IDEOLOGY AND THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD IN AFRICA - INTERPRETING SYMBOLISM IN IRON SMELTING TECHNOLOGY

This essay explores the interface between specific features in the arc haeological record pertaining to African iron smelting and various sym bolic meanings that are linked to those remains by ritual performances and their associated beliefs. Employing a critical direct historical approach that uses ethnographic observations and historical evidence, cross-cultural regularities can be isolated in the types of symbolic m eanings that are attributed to ritual offerings placed in the bases of African smelting furnaces. Such meanings range from interdiction of a ncestral spirits and witchcraft to the infusion of the furnace with at tributes of a fertility-one of the primary symbolic armatures that con fers meaning on iron smelting. Comparison of the ethnographic models t o archaeological evidence then reveals that ritual treatments of iron smelting show significant continuity through time-particularly in the domain of fertility symbolism-reaching as far back through time as the mid-first millennium B.C. (C) 1997 Academic Press.