[TheForge] Re: question concerning metalworking timeline

[Mike Spencer]

> would anyone know of any series of books that give the metalworking
> time line that one may use to authenicate the time period of a piece
> of metalwork?

If I were in pursuit of such information, I would ask one of the
people listed here:

   http://web.mit.edu/cmrae/faculty/index.html

the faculty of MIT's Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and
Ethnology. The faculty listed there all have links to brief blurbs on
their research interests so you might identify someone doing work
close to your interests.  At least someone there can point you the the
right books or journals.

Of these, I've met two.  Sam Allen is a hobbyist blacksmith himself
and has maintained a blacksmithing "lab" at MIT for many years. A very
agreeable and apporachable person, he could probably refer you to the
right person although his own specialty is not in the area you're
asking about. IIRC, Sam wrote the intro to New Edge of the Anvil and
you may have met him if you were at the 1990 ABANA conference.

Heather Lechtman will have all the answers to your questions if you're
concerned with pre-Columbian Meso-american metalwork. Some colleagues
speak of her as a "difficult" personality although she was more than
civil enough to me when we met.


FWIW,
- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^