa fall within this range. Controversy flared again with the publication of excavations by Étienne Zangato and colleagues of their excavations in the Central African Republic.〔Zangato, E. (2007) ''Les Ateliers d’Oboui: Premières Communautés Métallurgistes dans le Nord-Ést du Centrafrique''. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations (ERC).〕〔Zangato, E. and Holl, A.F.C. (2010) ‘On the iron front: new evidence from Central Africa’, Journal of African Archaeology 8:7-23.〕 At the site of Oboui they excavated an undated iron forge, for which they obtained eight consistent radiocarbon dates of 2000 BC. This would make Oboui the oldest iron working site in the world, and more than a thousand years older than any other dated evidence of iron in Central Africa. Opinion among African archaeologists is sharply divided. Some accept this interpretation, but it has also been suggested that Oboui is a highly disturbed site, with older charcoal having been brought up to the level of the forge by the digging of pits into older levels 〔Clist, B. (2012) Vers une réduction des prejugés et la fonte des antagonisms: un bilan de l’expansion de la métallurgie du fer en Afrique sud-Saharienne, ''Journal of African Archaeology'' 10:71-84.〕 Questions have also been raised about the unusually good state of preservation of metallic iron from the site.〔Pringle, H. 2009. Seeking Africa's first iron men. ''Science'' 323:200-202.〕 In summary, there is no proof that iron working technology was taken across the Sahara into sub-Saharan Africa; nor is there proof of independent invention. Given the multitude of potential problems with radiocarbon dating in the first millennium BC, archaeologist trying to date the earliest African metallurgy need to make routine use of luminescence dating of the baked clay from smelting furnaces. Even though the origin(s) of iron smelting are difficult to date by radiocarbon, there are fewer problems with using it to track the spread of ironworking after 400 BC. In the 1960s it was suggested that iron working was spread by speakers of Bantu languages, the original homeland of which has been located by linguists in the Benue River valley of eastern Nigeria and Western Cameroon. It has been since been shown that no words for iron or ironworking can be traced to reconstructed proto-Bantu,〔de Maret, P and F. Nsuka (1977) History of Bantu metallurgy: some linguistic aspects. ''History in Africa'' 4:43-65〕 so clearly metallurgy was acquired long after the original dispersal of Bantu-speakers. The linguist Christopher Ehret argues that the first words for iron-working in Bantu languages were borrowed from Central Sudanic languages, probably somewhere in the vicinity of modern Uganda and Kenya,〔Ehret, C. (2000) The establishment of iron-working in Eastern, Central and South Africa: linguistic Inferences on technological history. ''Sprache ind Geschichte in Afrika'' 16/7:125-176.〕 while Jan Vansina〔Vansina, J. (2006) Linguistic evidence for the introduction of ironworking into Bantu-speaking Africa. History in Africa 33: 321-361.〕 argues instead that they originated in non-Bantu languages in Nigeria, and that iron metallurgy spread southwards and eastwards to speakers of Bantu languages, which had already dispersed into the Congo rainforest and into the Great Lakes region. Whichever of these interpretations is correct, the archaeological evidence clearly indicates that iron and cereal agriculture (millet and sorghum) spread together from southern Tanzania and northern Zambia, starting in the first century BC, all the way south to the eastern Cape region of present South Africa, which was reached by the third of fourth century AD〔Killick, D. (2014) Cairo to Cape: the spread of metallurgy through eastern and southern Africa. In ''Archaeometallurgy in Global Perspective: Methods and Syntheses'', edited by Ben Roberts and Christopher Thornton, pp. 507-528. New York: Springer.〕 It seems highly probable that both iron metallurgy and cereal agriculture were spread through this vast area by migrations of people speaking Bantu languages. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Iron metallurgy in Africa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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