Wertime - The Furnace Versus the Goat

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The Furnace versus the Goat: The Pyrotechnologic Industries and Mediterranean Deforestationin Antiquity Author(s): Theodore A. Wertime Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 445-452Published by: Maney PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/529467Accessed: 18-08-2014 01:44 UTC

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Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 445 Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 445

MIKESELL, Marvin W. "The Deforestation of Mount Leba- non," The Geographical Review 59 (1969) 1-28.

NIBBI, Alessandra. Ancient Egypt and Some Eastern Neigh- bors (Noyes Press: Park Ridge, New Jersey 1981) see pp. 1-31.

PASSMORE, John Arthur. Man' s Responsibility for Nature (Scribner' s: New York 1974) .

PHILIPPSON, Alfred. Das Mittelmeergebiet: Seine Geogra- phische und Kulturelle Eigenart. 2nd. edn. (B.C. Teubner: Leipzig 1907).

PHILPOT, J. H. The Sacred Tree, or the Tree in Religion and Myth (Macmillan: New York 1897).

PUTNAM, Michael C. J. The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966).

RECKFORD, Kenneth J. "Some Trees in Virgil and Tol- kien," in G. Karl Galinsky, ed., Perspectives of Roman Poetry: A Classics Symposium (University of Texas Press: Austin, Texas 1974) 57-91.

ROSTOVTZEFF, Michael. The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World. 3 vols. (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1941).

. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Em- pire. 2 vols. 2nd edn. (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1957).

ROWTON, M. B. "The Woodlands of Ancient Western Asia," JNES 26 (1967) 261-277.

SEGAL, Charles Paul. "Landscape in Ovid's Metamor- phoses," Hermes 23 (1969) 1-109.

SEIDENSTICKER, August. Waldgeschichte des Alterthums. 2 vols. (Trowitzsch and Sohn: Frankfurt 1886).

SEMPLE, Ellen Churchill. The Geography of the Mediterra- nean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (Henry Holt: New York 1931) see pp . 261 -296.

..

SKLAWUNOS, K. G. "Uber die Holzversorgung Griechen- lands in Altertum," Forstwissenschaftliches Zentralblatt 52 (1930) 868-891.

SMITH, Catherine Delano. Western Mediterranean Europe (Academic Press: London 1979) see pp. 209-217.

SOUTAR, George. Nature in Greek Poetry (Oxford University Press: London 1939).

THIRGOOD, J. V. Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Ac- ademic Press: London 1981) .

TOUTAIN, Jules. The Economic Life of the Ancient World (Kegan Paul: London 1930).

TOYNBEE, Arnold J. Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic War's Effects on Roman Life. 2 vols. (Oxford University Press: London 1965) see Vol. 2, pp. 585-599.

TROTTA-TREYDEN, Hans von. "Die Entwaldung in den Mittelmeerlandern: Mit einem Anhang uber den heutigen Waldstand," Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes Geographischer Anstalt (Petermann: Gotha 1916) 248-253.

TURRILL, W. B. The Plant-Life of the Balkan Peninsula (Clarendon Press: London 1929).

VITA-FINZI, Claudio. The Mediterranean Valleys: Geologi- cal Changes in Historical Times (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1969).

WHITE, K. D. Roman Farming (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York 1970) see pp. 224-271.

MIKESELL, Marvin W. "The Deforestation of Mount Leba- non," The Geographical Review 59 (1969) 1-28.

NIBBI, Alessandra. Ancient Egypt and Some Eastern Neigh- bors (Noyes Press: Park Ridge, New Jersey 1981) see pp. 1-31.

PASSMORE, John Arthur. Man' s Responsibility for Nature (Scribner' s: New York 1974) .

PHILIPPSON, Alfred. Das Mittelmeergebiet: Seine Geogra- phische und Kulturelle Eigenart. 2nd. edn. (B.C. Teubner: Leipzig 1907).

PHILPOT, J. H. The Sacred Tree, or the Tree in Religion and Myth (Macmillan: New York 1897).

PUTNAM, Michael C. J. The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966).

RECKFORD, Kenneth J. "Some Trees in Virgil and Tol- kien," in G. Karl Galinsky, ed., Perspectives of Roman Poetry: A Classics Symposium (University of Texas Press: Austin, Texas 1974) 57-91.

ROSTOVTZEFF, Michael. The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World. 3 vols. (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1941).

. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Em- pire. 2 vols. 2nd edn. (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1957).

ROWTON, M. B. "The Woodlands of Ancient Western Asia," JNES 26 (1967) 261-277.

SEGAL, Charles Paul. "Landscape in Ovid's Metamor- phoses," Hermes 23 (1969) 1-109.

SEIDENSTICKER, August. Waldgeschichte des Alterthums. 2 vols. (Trowitzsch and Sohn: Frankfurt 1886).

SEMPLE, Ellen Churchill. The Geography of the Mediterra- nean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (Henry Holt: New York 1931) see pp . 261 -296.

..

SKLAWUNOS, K. G. "Uber die Holzversorgung Griechen- lands in Altertum," Forstwissenschaftliches Zentralblatt 52 (1930) 868-891.

SMITH, Catherine Delano. Western Mediterranean Europe (Academic Press: London 1979) see pp. 209-217.

SOUTAR, George. Nature in Greek Poetry (Oxford University Press: London 1939).

THIRGOOD, J. V. Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Ac- ademic Press: London 1981) .

TOUTAIN, Jules. The Economic Life of the Ancient World (Kegan Paul: London 1930).

TOYNBEE, Arnold J. Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic War's Effects on Roman Life. 2 vols. (Oxford University Press: London 1965) see Vol. 2, pp. 585-599.

TROTTA-TREYDEN, Hans von. "Die Entwaldung in den Mittelmeerlandern: Mit einem Anhang uber den heutigen Waldstand," Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes Geographischer Anstalt (Petermann: Gotha 1916) 248-253.

TURRILL, W. B. The Plant-Life of the Balkan Peninsula (Clarendon Press: London 1929).

VITA-FINZI, Claudio. The Mediterranean Valleys: Geologi- cal Changes in Historical Times (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1969).

WHITE, K. D. Roman Farming (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York 1970) see pp. 224-271.

WILHELM, Adolf. "Die Pachturkunden der Klytiden," Jah- ..

rescheft des Osterreichischen Archaologischen Institutes in Wien 28 (1933) 197-221.

WINTERS, Robert K. The Forest and Man (Vantage Press: New York 1974).

ZIMMERN, Alfred. The Greek Commonwealth. 5th edn. (Ox- ford University Press: Oxford 1931 ) .

The Furnace versus the Goat: the Pyrotechnologic Industries and Mediterranean Deforestation in Antiquity THEODORE A. WERTIMEt

This paper presents arguments and data to support the hypothesis that pyrotechnologic industries were the prime factor in the deforestation of Mediterranean lands during antiquity.

The Forces of Change Rene Dubos has reminded us that man has recast his

ecological settings a dozen times in the short 5,000 years that he has been tampering seriously with the landscape of the earth.l Homo, of course, is not the only force altering the face of the earth during the longer panorama of geologic history, as studies of climate and tectonic change remind us. But we can be sure from J. V. Thir- good's overview of the sad history of the Mediterranean forest from antiquity to modern times that within the frame of emergent civilization man is the responsible party.2 He is man in many incarnations or disguises, of course: settler, farmer, warrior, animal keeper, ship- builder, firemaker, religious fanatic, and city engineer. In each case the responsibility lodges with man.

There is more than dramatic purpose in having anthropos the goatkeeper confront anthropos the exploiter of hearths, furnaces, and kilns. The goat's worst depredations in the Mediterranean have been secondary, con- fined heavily to the past two millennia, and given wide publicity. The depredations of the industrial hearth, furnace, and kiln have been primary, been committed intensively over the past four millennia, been gradualistic and inexorable, and been largely concealed. Even Thir- good, in his painstaking review of Mediterranean forests,

1. R. Dubos, Beast or Angel? (Scribners: New York 1974) 161. 2. J. V. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Academic Press: New York 1981).

WILHELM, Adolf. "Die Pachturkunden der Klytiden," Jah- ..

rescheft des Osterreichischen Archaologischen Institutes in Wien 28 (1933) 197-221.

WINTERS, Robert K. The Forest and Man (Vantage Press: New York 1974).

ZIMMERN, Alfred. The Greek Commonwealth. 5th edn. (Ox- ford University Press: Oxford 1931 ) .

The Furnace versus the Goat: the Pyrotechnologic Industries and Mediterranean Deforestation in Antiquity THEODORE A. WERTIMEt

This paper presents arguments and data to support the hypothesis that pyrotechnologic industries were the prime factor in the deforestation of Mediterranean lands during antiquity.

The Forces of Change Rene Dubos has reminded us that man has recast his

ecological settings a dozen times in the short 5,000 years that he has been tampering seriously with the landscape of the earth.l Homo, of course, is not the only force altering the face of the earth during the longer panorama of geologic history, as studies of climate and tectonic change remind us. But we can be sure from J. V. Thir- good's overview of the sad history of the Mediterranean forest from antiquity to modern times that within the frame of emergent civilization man is the responsible party.2 He is man in many incarnations or disguises, of course: settler, farmer, warrior, animal keeper, ship- builder, firemaker, religious fanatic, and city engineer. In each case the responsibility lodges with man.

There is more than dramatic purpose in having anthropos the goatkeeper confront anthropos the exploiter of hearths, furnaces, and kilns. The goat's worst depredations in the Mediterranean have been secondary, con- fined heavily to the past two millennia, and given wide publicity. The depredations of the industrial hearth, furnace, and kiln have been primary, been committed intensively over the past four millennia, been gradualistic and inexorable, and been largely concealed. Even Thir- good, in his painstaking review of Mediterranean forests,

1. R. Dubos, Beast or Angel? (Scribners: New York 1974) 161. 2. J. V. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Academic Press: New York 1981).


446 Symposium: Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology. Contributions 1-2

fails to capture their true extent.3 From the late Neolithic till the coming of fossil fuels in the 20th century, man the pyrotechnologist has been possibly even more dev- astating than man the settler and terracer in erasing Med- iterranean trees. First, however, for the goat.

Essays on terracing have shown that human settlement of the hillsides of Israel, Greece, and Italy between 1200 B.C. and 900 B.C. was perhaps the first truly massive and enduring encroachment by man upon Mediterranean forests.4 Settlement in turn coopted the support of such pyrotechnologic industries as the making of iron tools and the kilning of lime for cisterns. Each new household brought into play the demand for one to two tons of firewood per year.5

With expanded terracing and farming came increased grazing by sheep and goats, early recognized by numerous ancient writers to be the number one scourge of young trees and bushes.6 But Thirgood hastens to note that the goat was kept on strict leash through Roman times, in favor of pigs, cattle, and horses.7 Vergil de- scribes the flock as gaining "its food in leafy woodlands".8 Only with the disintegration of the ancient world did grazing by sheep and goat achieve dominance.9 The Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries A.C. installed the nomad herder over North Africa and into Spain, bringing nearly total desuetude to the Roman systems of agriculture and irrigation that had prevailed theretofore. In once wheat-producing Spain under the medieval Mesta, the organized herder took virtual political control of the countryside and kept unrestricted access to it for their goats till the l9th century.l

We shall, however, have to judge the goat the party of the second or third part in the destruction of the Med-

3. Ibid. 19-84. 4. H. A. Koster, H. A. Forbes, and L. Foxhall, "Terrace Agriculture and Erosion: Environmental Effects of Population Instability in the Mediterranean," unpublished paper presented at this symposium ( 1978) . 5. J. M. Shay and C. T. Shay, "Modern Vegetation and Fossil Plant Remains," in G. Rapp and S. Aschenbrenner, eds., Excavations at Nichoria in Southwest Greece (University of Minnesota: Minneapolis 1978) 48; H. A. Koster and H. A. Forbes, "The Commons and the Market: Ecological Effects on Communal Land Tenure and Market Integration of Local Resources in the Mediterranean," unpublished paper presented at this symposium (1978). 6. Thirgood, op. cit. (in note 2) 67. 7. Ibid. 69. 8. Vergil Georgics ii.520. 9. Thirgood, op. cit. (in note 2) 69. 10. Ibid. 74.

iterranean forest. He was always the instrument of unre- strained social forces, whether individual, religious, or political. He was the accessory, directing his teeth not at mature forests (except where abetted by shepherds who cut them for fodder) but at regrowth from someone else's cutting. In parts of Anatolia today he browses the high forest as undestructively as in the Arcadian mountains of Vergil's day.1l In the maquis of Greece he even per- forms the useful function of pruning the wild olive, indeed of redomesticating it from year to year.12

At the same time, possibly no animal domesticate could so quickly have upset the natural order of biota. Through Brian Hesse's eyes we can see his original transformation to a pet in the Zagros nearly 10,000 years ago ac- company a period of heavy snows and afforestation, where he buffered human supplies from hunting.13 But the buffer quickly supplanted the supply of wild meat before preoccupying himself with the new maquis human charcoal-needs were creating.

Having noted personally the beneficial effects of the partial banishment of the goat from Cyprus (down by half in numbers in 70 years),14 I shall not be drawn into the merits of the goat as efficient producer of meat and hair and miLk, or as pruner and scavenger. Like the camel (which became another Arab instrument for overturning the Roman order of the wheel, the cow, and the planned city), he has served to maintain Abel's superiority over Cain well into the 20th century mainly by destroying the agricultural and forest domains of Cain. So much for the goat.

With the new studies of the rise and fall of terracing undertaken by such as Koster, Forbes, and Foxhall15 we are on the eve of an understanding of the long-term ero- sive forces at work in the Mediterranean. But such studies will not be complete till we put together the picture of the often forgotten but massive effects of man's re- shaping of earthy materials by fire that which Birin-

11. J. Kolars, "Locational Aspects of Cultural Ecology: The Case of the Goat in Non-Western Agriculture," Geographical Review 56 (1966) 577-584. 12. N. Gavriledes, "The Impact of Olive Growing on the Landscape of Fourni Valley," in Muriel Dimen and Ernestine Friedl, eds., An- nals of the New York Academy of Sciences 268: Regional Variation in Modern Greece and Cyprus: Toward a Perception of the Ethnog- raphy of Greece (New York Academy of Sciences: New York 1976) 143- 157. 13. Brian Hesse, "Afforestation and Domestication in the Zagros," unpublished paper presented at this symposium (1978); see now idem, "Animal Domestication and Oscillating Climates," Journal of Eth- nobiology 2: 1 ( 1982) 8. 14. Thirgood, op. cit. (in note 2) 142. 15. Koster, Forbes, and Foxhall, op. cit. (in note 4).


Journ(ll of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 447

transactions of value as well as providing the hardware of daily life, including even agriculture, in the 3rd mil- lennium s.c.19 These records were inscribed on tablets of baked clay. Ancient Nineveh was a picture of bricks and mortars.

Lead and silver form a metallurgical dyad in the earth, which, at such sites as Lavrion in Greece, went their separate ways of becoming respectively measures of weight and value.20 If the Greco-Roman world embraced the silver coin as the ultimate expression of silver's worth as money, credit, and an instrument of trade, it also exploited surplus lead no less to convert the jointed ceramic pipe into the pressurized lead pipe. All these came to a focus in the concrete city of Rome with its rivers of running water, emergent windows of glass, terra cotta roofs, and lavish use of bricks. Rome, indeed, was a quarry of pyrotechnologic materials.2l

The Biblical Job well captures the quiet assault of the fire-using industries upon the mores and landscapes of the ancient Mediterranean world, ranging from the mining and smelting of metals to the quarrying of mountains and the damming of streams.22

Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted from the ore.

Men put an end to darkness, and search out to the farthest bound the ore in gloom and deep darkness.

They open shafts in a valley away from where men live.

* * *

Man puts his hand to the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots.

He cuts out channels in the rocks and his eye sees every precious thing.

He binds up the streams so that they do not trickle and the thing that is hid he brings forth to light.

Plaster at Proto-Elamite Anshan (Iran)," in T. Wertime and S. Wer- time, eds., Early Pyrotechnology: The Evolution of the Fire Using Industries (Smithsonian: Washington, D.C. 1982) 104. 19. Henri Limet, Le travail du me'tal au pays de Sumer au temps de la lIIe Dynastie d'Ur (Bibliotheque de la Facultd de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Universite de Liege-Fascicule CLV: Paris 1960) 14-15. 20. N. H. Gale and Z. A. Stos-Gale, "Cycladic lead and silver metallurgy," BSA 76 (1981) 164-224; see now also iidem, "The Sources of Mycenaean Silver and Lead," JFA 9 (1982) 467-485. 21. Tenney Frank, History of Rome (Holt: New York 1923) 370-372, 380-404. 22. Job 28.2- 10.

guccio called Pirotechnia.l6 These materials were formed mainly in the lime or ceramic kiln and the glass or metallurgical furnace. The major products accordingly were plasterstcements; varieties of baked clays from bricks and pots to terra cotta pipes; glazes and glass; and metals.

It was a matter of constant astonishment to the ancients that such totally different forms of matter could be achieved by the application of heat to often not dissimilar earthy matrices. Pliny's famous disquisition on fire as an agent for altering nature is a surprisingly careful ob- servation of the countervailing phenomena evident as between the smelting of a metal and its forging, or between the kilning of a piece of limestone and that of a clay brick (often together in the same kiln).17 We shall note here merely that in the transformations furnaces rendered materials liquid or viscous, whereas kilns hardened or softened them. Lime, ceramics, and glass were yielded by the application of heat for the chemical-me- chanical alteration of clays and stones. Metals emerged from the chemistry of smelting through the direct application of charcoal fire to ores.

In the case of metallurgy the metal was the major product and silica was cast off in the slag. In baked clays and glass, silica was the major component and metals formed the coloring element. In cement, silica was secondary to calcium as lime. Metallic ores in turn played varying secondary roles in ceramics, glass, and cements. To correct the confusion the Greek term "metal" came to connote elements of luster and malleability; "vitrics", a rapidly cooled, viscous lime-soda-silicate mix, fragile, translucent, and sharp edged; "ceramic", a baked clay hardened to brittle stoniness; and "hydrated" material, a powder that could be reconstituted to stone by adding water. But whatever the defined differences, the ancient worker knew that these varying materials came out of a matrix of abundant and commonly associated materials in the earth's crust and would fructify each other in thou- sands of ways (as, e.g., cement and brick).

Confusing or not, pyrotechnology became the major accessory of the rise of settled community life and ultimately civilization in the Middle East and Mediterra- nean. One cannot think of the mud-brick village of the Late Neolithic Middle East without its panoply of baked clay or lime containers, plastered walls, terrazo floors, and limed water-storage sites.18 The written records of Sumer give us a picture of at least five metals entering

16. V. Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, trans. C. S. Smith (Dover: New York 1942). 17. Ibid. 399; Pliny Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 10. 159- 160.

18. M. J. Blackman, "The Manufacture and Use of Burned Lime


448 Symposium: Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology: Contributions 1-2

I suspect that the process of overturning mountains was so gradual, inexorable, pervasive, and octopal that it largely escaped the dramatic eye of the ancient writer.

Aeschylus in The Persians could boast of silver "en- treasured in the Greek soil" whose exploitation led to the defeat of the Persians.23 Plato in the Critias could speak sorrowfully of the total denudation of Attica, as we shall see, including the great timbers that had once graced ships and held up roofs of monumental struc- tures.24 But no Greek writer ever connected the two, mainly because the Lavrion mines, a great scar upon the Attic landscape, lay secreted at the very southern tip of the peninsula, well beyond the ken of most knowledge- able Athenians other than the Sounion farmers. They exemplified the gloom and deep darkness that was the fate of metallurgy, whereas lime, brick, and pot making were so public and commonplace as to be overlooked. One can only conclude that the human penchant for em- bracing petty tyranny in incremental doses adapting by amnesia obscured the picture of littered brickyards and treeless mountains that overhung major cities of the Mediterranean.

Yet, the occasional flashbacks of discerning writers, as documented by J. Donald Hughes,25 lighted the dark corners even of metallurgy. Eratosthenes gives us such a flashback of the totality of events on the island of Cyprus, presumably in Mycenaean times, ignoring mainly the lime kiln and pottery yard.26

Eratosthenes says that in ancient times the plains were thickly overgrown with forests, and therefore were covered with woods and not cultivated; that the mines helped a little against this, since the people would cut down the trees to burn the copper and the silver, and that the building of the fleets further helped, since the sea was now being navigated safely, that is with naval forces, but that, because they could not thus prevail over the growth of the timber, they permitted anyone who wished, or was able, to cut out the timber and to keep the land thus cleared as his own property and exempt from taxes.

Plato's picture of the ultimate cost in erosion and loss of water resources in Greece affords a final coda to Er- atosthenes, if again he totally ignored the pyrotechnologic villains largely responsible for this felony against the Greek heritage of nature.27

Contemporary Attica may accurately be described as a mere

23. Aeschylus Persians 238. 24. Plato Critias 1 1 1 a-d. 25. J. Donald Hughes, "How the Ancients Viewed Deforestation,'' in this issue of the JFA. 26. Strabo xiv.6.4-6 (383). 27. Plato, loc. cit. (in note 24).

relic of the original country. There has been a constant movement of soil away from the high ground and what remains is like the skeleton of a body emaciated by disease. All the rich soil has melted away, leaving a country of skin and bone. Originally the mountains of Attica were heavily forested. Fine trees produced timber suitable for roofing the largest buildings; the roofs hewn from the timber are still in existence. The country produced boundless feed for cattle; there are some mountains which had trees not so very long ago, that now have nothing but bee pastures. The annual rainfall was not lost as it now is through the ground and stored . . . the drainage from the high ground was collected in this way and discharged into the hollows as springs and rivers with abundant flow and a wide temtorial distribution. Shrines remain at the sources of dried up water sources as witness to this.

The lesson from Eratosthenes and Job and Plato is clear. Not one but two ultimately cataclysmic metamor- phoses in human technologies and lifestyles swept Med- iterranean man into the condition of city dweller and economic and political animal. If land clearing and the energies of the agricultural transformation restructured society into classes and crafts, the new materials of pyrotechnology stored those energies for densening population; damming streams; cutting limestone hillsides; plastering walls and cisterns; providing the tablets for writing for scribes; affording ornamentation; extending credit and trade; storing value; providing transportation; making possible bureaucracy and war; by way of the winch and the metal-working lathe and screw, setting in motion ultimate mechanization; helping to provide the technologic foundations of science and organized learn- ing; and propelling mankind into the first crisis in energy and ecology of human history, which itself became the major engine of further change in both the Greco-Roman Mediterranean and Han China. Indeed if human society till 20,000 B.P. had been largely negentropic, in the words of Leslie White,28 now it turned to entropy in large and consistent ways, with portentous consequences for the face of the earth.

The Material Ingredients of the Pyrotechnologic Industries in the Mediterranean

Job clearly perceived that the plutonic subsoil yielded the chief materials of pyrotechnology.29 This subsoil un- derlay the surface that gave man his bread. Food-producing man and pyrotechnologic man were engaged in a common revolution in these two layers of the earth. Certainly, evidences were all about in the volcanic Med-

28. Leslie White, The Evolution of Culture (McGraw-Hill: New York 1959) 39. 29. Loc. cit. (in note 22).


Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 449

iterranean of a frequently fiery interior of the earth, the proper home of the god Pluto. But from Pluto to the complex arts of Hephaistos or Vulcan was a very long process. It was not simply to be inferred from trying to imitate or reverse by fire the formation of the common rocks and minerals of the earth. There was to it an or- derly succession of sequential discoveries and feedbacks that could occur only over a large geographic area of interaction, with the right materials and energy technologies in intercommunication, and pushed by proper hier- archies of social need and awareness.

Scholars today tend to discredit environmentalism and "technical logic" as major elements in the invention of new technologies or technologic clusters. But careful study of the gradual unfolding of pyrotechnology in East Asia, the Mediterranean, and the New World persuades me that the "tarbaby" attraction of available earthy materials was given an explosive quality by a historical concatenation of forces unique to the Mediterranean. No- where else in the world, not even in China, did iron- steel, glass, terra cottas, and cement take on the syner- gistic power achieved in the building of Greco-Roman civilization. Several of these products simply never "made it" elsewhere. We come to perceive that Medi- terranean science-technology mirrors the underlying earth no less than it does the overlying stars.

Everywhere, of course, the earth itself offers a mod- erate tarbaby challenge in the form of the abundant metallic or semimetallic elements and their gathering together in a mix of oxides, carbonates, and sulfides, especially along a contact zone or in a pillow lava. Thanks to the fusion activities of the earliest stars and the "luck of the galactic draw", the abundant elements in the earth's crust came to be as follows, in order of percentage by weight.

erals. The brick and its cementing mortar, which so baf- fled Pliny and Biringuccio for the contradictory effects that could be achieved in the same kiln, do not stand all that far apart in the realm of kilned materials; no more do glass and pumice and metallurgical slags. The term "fluxing" has profound implications for the alteration of physical states. The possibility in real furnace-kilning operations of experimenting with mixes of clays, or ores, or fluxes led even to such discoveries as the cementing qualities of the pozzolanic ashes, including those underlying Rome. And the urge to play pyrotechnologic games over the Mediterranean rnilieu became a way of life when one encountered the varieties of materials lying abreast each other in the copper-iron gossans of Cyprus, the cerrusite-galena-iron-marble schists prevailing in Lav- rion, Greece, the rich iron ores of Elba, or the high- calcium ceramic clays located within echoing distance from each other.

Simple abundance does not, of course, automatically explain all the subtleties of man's immersion in the first place into shaping materials with fire. Abundant alu- mina, which resists reduction in a charcoal fire, is a case in point. So is scarce copper. Copper in the earth's crust is present in less than 0.5 part in 10,000 or 0.0045%. Why then the exploitation of copper as a metal in ad- vance of lead or iron? The answer is not difficult: simply because for 300,000 years men had already been seeking out stones and ores for their color, texture, and weight.31 Bright-orange native copper presented itself in numerous outcrops in the Middle East even more forcefully as a true metallic stone than did the iron ochers that had preoccupied cave painters. It did so in basalts, contact zones, and gossans in the latter often very close to the ochrish cup of the gossan. Its ores were also multicol- ored orange, gray, blue, green.

The transition to the chemistry of smelting such ore forms as green malachite (CuC03 * Cu(OH)2) and blue azurite (2CuC03 * Cu(OH)2), as well as the variegated sulfide forms, occurred under experimental conditions in which artisans moved from the annealing of the native metal to its accidental casting in a molten bath, often with smelting of admixed ores as a byproduct. Lead smelting began at the same time. The further steps to employing copper arsenates (Cu3As208 * nCu(OH)2 x H20) and stannite, the copper-tin-iron sulE1de (Cu2S FeS * SnS2), could well have been taken on the basis of the green color of the former and the bronze color of the latter, yielding in time the intricate discovery of tin bronze.

31. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "Ocher in Prehistory: 300,000 Years of the Use of Iron Ores as Pigments," in Theodore A. Wertime and James D. Muhly, eds., The Coming of the Age of Iron (Yale University Press: New Haven 1980) 127-150.

O Si A1 45.2 27.2 8

Fe Ca Mg Na K 5.8 5 2.7 2.3 1.6

Translated into oxides (since oxygen is the most abundant element of all), silica (SiO2) occupies 60% of the earth's crust; iron oxides (calculated as Fe203), 6%; lime (CaO), 4.8%; and oxides of magnesium, sodium, and potassium, slightly smaller percentages.30 Aluminum is also quite abundant but cannot be recovered from its ores in a charcoal fire. In antiquity silicon, iron, and calcium became the big three of the kingdom of human engi- neering.

One can play a game with the ternary phase diagrams of kilned ceramics, kilned lime-cements, smelted metals and slags, and even non-crystalline glass, showing the common boundaries of their various combining min-

30. Edward S. Dana, Textbook on Mineralogy: with an extended trea- tise on crystallography and physical mineralogy, 4th edn., rev. and enlarged by William E. Ford (Wiley: London 1932) 379.



These are just a few of the mazes encountered in the Dante-like descent into Job's domains of "gloom and deep darkness". First were the interlocked matrices of the abundant pyrotechnologic minerals, and second the spiralling metallurgic ladder of often jointly copper-bearing, iron-bearing, lead-bearing, arsenic-bearing, and tin- bearing ores that carried mankind to bronze and iron. The threading of these mazes could scarcely have occurred simply on the grounds of esthetic playfulness or chance. Only a combination of inducements and pres- sures call them also serendipities and imperatives- could have yielded it.

In the future "incrementalism" is likely to become an ever more sought-out term for the forces inducing technologic change. One form of incrementalism was that emanating from the expansion of human experimentation with industrial fire itself going back to about 20,000 B.P. Four separate tracks can be discerned in the human cooking of stones or clays. One was the automatic baking of clays in the cooking hearth (giving rise to the figurines of Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov). A second was the fire- drying of iron ocher in such caves as Arcy-sur-Cure to enhance its color. A third was the fire quarrying of sil- iceous stone for useful cores for flaking (later native copper to break it out of its matrix). A fourth and possibly most widely used track was the thermal alteration of the quartzes flints, jaspers, chalcedonies, and cherts affording them a cleaner break across the crystal boundaries .32

One track, that of fire quarrying, led men directly but serendipitously toward eventual pyrotechnology, first by the accidental kilning of limestone to lime, second by the serendipitous annealing of native copper to casting- smelting temperatures. A second, the cooking hearth, undoubtedly metamorphosed with but few mutations to the ceramic oven. The heating of ochers certainly enlarged man's appreciation of color in ores and contrib- uted somewhat directly to ultimate metallurgy. But the thermal alteration of stones was largely a dead end, except for aiding the cross-referencing of changes in texture and color in raw materials on heating.

This external experimentation with fire burning of materials thus meshed if unequally with the inner pyrotechnology of the plutonian earth, yielding first the lime kilns at work, say, at C, ayonu Tepesi, and not much later the ceramics and the metallurgy, whether hammered copper or smelted lead, at C,atal Huyuk. One may call this meshing a technologic incrementalism, carried for- ward not simply by human demand but by the momen- tum of discovery led on both by the attractions of fire-

32. Ibid.; and the essays published in Wertime and Wertime, eds., op. cit. (in note 18).

making and the varying responsiveness of earths to it. Lime became the first major fire-based industry to come onstream simply because it so readily was kilned and was adapted to human use through such accidental discoveries as having it turn to plaster when daubed on a wet wall.33

The second form of incrementalism was that brought on by Mediterranean population growth in an increasingly settled and urbanizing milieu. A look at the general conditions of life at gayonu helps one to understand why experimentation with pyrotechnology also occurred there.34

The third incremental factor was that of progressive energy shortage induced by ever widening areas of charcoal provisionment for the new industrial hearths, kilns, and furnaces. We cannot ever let ourselves forget that to provision one traditional limekiln for one burn in the highlands of Greece required 1,000 donkey loads of juniper wood.35 It is this third form of incrementalism that will occupy the remainder of this paper. Such incrementalism was sufficiently powerful to have been both a response to the materials revolution of antiquity and a further stimulus to it.

The Energy Factor When one looks around the Mediterranean littoral for

evidences of ancient industrial fire-making, he discovers that the best and possibly only index is metallurgical slags. The eastern desert of Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, Elba, Sardinia, France, and Spain and parts of North Africa all manifest slag heaps of varying size and metallurgical implication. In a paper as short as this one cannot even catalogue or describe the large sites, many of which I have visited. Nothing will be said, for example, about the huge Bor mining area of Yugoslavia, where smelting of copper and iron has been carried on steadily since the Vinca era. The same is true of Sardinia.

We instead offer four reasonably well documented examples of metallurgical activities that illustrate both the magnitude of drains upon the resources of the Mediter- ranean and the interconnectedness of their pyrotechnologic evolution. They are Cyprus, Lavrion (Greece), Populonia (Italy), and Rio Tinto (Spain). Cyprus produced copper but also helped to launch the Age of Iron; Lavrion, lead, silver, and some iron; Populonia, bronze

33. W. H. Gourdin and W. D. Kingery, "The Beginnings of Pyro- technology: Neolithic and Egyptian Lime Plasters," JFA 2 (1975) 133-150.

34. R. J. Braidwood, H. Xambel, W. Schirmer, et al., "Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in South-Eastern Turkey: Xayonu Tepesi, 1978 and 1979, " JFA 8 ( 1981 ) 249-258 . 35. Koster and Forbes, op. cit. (in note 5).


Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 451

ulonia, on various sources including Pleiner;38 and for Rio Tinto on Salkield,39 modified upwards by myself. No guess for all of pyrotechnology could be made for any but the largely self-contained regions of Cyprus and Lavrion. Here again estimates are skewed by the fact that both Lavrion and Populonia produced most of their slags in the Sth-lst centuries B.C. (though Lavrion began yielding about 2900 B.C.) whereas Cyprus and Rio Tinto functioned more intensively over much longer periods, though most heavily exploited in Roman times.

The other skewing factor is the grossly differing yields of metal from ores for the same amounts of charcoal expended. Cyprus ores averaging little better than 4.5% copper obviously fared much worse energy-wise than rich Lavrion ores (17-20% Pb), enriched up to nearly 50%; Populonian iron ores of 89.3% hematite; or the rich lead sulfate ores of Rio Tinto. I say this mindful of the fact that as much as 53.5% iron oxide appeared in Populonian slags (because of the barely liquid condition of the iron). As much as 20% lead appeared in Lavrion slags. Another skewing factor at Rio Tinto arises from our uncertainty as to the proportions of copper produced compared to lead-silver, as well as the extent to which hydrometallurgy might have been employed as against roasting.

Even more telling than sheer statistics is the evidence of evasive energy strategies probably or possibly fol- lowed in the four regions. They suggest to us that energy may have become a central calculus in the further course of the materials revolution of the Mediterranean. The strategies may be summarized as follows.

1. Avoidance of roasting of sulfide ores to conserve energy and preserve existing stands of trees from the destructive effect of sulfur dioxide (SO2), by varying ore mixes or applying hydrometallurgy (Lavrion, probably Cyprus, Rio Tinto).

2. Barge traffic of fuel and/or ores (Lavrion, Popu- lonia, and putatively Cyprus).

3. New smelting strategies. a. Moving furnaces from the highlands to the

coast and losing lead in the slag in order to save wood (Lavrion).

b. Recourse to fluxing techniques that guaran- teed ever more energy-efficient slagging operations (Cyprus and probably Rio Tinto).

38. R. Pleiner, ''Early Iron Metallurgy in Europe," in Wertime and Muhly, eds., op. cit. (in note 31) 386-387. 39. Leonard U. Salkield, ''The Roman and Pre-Roman Slags at Rio Tinto Spain," in Wertime and Wertime, eds., op. cit. (in note 18) 138.

and iron; and Rio Tinto, silver and copper, and, the ancients said, even iron.

The following table (TABLE 1) sums up my best estimates of the energy costs of metallurgy and pyrotechnology in the four regions.

The Cyprus estimates in Table 1 are based on my new study for the Cyprus metallurgical symposium;36 Lavrion estimates are based on Conophagos;37 estimates for Pop-

36. Theodore A. Wertime, ''Cypriot Metallurgy Against the Back- drop of Mediterranean Pyrotechnology: Energy Reconsidered," in James D. Muhly, Robert Maddin, and Vassos Karageorghis, eds., Acta of the International Archaeological Symposium ''Early Metal- lurgy in Cyprus 4000-500 B.C.'' (Department of Antiquities of Cy- prus: Nicosia 1982 [to appear in fall, 1983]) 351-362. 37. C. Conophagos, Le Laurium Antique (Ekdotike Ellados: Athens 1980) 151.

4

5-6 5-6

0.2-0.4

CYPRUS Slag (tons) Charcoal (est. tons) Coppice (est. acres) Production of copper

(est. tons) Coppice for all pyrotechnology

(est. acres) LAVRlON

Slag (tons) Charcoal (est. tons) Coppice (est. acres)

(including cuppellation) Production of lead

(est. tons) Production of silver


(est. acres) POPULONlA

Slag (est. tons) Charcoal (est. tons) Coppice (est. acres) Production of iron


(no estimate) RlO TlNTO

Slag (est. tons) Charcoal (est. tons) Coppice (est. acres) Production of copper Production of silver Coppice for all pyrotechnology

(no estimate)

10

I .5

2

1.5

0.0035

3.5

2-4 1 .5-3 1 .5-3

4

15 7-10 7-10 ? ?

Table 1. Energy costs of pyrotechnology for the whole of ancient history at Cyprus and Rio Tinto, and for the 5th-lst centuries B.C. at Lavrion and Populonia. Numerical units are in millions.



c. The shift from copper to iron to gain a more energy-efficient metal (Cyprus, Populonia, and ultimately the whole Mediterranean. Lavrion and Rio Tinto may have smelted iron but never at the cost of silver).

The suggestion that artisans turned from the extremely energy-inefficient copper to the energy-efficient iron has been made in another paper,40 in which I note that such a choice could probably have occurred only in a primi- tive phase of smelting when men were breaking copper prills out of a matrix of sponge iron. More need not be said here about the further launching of the Age of Iron than that it was probably as much influenced by a desire to get more metal for the same amount of fuel as it was by shortages of tin or the perceived advantages of steel over bronze.

These then are the metallurgical facts. Over the whole of the Mediterranean littoral one might find minimally 70-90 million tons of slag from antiquity representing the divestiture of at least 50-70 million acres of trees. Thirty million tons of slag are lodged in Iberia alone. The acreages of fuelwood are not cumulative, of course, since regrowth occurred. Moreover, a large distinction must be made between high forest and coppice. Little wonder, even so, that Rome turned increasingly to the forested flanks of Europe for its metals and glass: Nor- icum, the Vosges, the Forest of Dean, and even the Slupia Nova mountains of Poland (which was not under Roman control), to name a few examples.

What then about the other pyrotechnologic industries such as bricks and lime-cement? In the case of Lavrion we have factored in the huge cisterns with the metallurgical activities. But what about the endless fuel costs for bricks and lime in the constant rebuilding of the city of Rome? We are told that Marcus Aurelius' mother made a fortune in fabricating bricks for the great villa of Hadrian at Tivoli. One can read back into Med- iterranean history only from the few statistics one has, as, e.g., on lime making. At ancient Anshan in Iran one level of one plastered building required 8,000 kg. of quicklime.41 In traditional Greece a single lime kiln required 1,000 muleloads of juniper wood for one burn, 50 kilns requiring 6,000 metric tons of wood yearly.42

It is a pity that there is no comparable evidence for the roof tiles that became common with Greek temples from the 8th century B.C. onward. They must have con- stituted an additional burden on forests equivalent to lime kilning, as the passion spread to Greco-Roman hous-

40. Wertime, op. cit. (in note 36). 41. Blackman, op. cit. (in note 18) 104. 42. Koster and Forbes, op. cit. (in note 5).

ing.43 How do we know? Simply by taking the measure of one 4th century B.C. kiln at Nemea. This had the hor- rendous dimensions of 4.2-4.6 m. and yet may have confected at best 140 of the huge tiles necessary. One can only guess at its consumption of raw pine.44

One can quickly perceive the magnitude of the dev- astation when one contemplates the passion for lime plaster throughout the Mediterranean from Neolithic days on, as well as the wave of cistern building and cement- brick construction (with tiles and pipes) that occurred after the 3rd century B.C. Each installation represented a widening ripple of cut forests, making energy crisis a matter of immediate distance of provisionment as well as ultimate national shortages. I have treated this phe- nomenon extensively for 1 8th-century Europe in The Coming of The Age of Steel.45 Barge traffic helped to save the day at coastal Lavrion and Populonia and possibly Cyprus. But on the mainland the ripples merged and merged again, as metallurgy gathered force and roof tiles became common on temples and houses, and bricks and cement in all types of construction, large and small. Had the Mediterranean not been a readily traversible body of water, the crisis would probably not have widened as rapidly as it did, for the possibility could then be exploited of making products at a distance and shipping them to Athens or Rome.

In such a setting, the goat was merely an accessory waiting for his moment to consolidate the damage, during Islamic rule of the Middle Ages and modern era. In the modern orgy of earthly deforestation, in which Af- rican and Asian peasants forage over 100-mile perime- ters for firewood, we see man at the ultimate end of the process he began in the Mediterranean and China.

43. W. B. Dinsmoor, Architecture of Ancient Greece, rev. ed. (Nor- ton: New York 1975) 42-43. 44. W. Rostocker and E. Gebhard, "The Reproduction of Roof Tiles for the Archaic Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia, Greece, " JFA 8 ( 1981 ) 21 l-217.

45. T. A. Wertime, The Coming of the Age of Steel (University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1962) 1 15.

Theodore A. Wertime, Research Associate in Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, was an internationally recognized expert in the history of pyrotechnology. His numerous published works include two recent volumes, The Coming of the Age of Iron (Yale University Press: New Haven 1980), which he co-edited with James D. Muhly, and Eaxly Pyrotechnology (Smithsonian: Washington, D.C. 1982), which was co-edited by S. Wertime.


Article Contentsp. 445p. 446p. 447p. 448p. 449p. 450p. 451p. 452

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 391-500Front MatterEditorial Commentary [pp. 391-395]Field Reports: Excavation and SurveyCaracol, Belize: Evidence of Ancient Maya Agricultural Terraces [pp. 397-410]Dendrochronological Investigations in the Aegean and Neighboring Regions, 1977-1982 [pp. 411-420]More Evidence for an Advanced Prehistoric Iron Technology in Africa [pp. 421-434]

Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean and Middle East: Contributions 1-2How the Ancients Viewed Deforestation [pp. 435-445]The Furnace versus the Goat: The Pyrotechnologic Industries and Mediterranean Deforestation in Antiquity [pp. 445-452]

Special StudiesPaleoclimatological Patterning in Southern Mesoamerica [pp. 453-468]Design and Evaluation of Shovel-Test Sampling in Regional Archaeological Survey [pp. 469-480]

The Antiquities Market [pp. 481-490]News and Short Contributions [pp. 491-500]Back Matter

Documents

Wertime - The Furnace Versus the Goat