The roman smithing workshop of Rodersdorf - Klein Buel
A roman forge with a slag layer, dating to 170-250 A.D.
The site of Rodersdorf - Klein Buel (SO), excavated in 2001 (Harb 2002), has yielded an important quantity of smithing residues and a smithing workshop with a wooden building and pits. Unfortunately, none of the structures could clearly be interpretated as a smithing hearth.The workshop belongs to a villa rustica and has been working for perhaps 30 to 70 years. During the excavation, 780 kg of slag and 144 kg of hearth wall fragments have been collected, together with 10 kg of iron working tools and half-fabricated artifacts. Allmost all of the slag layer lays within the excavated surface.
All slags have been examined macroscopically and show characteristics of typical smithing slags, similar to those known from several similar contexts in Switzerland.
The slag assemblage gives evidence of a certain variability as much in size as in type (physical and chemical composition) and morphology, but also an important part of iron-poor, silica-rich slags. Such an assemblage could possibly be linked to production "on demand" and repairs. The iron lost in the slags has been quantified (following Anderson et al, 2003) and the results suggest that the volume of iron forged in this workshop didn't exceed 100 kg/year.
Rather than to serial production for an external market, the workshop seems to have been oriented towards the maintainance and the manufactering of a large range of tools and objects. The diversity of the smithing activities implies a reasonably skilled blacksmith. The importance of the wooden structure shows this was a permanent installation, but the smithing activities do not necessarily represent a fulltime job. The working of less than 100kg of iron per year most probably just covered the domanial consumption and fits well the expected figures for a medium sized roman domain.
Research project S. Perret. Joint project with Pierre Harb / Archaeological Service Solothurn. Ongoing.
Coordinates: 601025 E, 259235 N
Bibliography
Harb (P.). 2002. Rödersdorf SO, Klein Büel: Fundbericht 2001. Jahrb. der Schweiz. Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, 85, 328-329.
Perret (S.). 2003. Quantitative Analyse der metallurgischen Verarbeitungsabfälle der antiken Schmiede von Rodersdorf-Klein Buel. Kantonsarchäologie Solothurn (unpublished report).
Download
S. Perret: PowerPoint slides (2.28 Mb; in german).
Presented at the Tagung des Südwestdeutschen Verbands für Altertumsforschung (Ingolstadt, June 6-10, 2003)