Glossary Metals, materials and technology
Smelting
Heating ore with a fuel such as charcoal until the metal separates from the rock, leaving a waste called slag behind.
Smelting is the step that turns rock into metal. Cypriot copper sits mostly in sulphide ores, which cannot be reduced to metal in a single heating as oxide or carbonate ores can, so the story of the island's copper industry is largely the story of learning to smelt them. The earliest Chalcolithic copper objects were hammered from native copper and needed no smelting at all.
The first clear proof of smelting on Cyprus comes from Ambelikou-Aletri in the Middle Bronze Age, where a fragment of furnace lining still carries slag. By the Late Bronze Age, sites such as Politiko-Phorades ran a multi-stage process with furnaces, tuyères and bellows, described under copper metallurgy.
Full entry: Copper Metallurgy in Ancient Cyprus
Related terms
- Ore
Rock containing enough metal to be worth mining and smelting; Cypriot copper ore is mostly chalcopyrite, a copper-iron sulphide.
- Slag
The glassy waste left when ore is smelted: the rock and impurities that separate from the molten metal in the furnace.
- Tuyère
A clay nozzle set into the wall or top of a furnace so that air from bellows can be blown into the fire to raise its heat.
- Native copper
Copper that occurs naturally as metal in the ground and can be shaped by hammering, with no smelting needed.
Where it appears
- Gold, Silver, Tin, Arsenic and Iron in Ancient Cyprus
- Tools and Technologies of Ancient Cyprus
- Climate and Landscape in Ancient Cyprus
- Village Life in Late Bronze Age Cyprus
- Village Life in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus
- Subsistence, Craft, and Community in Prehistoric and Archaic Cyprus
- Chalcolithic Cyprus
- Cypro-Geometric Cyprus
- Pottery Kilns and Firing in Ancient Cyprus
- The Environment of Ancient Cyprus
- Weapons and Armour of Ancient Cyprus
- Weapons of Bronze Age Cyprus