Ideology and the archaeological record in Africa: Interpreting symbolism in iron smelting technology

This essay explores the interface between specific features in the archaeological record pertaining to African iron smelting and various symbolic meanings that are linked to those remains by ritual performances and their associated beliefs. Employing a critical direct historical approach that uses ethnographic observations and historical evidence, cross-cultural regularities can be isolated in the types of symbolic meanings that are attributed to ritual offerings placed in the bases of African smelting furnaces. Such meanings range from interdiction of ancestral spirits and witchcraft to the infusion of the furnace with attributes of a fertility-one of the primary symbolic armatures that confers meaning on iron smelting. Comparison of the ethnographic models to archaeological evidence then reveals that ritual treatments of iron smelting show significant continuity through time-particularly in the domain of fertility symbolism-reaching as far back through time as the mid-first millennium B.C. (C) 1997 Academic Press.