Importance Of Metallurgy In The Sub-Saharan Africa

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Mining and Metallurgy served, and continue to do so, a crucial role to the advancement of the economy, labour, infrastructure, technology and etcetera in pre-industrial African societies as I am yet to analyse. This essay will critically discuss this crucial significance of mining and metallurgy specifically around the sub-Saharan Africa during the first and second millennium. Firstly, it will define metallurgy and introduce a period before industrialization which we use as our precolonial period. It will then discuss in what way metallurgy and mining were of high significance and to what kind of society. The final part of the essay will question if were all metals, gold, iron, copper of equal importance and will thus provide archaeological …show more content…

Before I begin the analysis of metals and their origination, defining the term metallurgy might be a positive start. Metallurgy refers to the branch of science and technology concerned with the properties of metals and their production and purification. This description is accurate as far as S. Terry Childs and Eugenia W. Herbert are concerned since they argue that metallurgy arrived in two stages: first as metal objects, then as the technology to manufacture them. However, the practice of metallurgy in the sub-Saharan Africa was initiated in the late centuries and it`s diffusion in the Southern Africa was due to the Bantu expansion (chapter 12) in the period 500 b.c to a.d 500. This period is far before industrialization thus we use a period just before industrialization which is 1750 …show more content…

Having more metal made you superior and respected. The kings would have their slaves decorate for them their high thrones with gold and other bright metals. Dissimilar types of bronze and gold were used to decorate the ancient Egyptian temples and palaces. The town in Nigeria named Igbo Ukwu had bronzes dating between AD 900 and 1200 (Shaw 1970) and the west African nation named Benin had bronzes made from the 16th century AD onward and were used to express power and to commemorate deceased kings and were an inimitable expression of the Oba`s power and authority (Herbert 1984). Though the word ` economy` had no precise meaning then. However, metallurgy was of economic value and religious symbolism during the 16th century

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