It was a great and proud moment for me killing time with my two boys in the Montreal Science Museum when something caught my eye... Damascus Steel and Woods Steel used to make swords... Damascus steel was supposed to be a very fine and versatile sword made from 400 AD and then it went on to state however the origins of Damascus steel were actually from South Indian Wods Steel which was in existence from 500 BC.... Felt very nice to point out to my boys (simple maths lesson) that WE were good metallurgists 900 years before...it made it made its existance in middle east before entering europe... It just reminded me of our discussions on Ekku Sri
Being my research on kalinga influence in tamilnadu and kumarikandam continueing at southern region.
woots steel melting in our region was populariesed by karnal heeth during 1794 paper presentation at culcutta asiatic soceity.
he states that woots steel r used for damascus steel, ultimately first offical steel plant was started at parangipettai port of nova using ganja malai ore.
there is a possibility of tamils migration through iron making technology in past to the entire world . thats why our language basic roots spread everywere.
intrestingly indias oldest iron making site r situated from deccean to adichanallur region through western ghats.
intrestingly thagada malai of kaniykumari kerala border near thenmalai noted as a one of the most oldest site digged by alexanadar rea during 1906.during december shanthi pappu and my self going to do extensive field work through the unnoticified forest of that region.
now me and my friend at dharmapuri partiban r working on adiyan marabinarin veliulaga thodarbugal through iron technology . .
Kalinga is from the area is from. He is Balu sir to all of us and when he writes it s.balasubramani B+ve - a movement which he lives by - affixing his blood group after his name, so that it becomes a tag for emergency. But i think it also portrays his attitude - BE POSITIVE.
Mr.B.sashisekaran did extensive work on iron melting sites in tamilnadu. presently he is at National institute of ocean technology pallikarani chennai.
during my free time will send more information.
predating of indian iron age through southrn region will elight soon
there are two identified metal furnace site at kaniyakumari maathur near susindaram a biggest site still u can get big slags and kollan families still exist at there on purathaya nadu.
Another at near udayagiri pn the way to padmanabapuram is a medivel melting site
oldest site kaniyakumari region is situated near netta border of kaniyakumari on the way nedumangadu.
Near ponmudi hils on aryankaaval forest region lot of melting sites are noticed.
Mr.Nambirajan of ASI thirusur concentration on this
from seevalaperi to aathur on thamiraparani river u can get metal slag
from sivagiri to kaaval kinaru along the western ghats hills plenty of iron making sites are there at panacha paandiyar desam.
reference books
Iron Industry & Metallurgy: A Study of Ancient Technology by Dr. B. Sasisekaran
Review: Archaeometallurgy in India. Tripathi Vibha (Ed.). 1998. New Delhi: Sharada Publishing House. Pp. 387. Price Rs. 1300/-. by D.P. Agrawal & Lalit Tiwari
Vibha Tripathi has done a great service by organizing this seminar on metallurgy and bringing out this very informative volume of proceedings covering so many different dimensions of archaeometallurgical studies in India. This is a very valuable volume as a source book on Indian archaeometallurgy - a subject not much popular among archaeologists!
India has a very old iron technology tradition, as indicated by the 6 ton rust-free Delhi Iron Pillar of 4th-5th century A.D., beams of Konark temple (10th century A.D.) and the famous Dhar pillar of 10th -11th centuries A.D. All these are proof that the Indian ancient alchemy and metallurgical science are rich and vast. The detailed description of metallurgical processes and intricate properties of minerals and chemicals in the 10th -11th century alchemy-text, the Rasaratna Samuchchaya is yet another proof of the high level of knowledge of metallurgy. Metals had a very close relationship with human civilization and the levels attributed to different stages of cultural growth are dominated by the metals being used at a particular period, viz. the Copper-Bronze Age or Iron Age etc. Metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent dates back to circa 6000B.C. as indicated by the occurrence of a few copper objects, from the early phases of Mehrgarh (Pakistan). The main theme of this book is the ancient Indian metallurgical traditions and techniques.
This volume is edited Vibha Tripathi, a Professor at the Department of Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She organized a National Seminar on Indian Archaeometallurgy in 1991 at Banaras Hindu University. The present volume is an valuable outcome of the deliberations of that seminar, even though it took seven years to publish it!
The volume contains 37 articles by well-known scholars in the field of the History of Technology and Archaeology. A total of 68 scholars have contributed to this volume. The volume is divided into four sections: Mining and Metallurgy, Ethno-Archaeological Evidence on Archaeometallurgy, Literary Evidence on Archaeometallurgy, and the last section is devoted to Socio-Economic Implications of Metals.
Section I: - Mining and Metallurgy. This is a very lengthy section containing 20 articles by various authors.
Arun Kumar Biswas writes the first article of this book that discusses some issues related to Indian archaeomaterials, trace element correlation, etc.
Second article of this book is " The Metallurgical Tradition of the Harappans" written by D. P. Agrawal and Rajam Seshadri. In this article they explain that the Harappans made prolific use of gold, silver, copper, and lead in addition to the alloys of these base metals but the Pre and Early Harappan contexts are generally poor in copper. They also emphasise that they analysed more then 200 Harappans artifacts of which only 23% were alloyed with tin, 12% with arsenic and 80% with lead.
In the next article, Sudhir, C. Duari and Pranab K. Chattopadhyay describe the transition from Neolithic to Copper Age at Kushadwip, District Bankura, West Bengal with the help of chemical and metallographic analysis.
Senuwar, a site in district Rohtas, Bihar, is an important archaeological site, located south of Sasaram on the right bank of the river Kundra. Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay and Birendra Pratap Singh discuss the metallographic and chemical analyses of copper artefacts of this site. It also describes the Neolithic Chalcolithic copper objects.
Hari Narayan, Jay Prakash, M. V. Nair and O. P. Agrawal present two different articles in this volume. In the first article they describe the metallographic study of copper antiquities of Manjhi site, district Saran, Bihar. They also discuss the culture context of the different periods in the first paper. In the second article they deal with the metallographic study of iron artefacts of domestic use like tools, weapons, etc from Sringverpura site of Uttar Pradesh. Tradition associates Sringverpura site with Rama who crossed the Ganga here after banishment from Ayodhya.
Ashok Datta deals with the beginning of ancient iron technology in west Bengal region in the Chalcolithic phase. He states that the beginning of iron technology in west Bengal may safely be placed c. 11th /12th Century B.C.
R. P. Pande and B. Prakash describe the historical development of iron technology in the Morar valley, M.P and metallurgical study of ancient swords, respectively.
A detailed discussion of Indian iron and steel technology in archaeology is presented by Syed Jafar Mahmud. He describes the ancient iron mines, mining technology and smelting processes with the help of archaeological data.
Rajghat site is located within the Varanasi area and Varanasi is one of the most important ancient living cities of the world, which has a continuous history since 1000 B.C. A number of gold, silver and copper coins belonging to 400 B.C. to 900A.D. were found at the excavations of Rajghat site. Somnath Misra and T. N. Tiwari deal with the archaeometallurgical study of Rajghat site in their article entitled, "Studies and Archaeometallurgical Significance of some Gold, Silver and Copper Coins from Rajghat (Varanasi) Excavations - a Brief Review."
There is confusion about early occurrence of zinc. The regular zinc production in India started approximately around 12th century A.D. and in China it is not earlier then 16th century A.D. Swarna Kamal Bhowmik gives evidence in his article that the metal craftsmen of ancient Gujarat knew the method of extraction of metallic zinc from zinc ore.
P. T. Craddock, I. C. Freestone, Lynn Willies, H. V. Paliwal, L. K. Gurjar and K.T.M. Hegde, in the next article of this section, deal with ancient lead, silver and zinc industry of Rajasthan area.
The next article by K. N. P. Rao is very interesting as it describes the uses of metals in Indian traditional medicine systems like Ayurveda and Sidha systems. K. Nagesh Rao and P. R. Range