Iron smelting furnaces from the Etruscan metalworking centre of Baratti, Populonia: a mineralogical and petrographical study

The Gulf of Baratti (Populonia) has represented one of the most important early iron metal working in Europe over at least five centuries (VI-I century BC) Recent excavationa in the Etruscan industrial quarter (Camp VI area) led to the discovery of a channel up to 1,5 meter large and 60 cm deep, extending parallel to the Hellenistic walls. This channel was filled in with different kinds of metallurgical debris currently under investigation: tapped and furnaces iron slags, a few fragments of copper slags, and many broken pieces of smelting furnaces. We report here after the first results of the mineralogical and petrographical nalyses of smelting furnaces. The external portion of the furnace is instead constituted by a coarse sandstone, frequently shaped in angular blocks with sqaured corners. The sandstone's mineralogy and textural features are compared with those of sandstones from nearby occurences, in order to trace back the provenance of the material employed for smelting furnaces. Some information on the metallurgical processes, as as inferred from the minero-petrographical and compositional features of the furnaces, will also be proposed.