Metallurgical Slags as Traces of a 15th century Copper Smelter

Abstract

The research focuses on assessing the metal content, mainly copper, lead, iron and also silver in metallurgical slag samples from the area where historical metallurgical industry functioned. In the smelter located in Mogiła, near Krakow (southern Poland), whose operation is confirmed in sources from 1469, copper was probably refined as well as silver was separated from copper. Based on the change of chemical and soil phase content and also taking cartographic and historical data into account, considering the restrictions resulting from the modern land use the area was determined whose geochemical mapping can point to the location of the 15th century Jan Thurzo’s smelter in Mogiła near Krakow. Moreover, using the same approach with the samples of this kind here as with hazardous waste, an attempt has been made to assess their impact on the environment. Thereby, taking the geoenvironmental conditions into account, potential impact of the industrial activity has been assessed, which probably left large scale changes in the substratum, manifested in the structure, chemical content and soil phase changes. Discovering areas which are contaminated above the standard value can help to identify historical human activities, and finding the context in artefacts allows to treat geochemical anomalies as a geochronological marker. For this purpose the best are bed sediments, at present buried in the ground, of historical ditches draining the area of the supposed smelter. Correlating their qualities with analogical research of archeologically identified slags and other waste material allows for reconstructing the anthropopressure stages and the evaluation of their effects. The operation of Jan Thurzo’s smelter is significant for the history of mining and metallurgy of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe.

Dwie bransolety ze starszego okresu epoki brązu z kujawskiej części Torunia i Brudzynia na Pałukach w świetle badań archeologicznych i archeometalurgicznych

“…Zreferowane poniżej wyniki prac to kolejne działania badawcze przeprowadzone w ostatnich latach dla pradziejowych artefaktów wykonanych ze stopów miedzi (Garbacz-Klempka, Rzadkosz 2014;Garbacz-Klempka i in. 2015;2016;Garbacz-Klempka, Kwak, Kozana, Piękoś, Czekaj 2017;Garbacz-Klempka, Makarowicz, Tokarski 2017;Garbacz-Klempka, Suchy, Kwak, Długosz, Stolarczyk, 2018;Garbacz-Klempka, Suchy, Kwak, Tokarski, Klempka, Stolarczyk 2018).…”

Archives of Foundry Engineering

“…The performed pre-dating of the kettlebell allows to determine the age of the bell as the seventeenth century, which is in accordance with classical works [3][4][5][6], where similar artefacts produced ca 400 years ago of Fe and Cu casts are described and investigated. For determining the microstructure, as well as the microstructure compounds, its chemical composition, size, distribution or homogeneity, as well as impurities, electron microscopy methods were applied [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”