The Reconstruction of 7th. c. A.D. Smithy in Central Italy
(2009) BUMA-VII. The Seventh international Conference on “The Beginnings of the Use of Metals and Alloys” — Location: Bangalore-India (13.September.2009)
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- Not many 7th c. blacksmith workshops have been properly excavated in Italy up to now. The still ongoing excavations carried out since 2005 at Aiano-Torraccia di Chiusi, near San Gimignano (Siena) in Tuscany by the team of the Université catholique de Louvain, directed by Prof Marco Cavalieri, have brought to light architectural structures belonging to a Roman villa, dated between the 3rd and the end of the 5th/ beginning of the 6th c. AD. Up to now only a small part of the large villa - shown by geodiagnostic surveys to extend over 1 hectare - has been excavated. The excavations and the researches represent a relevant part of the international project “VII REGIO. Elsa Valley during the Roman Age and late Antiquity”. The building was abandoned in the 6th c., but in the period between the 6th and the 7th c. AD a group of Lombardic (Langobard) artisans coming from Eastern Europe, settled down in the villa remains and installed various workshops in the rooms of the representative part of the villa. They include a ceramic workshop with a kiln and spaces for different working stages, three rooms in which Roman glass mosaic tesserae and glass fragments were recycled, and a large and well organized iron smithy. Apparently there was also a workshop for the production of copper-based items, based on indications gathered from the remains behind the North/North-East wall, in not yet fully excavated areas, where the waste from the workshops was dumped. Other remains suggest that, in one or more rooms of the Roman architectural structure, gold was also worked. Rational and efficient Lombardic workshops for so many different productions, dated to this period, have never been identified and thoroughly studied before in Italy. The workshops were connected one to another and were provided with water from a complex system of channels, probably fed by a higher positioned reservoir. In the smithy all important structures are well preserved and can be reconstructed in detail. The blacksmith workshop was well organized and a large amount of iron working debris, such as bun-shaped working slag and hammer scale, but also iron objects and object fragments have been recovered from the excavated area. This paper presents the reconstruction and the graphic renderings of the different workshop features. It also shows the preliminary analysis data of part of the large amount of materials from the excavation which will be studied in detail in the next years.
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Cavalieri, M., & et al. (2009). The Reconstruction of 7th. c. A.D. Smithy in Central Italy. BUMA-VII. The Seventh international Conference on “The Beginnings of the Use of Metals and Alloys”, Bangalore-India. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/62473