The study of ancient metals in their social and cultural contexts has been a topic of considerable interest in archaeology and ancient history for decades, partly due to the modern dependence on technology and man-made materials. The formal study of Archaeometallurgy began in the 1970s-1980s, and has seen a recent growth in techniques, data, and theoretical movements. This comprehensive sourcebook on Archaeometallurgy provides an overview of earlier research as well as a review of modern techniques, written in an approachable way. Covering an extensive range of archaeological time-periods and regions, this volume will be a valuable resource for those studying archaeology worldwide. It provides a clear, straightforward look at the available methodologies, including: • Smelting processes • Slag analysis • Technical Ceramics • Archaeology of Mining and Field Survey • Ethnoarchaeology • Chemical Analysis and Provenance Studies • Conservation Studies With chapters focused on most geographic regions of Archaeometallurgical inquiry, researchers will find practical applications for metallurgical techniques in any area of their study. Ben Roberts is a specialist in the early metallurgy and later prehistoric archaeology of Europe. He was the Curator of the European Copper and Bronze Age collections at the British Museum between 2007 and 2012 and is now a Lecturer in Prehistoric Europe in the Departm ent of Archaeology at the Durham University, UK. Chris Thornton is a specialist in the ancient metallurgy of the Middle East, combining anthropological theory with archaeometrical analysis to understand the development and diffusion of metallurgical technologies throughout Eurasia. He is currently a Consulting Scholar of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, where he received his PhD in 2009, and the Lead Program Officer of research grants at the National Geographic Society.

This is a study of technology as self-help endeavor in the home and the provisioning of the household; as work in the rural workshop that supplies pots or iron tools for the village; and as techniques mastered in the urban workshop feasible not in simple tribal villages but when new production institutions emerge with the development of a political hierarchy. It travels from the agricultural field to the building of the home (with its food-processing and storage facilities), to urban water supply techniques and transport mechanisms, to the use of stone, bronze and iron for tools and weapons. A glimpse is afforded of the difference between the making of pottery by hand and the use of the potter's wheel. The social circumstances required of pottery production are in turn contrasted with those required of metallurgy. The whole is based on the archaeological evidence of the Neolithic to Iron Age cultures of South Asia, and concurrently, on observations of some technological processes followed by villagers today. The book asks if it is the nature of tools available that could have made possible the use of materials such as certain semi-precious stones or ivory. Which were the craft technologies that depended on bronze tools in the Indus cities? Else, it may have been horse-riding that prompted chiefs of southern India to sponsor the production of new kinds of iron weapons. It is, besides, possible that the charcoal requirements of early iron-smelting and forging are connected with localized deforestation, and that this had a role to play in the organization and dispersal of the industry. Why were masonry wells so rare after the Indus Valley civilization? Why is glass production known in the Bronze Age of Western Asia but in the Iron Age of South Asia? In what economic circumstances did people begin to use wheeled transport? Technology is not viewed here as a self-generating phenomenon. Instead, puzzles are explained by social and economic factors such as the nature of the work group and the resultant production process, and by political structures as well.

--Being an officialaccount of archaeological excavations at Mohenjo-Daro carried out by the Govt. of India between the years 1927 and 1931 with chapters byA.S. hemmy, B.S. Guha and P.C. Basu, incl. 146 b&w plates illust.