Université de Fribourg

Tools to qualify experiments with bloomery furnaces

Senn, M. ; Gfeller, U. ; Guénette-Beck, Barabara ; Lienemann, P. ; Ulrich, A.

In: Archaeometry, 2010, vol. 52, no. 1, p. 131-145

Five experimental bloomery iron ore smelts were carried out in a reconstruction of an early medieval furnace of the Boécourt type (Switzerland). A part of the bloom from the most successful experiment was forged to a billet. Starting materials and products were weighed, described and chemically characterized (ICP-MS, LA-ICP-MS and WD-XRF). The calculation of the yield and mass balance based on...