Databases and other information resources

Introduction

The group has been collecting archaeo-metallurgical data and information for the last 20 years. Much of this has been published in individual site reports and disparate papers in various journals. It is intended in the long term that these data will be generally available as FTP retrievable text or database files.

For the moment we will display a list of the databases and contact address. If you contact the address associated with the database, the person concerned will contact you. They will then search the database for the information you require, extract it, and forward it to you. I know this is a rather messy way of arranging things but more work is required on the databases before they can go on-line. Also, we need to know the sort of information people are likely to require and how they wish it to be presented. This method of access will hopefully give us that information.

More recently in conjunction with the E-mail discussion group Arch-metals a bibliography of publications related to archaeo-metallurgy has been compiled. This is not a comprehensive bibliography, but it is intended to compliment the abstracts that appear in the Historical Metallurgy Society Journal, in that the bibliography is updated approximately every three months.
It is intended that all both the databases and bibliography should be be directly retrievable by WWW, but this is the case only for the bibliography. 

  • Iron Several maps of the British iron-working sites are presented 
  • Copper working - in preparation
  • Archaeo-metallurgical Bibliography
  •     - introductory file.
  •     - main bibliography
  •     - new entries
  •     - Abstracts
  • New Archaeo-metallurgical books  

    • Database of British ironworking sites Graphics

    The list below indicates the maps available or intended to be available in the form of GIF images. These were or will be created from the British Ironworking sites database using PARADOX and ARC-INFO.

    You may reproduce them freely as long as it is clearly stated where and when they were obtained, and that they remain copyright of C.J.Salter and associates.

    All sites with evidence of iron-working or possible iron-working.

  • All sites, all periods
  • All Iron Age sites
  • All Roman sites


    • Smelting sites -

  • All periods
  • Iron Age
  • Romano-British - Mid-first to end 4th centuries AD.
  • "Saxon" - AD 410-1066 approx
  • Medieval - AD 1066 - 1495
  • Early blast furnaces - pre 1800


    • As much of the information presented here was culled from annual reviews of sites and work in progress in National and County journals, therefore, there is no guarantee that the information is accurate. In some instances, the National Grid references have been given incorrectly, hence the location of offshore sites. These errors will be corrected as soon as possible, however, as this project is mainly carried out by volunteers, this may not happen very quickly. You can help us, if you wish, by having a copy of the full database (sorry but IBM PC only), and checking for errors, or by informing us of new sites.

    The ironworking Access2 database is available as a Microsoft Access 2 database.
    Clicking on the highlighted Access2 Adatabase above should get your web-browser to save the file on your computer in a directory of your choice.
    The transfered file is a DOS self extracting file, thus you will need to get a MS-DOS window up and change to the directory that you put the file in, using the cd at the MS-DOS prompt. The run the transfer file. The dialogue should be :-

    >cd \someroot\other\target
    >iron2

    This will generate the two files that constitute the database iron2.ldb & iron2.mdb

    The database consists of one table and one form. The table has the following structure:-

    .
    Site No  Site Number
    Name Site  Site Name 
    Parish Parish, or Town 
    County County, District, Region 
    NGR Nation Grid Reference
    NGR_Qual  The precision of the NGR
    Period Dating 
    Slag Weight  Amount of metallurgy debris found (if known)
    Mining  Presence of mining activity
    Ore Ore present on site
    Bloomery  Bloomery site
    Blast Furnace  Blast furnace site
    Refining  Refining (of cast iron or of blooms)
    Smithing  Smithing activity
    Unclassified  Undefined metallurgical activity on site (might not be iron-working)
    Ref  References
    Description  Short description of evidence
    Edit date  Date of last editing of that record

    Go to Historical Metallurgy Society Home Page
    Go to Oxford Materials Science-based Archaeology Group Home Page 

    Created: 16 May 1995
    Last Updated: 20 Oct 1998

    Any comments or site information should be addressed to Chris Salter at chris.salter@materials.ox.ac.uk