Glossary Metals, materials and technology
Tuyère
Also called: tuyere
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.
A tuyère protects the end of the bellows pipe from the heat of the fire. Tuyères matter in Cypriot archaeology because they mark a change in technology: there is no certain evidence for them, or for bellows, anywhere on the island before Late Cypriot I, and earlier smiths seem to have relied on natural draught and blowpipes.
The Late Bronze Age smelting site of Politiko-Phorades produced some fifty nearly complete tuyères and over 600 fragments, the largest such group from any Cypriot site. There they were inserted from the top of the furnace and fed by pot-bellows, one of the innovations that let Late Cypriot smiths separate slag from metal cleanly.
Full entry: Copper Metallurgy in Ancient Cyprus
Related terms
- Smelting
Heating ore with a fuel such as charcoal until the metal separates from the rock, leaving a waste called slag behind.
- Slag
The glassy waste left when ore is smelted: the rock and impurities that separate from the molten metal in the furnace.
- Crucible
A small heat-resistant clay vessel in which metal, or sometimes ore, was heated until molten and then poured into a mould.