Ancient metallurgy
03 Oct 1994 12:00Especially swords, bells, ritual objects (esp. Shang dynasty bronzes). And shamanism. And alchemy. (Cf. Eliade on both those two.)
- Recommended:
- Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible
- Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5 has, in the course of its discussion of alchemy, a lot to say about less esoteric sorts of working in metals.
- Cyril Stanley Smith, A Search for Structure: Selected Essays on Science, Art, and History and From Art to Science : Seventy-two Objects Illustrating the Nature of Discovery
- Wen Fong (ed.), The Great Bronze Age of China
- To read:
- Sandra Blakely, Myth, Ritual and Metallurgy in Ancient Greece and Recent Africa [Blurb]
- Dorothy Hosler. The Sounds and Colors of Power:The Sacred Metallurgical Technology of Ancient West Mexico
- Cyril Stanley Smith, A History of Metallography; the Development of Ideas on the Structure of Metals before 1890
- Roderick Whitfield, The Problem of Meaning in Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes
