Iron Age Iron Smelting Furnaces of the Western/Central Transvaal: Their Structure, Typology and Affinities

Mountain living: The Holocene people of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, South Africa

“…Moreover, another clear distinguishing variable is that the mean thickness of the early potsherds recovered in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg is noticeably thinner than that of the early agriculturist potsherds (Mazel 1992c). Considering copper and iron beads, Miller (2003: 101), in a paper focusing early copper and iron usage in southern Africa, noted that both 'iron and copper were in use by the earliest agriculturists', mentioning that their earliest known usage 'are from the fifth century site of Broederstroom in the Transvaal (Friede and Steel 1975;Mason 1981) and from Divuyu in the Tsodilo Hills, with a range of dates from AD 550 to AD 730 (Denbow 1990).' Closer to the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, in KwaZulu-Natal, the agriculturist site of KwaGandaganda yielded iron and copper beads from between AD 660-760 (Whitelaw pers.…”

Indigenous African Furnace Types and Slag Composition—Is there a Correlation?

“…Consequently, further attempts to reconstruct the chronology of furnace types in sub‐Saharan Africa suffered from this poor preservation and the consequent inability by researchers to separate them archaeologically. Typically, all one can find is the base of the furnace, which makes it difficult to know how tall the shaft was, if there was any (Friede and Steel ). Occasionally, the collapse of tall shaft furnaces left signature remains such as remnant furnace walls, multiple fused tuyeres and slag remains (Prendergast ; Killick ).…”