Seandálaíocht - Irish for Archaeology

As promised here is some video from Smelt 2010. During the project I tried to capture as much as possible using time lapse photography to give a sense of the activity and number of people involved in a smelt. The video above shows the painstaking building of the furnace chimney which was built up of sausages of pre-mixed clay. The clay was mixed using equal parts horse dung, potters clay and sharp sand. The mix worked very well and we ended up with no cracks at all in the furnace. You can see the hardy volunteers in the background kneeding the sausages of clay in their hands.

The next video is from near the end of the smelt when we began to burn down the charcoal after about five hours of charging. It was getting late at that stage and the light fades until you can only see the glow of the burning charcoal. Unfortunately the lack of light meant no time-lapse of the removal of the bloom but we do have photos.

These and other videos and photos will be combined with standard video taken over the course of the weekend into a video report on the smelt which will be made available as soon as its ready. I have to thank Mark Gordon for acting as cameraman for the event and volunteering to edit all the footage, no small task. 

UPDATE: One more video of the opening of one of Niall and Eoin's charcoal pits is available over at charcoal.seandalaiocht.com.

Smelt 2010 went off practically without a hitch almost two weeks ago now. I've been prevented from posting about it due to a serious case of man-flu. Probably from sleeping Early Medieval style for the weekend of the smelt. 

However, one of my collaborators on the project Tom Birch has been far more industrious despite a sniffle of his own and has managed to get a report on the project published on one of the Naked Archaeology Podcasts. You can download the podcast here or listen to it through your browser here (skip forward to 25 minutes for the relevant section). 

As a bit of a teaser I have uploaded a few photos from the weekend. More will follow including some video and I will be updating the project website with a report on the smelt as soon as possible.

I spent yesterday researching and organising things for Smelt 2010 which is fast creeping up on me. One of the fancy things I'd like to do for the smelt is some time-lapse photography so I devoted a bit of time to figuring out how my still relatively new digital slr works; familiarising myself a bit more with terms like apeture, shutter-speed and ISO. The result is a test video of me working for a couple of hours in my little home office: 

It reveals a weird tendency to play with my beard (shared by all bearded men i'd imagine) and a dangerous sedentism that reminds me how much exercise I don't do. 

Besides that, preparations are coming along and the Smelt will go ahead on the 6th and 7th of March. The one big thing I need to sort out is a bellows system, which I will make if need s be but I would be more than happy to borrow if someone would like to donate!

For people who would like to come to see the smelt (taking place in the Irish National Heritage Park in Co. Wexford) the schedule will hopefully run as follows: 

Friday 5th - I'll be there prepping and setting up the smelting area and probably starting construction of the furnace
Saturday 6th - Completion of furnace and pre-firing with wood. Ore preparation and roasting. 
Sunday 7th - The smelt (volunteers needed!)
Monday 8th - Clean up

All are welcome to come but if you can't make it I will be putting up videos and images from the smelt on the project's website.

Readers may be interested in a brilliant opportunity to get involved in a project reconstructing a large currach based on the Boyne-type currachs used up until the twentieth century. 

This summer the project will be experimenting with methods of transporting stone based on theoretical ideas about how stone was transported from various places on the east coast of Ireland to Newgrange and there are further plans for next year. The film company Crossing the Line Films is involved on the project. They were previously involved in the extremely professional production of  Blood of the Irish. 

I was involved in a similar project based in Denmark which resulted in the sailing of a reconstructed viking ship called the Sea Stallion from Roskilde to Dublin and back. I can highly recommend it and if I can find the time I might get involved myself.

I'd strongly advise a look at the superb website and encourage people to get involved in a project that represents an exceedingly rare opportunity.

Head on over to charcoal.seandalaiocht.com and read the update on a recent experimental charcoal production experiment I was involved in with Niall Kenny. We attempted to reconstruct and early medieval pit kiln from Russagh 4 and a mound kiln too with mixed results.

There's a summary blog post on the site now but we'll be adding more images and eventually a video to the site as we get time. Niall is going to have another go at charcoal making at Smelt 2010 and hopefully with the lessons we've learned from this experiment it will be a big success.

For those of you out there interested in experimental archaeology or who, like me, are latent pyromaniacs who gave up smoking for the new year I'm happy to let you know about a unique opportunity.

Niall Kenny has organised an experimental charcoal making event which will be taking place in Meath, starting Sunday week. That's assuming the ground isn't frozen solid or covered in snow!

Niall has done a lot of research into early charcoal making in Ireland and hopes to re-create an archaeologically excavated charcoal pit kiln (and possibly a mound kiln as well). I'm tagging along and the hope is that if the experiment is successful I can use the resulting charcoal in my smelt in March.

Anyone interested is welcome to come along and have a look but it is essential that you let us know that you will be visiting as it takes place on private land.

More information can be found on the project's website.

Yesterday, myself and some obliging volunteers (Conor McDermott, Angela Wallace and Niall Kenny) went to a Bord na Móna bog in Offaly (with their permission of course!) looking for bog iron ore.

Bog iron ore is referred to in much of the archaeological literature on iron smelting in Ireland. It is often suggested as the primary source of iron in prehistory and medieval times but this assertion is rarely supported with scientific analysis (although this has changed in recent times and there are many sites now where chemical analysis of iron slag has indicated a bog source for the smelted ore). 

The assertion is a logical one, considering the lack of large, high quality mineral ore deposits in Ireland on the scale of those in Britain. Also, bog ore is supposed to be a renewable resource, replenishing over a few decades according to Tylecote, and thus providing a very useful source for small scale iron smelters.

Unfortunately very little is known about where and to what extent it occurs in Ireland (more is known about American, Canadian and Scandinavian bog ores). Discussions with Conor McDermott, a colleague of mine in the UCD School of Archaeology who had worked extensively in Irish bogs led to a plan to go collecting some of the 'bog iron' he had frequently observed in the field: with the goal of checking its iron content to test if it really is a viable ore and, if it is, of smelting it.

Our expedition was very successful, collecting almost 40KG of orange material from the bog (presumed bog ore pending XRF analysis). The material varied from a clay-like consistency to hard agglomerations similar in morphology to iron slag. All of it was very orange, presumably derived from oxidised iron. 

All of this is part of the SMELT 2010 project which will culminate in an experimental iron smelt in the National Heritage Park, Ferrycarrig, Co. Wexford.

This is the first in a series of videos just uploaded to YouTube that nicely demonstrate a number of Scandinavian flint knapping styles. 

Its harder than you might think to get started learning some traditional blacksmithing skills. Unlike in the UK and the US there isn't a vibrant artist-blacksmith tradition and beginner's blacksmithing courses don't seem to be common.

Saying that I have come across a few courses that are listed in the Iron Links section of my Links Page.  One interesting course is to be held in Enniscroe House in Co. Mayo from Wednesday 23rd to Sunday 27th September. Download a poster and more information here and here and information about staying in the house here.

This post is a call for help rather than anything informative I'm afraid. I have been thinking more and more recently about how beneficial (and interesting) it would be for my PhD research to do some experimental iron smelting and/or smithing. 

However, setting up a reconstructed bloomery iron furnace requires a lot of work. First of all I need to find a space where I can burn a fire at over 1000 degrees. It needs to be in an open space and somewhere where the noise of forging won't bother the neighbours (so not my back garden in the heart of Dublin!).

I also need to get hold of a significant amount of clay for the superstructre as well as charcoal and ore for the smelt. Ideally, the charcoal should be made from oak and it would be an interesting experiment in itself to try and produce it from scratch. The ore should probably come from a bog so if anyone out there knows of a bog with a good supply please do let me know. Of course, some practical experience would be good to have to but that's something I can't really borrow.

Surfing the internet I have found some useful information incluging, weirdly, how to smelt iron in a microwave. Extensive information about a series of smelting experiments (including video) based on viking technology can be found here as well as a related blog here.  A series of Danish experiments are documented online here with excellent photos but unfortunately all in Danish. Some related posts in english can be found here and here. Finally this site has a serie of links relating to the smelting of iron and other metals and my video section includes a smelt based on prehistoric British furnaces.

If anyone is interested in collaborating or contributing it would be great to hear from you. I'm sure I'm not the only person in Ireland interested in this sort of thing.