Early ironwork in Biscay: Survey,excavation, experimentation and materials characterization. An integral study of the mountainside ironworks (ferrerías de monte or “haizeolak”)

ABSTRACT

The production of iron in Biscay (Basque Country, Spain) has been a hallmark of this territory of the North of the Iberian Peninsula throughout its history. The Archaeology team of the Basque Country Mining Museum has spent 13 years, so far, studying the origins of this activity through the evidences left at the old pre-hydraulic iron production workshops known as mountainside ironworks (ferrerías de monte) or haizeolak. It has catalogued 170 archaeometallurgical sites of this type in Biscay, and the archeological excavation of some of them has led to the knowledge of the different stages of the production process that took place in these workshops. The team has also experimentally reproduced the work carried out in a mountainside ironworks from the High Middle Ages, and it has currently started the characterization process of this type of activity through the study of the collected materials.