AFRICA
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Almost guaranteed to set a gathering of African archaeologists
to arguing is the subject of metallurgy. Where it started, how it
developed, and how it spread has been disputed in many pub-
lications. It is possible that the fi rst metal Africans worked was
gold, because it oft en appears as nuggets that can be hammered
into shapes. Other metals available to Africans were copper,
tin, and iron. Ancient Africans may have found silver, too, but
the archaeological evidence suggests that silver was imported
from the Mediterranean world, perhaps from the Iberian Pen-
insula, the land where Portugal and Spain are today.
Most archaeologists and historians agree that the smelt-
ing of metals in Africa probably began in Egypt. Th e technol-
ogy for making bronze out of copper and tin probably was
imported from the Near East into Egypt. When Egypt solidi-
fi ed its control of Nubia, the land south of Egypt, during the
reign of Pepy II (r. ca. 2246–ca. 2152 b.c.e.), Africans outside
Egypt were still in the Stone Age. Is likely that the Egyptians
introduced the copper to the Nubians; the Nubians used cop-
per to make spearheads that looked like long leaves, though
most of their spears were still tipped with stone. Nubian cop-
per tools from that era were either imports from Egypt or
copies of Egyptian tools.
Nubia was rich in gold, and over the years Nubia’s gold
mines yielded about 65 pounds of pure gold from about 9,000
tons of ore annually. Th is gold went to enrich Egypt, helping
to make Egypt one of the wealthiest nations of the ancient
world. Elsewhere in Africa gold was being made into jewelry.
Whether techniques for smelting gold ore were passed from
Egypt to Nubians and then to the rest of Africa or Africans
fi gured out these techniques for themselves is unclear. Th at
Africans loved the decorative possibilities of gold is plain. In
central and western Africa people learned to sift gold nug-
gets out of streambeds and even how to mine gold dust from
quartz.
In the 1600s b.c.e. the kingdom of Karmah stretched its
dominion northward over lands to the south of Egypt nearly
to the fi rst cataract of the Nile River. Th e Karmahn culture
was still in the Stone Age and did metalworking. Between
1504 and 1492 b.c.e. Egypt conquered Karmah and swept
south to take control of Nubia. Until Egypt’s withdrawal in
1070 b.c.e., Egyptian technology passed to other Africans
through Nubia. By that time the secrets of making bronze
were known to the peoples of northeastern Africa, but they
still worked primarily in copper, perhaps because tin was
hard to fi nd locally and had to be imported from the north or
from western Africa, where there were tin mines.
Th e kingdom of Kush arose around 900 b.c.e., encom-
passing most of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers. During
several military campaigns from about 728 to 702 b.c.e. Kush
conquered Egypt. Although ironworking was established in
the Near East in the early 1000s b.c.e., Egyptian armies still
used bronze weapons, and Kushites used mostly stone weap-
ons. Th e use of iron for tools and weapons came crashing in
on the Kushites in about 671 b.c.e. when Assyria invaded
Egypt. Although bronze held its edge better than iron, iron
was easier to manufacture in large quantities and had special
qualities for armor, including its ability to be case-hardened.
Th e ancient smiths would either pour liquid iron into molds
or hammer it into shape by repeatedly heating it until it was
soft , beating it, heating it again, and so on. In a bed of carbon,
possibly charcoal but more oft en the ashes of husks of grain,
the hot iron would be set to rest. Th is might be done several
times, during which the iron would absorb the carbon and
harden on the outside while remaining soft and fl exible on
the inside. Th is meant that when it was struck, iron armor
fl exed rather than broke. Superior tactics and superior armor
were the advantages of the Assyrians.
In 593 b.c.e. Kush moved its capital from Napata to
Meroë, where iron from mines was plentiful. Th ere, a large
iron-making industry developed. Kushite ironworkers built
furnaces out of clay. Into these furnaces were inserted clay
tubes. Bellows, probably made of animal skins, were attached
to the outside of the tubes. When the bellows were pumped,
outside air fl owed into and through the furnaces, creating the
eff ect of a blast furnace. Th e superheating caused by the blasts
of air allowed the smiths to reach the 2,797 degrees Fahrenheit
required to make iron liquid and pourable. Th e smiths could
therefore make almost anything they wished out of iron, and
although bronze remained the preference for decoration, iron
vaulted Kush out of the Stone Age. Numerous large slag heaps
still exist in Meroë.
Th e long-standing African custom of remelting metal
objects, especially gold, to be remade into whatever was cur-
rently fashionable has made it hard to trace how metallurgy
spread. Sometime between 700 and 500 b.c.e. a major metal-
working culture emerged in a valley along the Niger River in
western Africa, almost due west of Kush. It is called Nok aft er
the village near the tin mine where the fi rst remnants of the
culture were found in 1928. Its exceptionally well-sculpted
ceramic fi gures have caught the imaginations of archaeolo-
gists, but little is known about the Nok. One of the greatest
puzzles they present is that they were working metals when
Kushites were doing so, and they may have begun smelting
iron before the Kush.
Archaeologists and historians have proposed various
ways this could have happened. One is that traders brought
the knowledge with them from the Phoenicians or the Greeks
who traded with the Noks. Another is that people fl ed west
from Kush when nomads invaded t heir k ingdom. Th ey would
have fl ed along the Sahel corridor, grassy steppes that stretch
west to east along the southern edge of the Sahara. Another
possibility is that the knowledge fl owed from tribe to tribe
along the Sahel corridor. Yet another possibility is that the
Nok learned to make bronze and smelt iron on their own.
In any case, as early as 500 b.c.e. the Nok were using blast
furnaces of clay with ceramic tubes that may have functioned
like the Kushite blast furnaces.678 metallurgy: Africa