Presenter: Sarah Wyer
Mentor: Daniel Wojcik, William Ayres
Oral Presentation
Major: Anthropology/Folklore
This paper is an ethnoarchaeological look at blacksmithing by combining ethnographic field work and archaeological data. I interviewed blacksmith Jack Frost, a resident of Glenwood, Oregon but originally from Devon, Great Britain. Frost works with a traditional forge and tries to keep his practices as authentic as possible. By asking Frost questions about his blacksmithing techniques and experience, I have been able to compare his methods and his step-by-step processes to what the archaeological record tells us of blacksmithing. In particular, I focus on the quantity of carbon versus phosphorus in iron and how that affects the blacksmithing process as a whole. By looking at the procedure of modern blacksmithing in a traditional vein through Frost’s work, I attempt to explain how archaeological data, such as carbon residue discovered during an excavation, might have come to be. Blacksmithing and smelting methods from Europe to Africa are explored to provide a historical context. This paper combines two usually differing fields of anthropology, socio-cultural and archaeology, to show how ethnographic research might contribute to how we interpret archaeological data. Bringing Frost into the study shows how ethnographic research can couple with archaeological data to offer some insight into the unrecorded past.