Iron metallurgy in Africa

The topic Iron metallurgy in preindustrial sub-Saharan Africa encompasses both studies of the technology and archaeology of indigenous iron production, and also an understanding of the role that iron production played in African societies before European colonization of the subcontinent.

Although the origins of iron working in Africa have been the subject of scholarly interest since the 1860s, it is still not known whether this technology diffused into sub-Saharan Africa from the Mediterranean region, or whether it was invented there quite independently of iron working elsewhere. Although some nineteenth-century European scholars favored an indigenous invention of iron working in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeologists writing between 1945 and 1965 mostly favored diffusion of iron smelting technology from Carthage across the Sahara to West Africa, or from Meroe on the upper Nile to central Africa, or both. The invention of radiocarbon dating in the late 1950s made it possible to date metallurgical sites in sub-Saharan Africa (since the fuel used for smelting and forging was always charcoal) and by the late 1960s some surprisingly early radiocarbon dates had been obtained for iron smelting sites in both Nigeria and central Africa (Rwanda, Burundi). This led some scholars to state that iron was independently invented in sub-Saharan Africa These conclusions were premature, for there was no firm evidence at that time for the antiquity of ironworking in either Carthage or Meroe. Evidence of early Phoenician iron smelting in the western Mediterranean (900-800 BCE) was not found until the 1990s and it is still not known when iron working was first practiced in Kush and Meroe in modern Sudan.

From the mid-1970s there were new claims for independent invention of iron smelting on central Niger and from 1994–1999 UNESCO funded an initiative "Les Routes du Fer en Afrique/The Iron Routes in Africa" to investigate the origins and spread of iron metallurgy in Africa. This funded both the conference on early iron in Africa and the Mediterranean and a volume, published by UNESCO, that has generated much controversy because it included only authors sympathetic to the view that iron was independently invented in Africa.

Two major reviews of the evidence were published in the mid-2000s. Both authors concluded that there were major technical flaws in each of the studies claiming independent invention. Three major issues were identified. The first was whether the material dated by radiocarbon was in secure archaeological association with iron-working residues. (Many of the dates from Niger, for example, were on organic matter in potsherds that were lying on the ground surface together with iron objects). The second issue is the possible effect of "old carbon" - wood or charcoal much older than the time at which iron was smelted. This is a particular problem in Niger, where the charred stumps of ancient trees are a potential source of charcoal, and have sometimes been mis-identified as smelting furnaces. A third issue is the inherent lack of precision of the radiocarbon method itself in the range from 800 to 400 BC, which is attributable to irregular production of radiocarbon in the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately most radiocarbon dates for the initial spread of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa fall within this range.

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