Interdisciplinary Research of Iron Casting Technologies in the Town of Juketau during the Golden Horde Period

Abstract

The work features the results of interdisciplinary research of cast iron dishware fragments discovered in the territory of one of the largest towns of the Volga-Kama region in the Golden Horde period. The microstructure of cast iron samples and surface mapping have been studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the microelemental composition was determined by emission spectral analysis (ESA). The characteristic features of the manufacturing technology have been revealed as a result of research of the elemental and phase composition across the area of the transverse fracture and longitudinal polished section. The results of SEM allowed to carry out a comparative analysis with archaological material from the territory of Bolgar settlement – capital of the Bolgar Ulus of the Golden Horde. According to the results of microelemental analysis, two groups of cast iron were determined with differences attributed to various sources of raw material.

Structural Features of the Fragments from Cast Iron Cauldrons of the Medieval Golden Horde: Neutron Tomography Data

“…The first group is composed of small pores present in all the studied fragments from the Selitrennoye settlement and the BS-65 sample from the Bolgar settlement. Recently, comparative microscopy and chemical studies of cast iron products [3,4,61] suggested that a historical school of cast iron craft in Bolgar was quite advanced in comparison with the Selitrennoye settlement. It is believed that cast iron products from the Bolgar settlement are of higher quality.…”

“…If small pores are characterized by the so-called "belt" texture or Observed small pores may occur during the casting of medieval products, and their formation can be associated with two processes when cooling a cast iron product. There is a formation of various phases in the Fe-C system [3,4,61,62], including graphite from excess carbon content, and the uneven cooling of the cast of cauldrons. It is known that molds made of a densified sand-clay mixture were used for casting cauldrons [3,4].…”

“…There is a formation of various phases in the Fe-C system [3,4,61,62], including graphite from excess carbon content, and the uneven cooling of the cast of cauldrons. It is known that molds made of a densified sand-clay mixture were used for casting cauldrons [3,4]. These occurred in the solid-liquid state of iron in the temperature range between liquidus and solidus points [4,61].…”

“…Metal casting fragments are excellent markers for reconstructing the features of technological levels of medieval settlements [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Now, there has been a growing interest in the research of archaeological and cultural materials using natural scientific methods [1,[6][7][8][9].…”

“…In our work, we tried to identify the structural features of fragments from cast iron cauldrons of the medieval Golden Horde [3,4,42,43], as a representative of the products from the ancient iron casting process. We have selected two groups of iron-cast fragments from the Selitrennoye settlement in the lower parts of the Volga River and the Bolgar settlement in the central Volga region.…”