Chairperson: Sharada Srinivasan, Professor and Dean, School of Humanities, NIAS
About the lecture:
The paper aims to understand the copper smelting technology through experimental approaches. Experiments conducted with ancient equipment’s following the traditional methods. This paper is based on archaeological shreds of evidence of ancient copper smelting technology provided by archaeological excavations. Pyro technology has always been an integral part of Harappan culture, and the metallurgical activities of that culture have been identified to be a consequential factor for branding it as first urbanization. The remains of metallurgical activities are found in form of fragments of ores, kilns or fragments of kilns attributed to metal processing, metallurgical slag from the reduction of ore to metal. The tools used for metal processing such as crucible fragments with metal prills, moulds, anvils, stakes, hammers and chisels and so on and metal objects including smelting and melting ingots, semi-finished and finished objects. Based on these shreds of evidence, the attempts are made to understand the ancient technology.
The author strongly believes the use of modern equipment’s like machine bellows, modern furnace, and other modern instruments like a thermometer, etc. is futile to understand ancient technology. Henceforth, the author has strictly restricted the use of any kind of modern instruments and instead relied on ancient equipment like leather bellow, clay furnace, use of stone hammers, etc. As has been mentioned before, this paper is not a reconstruction or recreation of Harappan copper technology; it is simply an attempt to understand the complex technological process of the Harappan culture through experimental approaches.
About the speaker:
Dr Diya Mukherjee is a trained archaeologist specializing in Harappan copper metallurgy. Her research interests include archaeo-metallurgy, particularly Harappan metallurgy, experimental archaeology, and ethnoarchaeology. She has participated in various archaeological excavations as a trained archaeologist at sites like Karsola, Rakhigarhi, etc. She was awarded multiple grants from prestigious institutes like INTACH Heritage Academy and Coghlan Bequest Grant (from Historical Metallurgical Society, London). She has published her research papers in the journals like Crucible (from Historical Metallurgical Society, London), History Today (from The Indian Archaeological Society), etc.