Experimental archaeology by Melissa cadet
The application of lead isotope-based provenance analysis in Southeast Asia over the last decade ... more The application of lead isotope-based provenance analysis in Southeast Asia over the last decade has strongly suggested a central role was played by the Lao PDR in regional copper production exchange networks for approximately 1500 years. The Vilabouly Complex, in central Lao's Savannakhet Province, has revealed major copper mining and smelting sites dated to the regional Iron Age (c. 400 BC-AD 500) and possibly Bronze Age (c. 1000-400 BC). Metallurgical practices at the Vilabouly Complex, and indeed for all of the Lao PDR, are unknown, and the propose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analytical study of the Vilabouly Complex metal assemblage, including 60 copper-base artefacts of multiple typologies. Cut samples of these were subjected to morpho-stylistic, metallographic (OM), elemental (XRF, SEM-EDS) and lead isotope analyses (MC-ICP-MS) in order to reconstruct the range of forms, metalworking materials, techniques (alloying, casting and post-casting treatments) used at the Vilabouly Complex. The results revealed an assemblage composed of copper, bronze and leaded bronze alloys, with a majority consistent with the lead isotopic signature for the Vilabouly Complex copper. The consistent geochemical and technological signature of the majority of artefacts strongly corroborates the extensive onsite production evidence, and fits with the burgeoning regional copper-base metals database for copper metal demand being sated in large part by Lao PDR supply.
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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2021
Field experiments in copper smelting were carried out in order to test assumptions about the copp... more Field experiments in copper smelting were carried out in order to test assumptions about the copper production processes employed at the Vilabouly Complex (VC), an Iron Age extraction and production site in central Laos. VC is one of only three primary production sites known in Southeast Asia and appears to be a major copper production and mining locale. Analytical results on the VC assemblage (ores, crucibles, slag fragments and copper alloy objects), along with the geological information, allowed us to generate hypotheses on the smelting process. The identificationof macroscopic layers of matte associated with copper suggests the introduction of sulfidicores during the process. Co-smelting with carbonate ores (likely malachite) and a secondary copper sulfide,chalcocite (Cu2S), seemed to be most likely. Therefore, experimental reconstructions were performed to test this co-smelting of malachite with chalcocite in a one step-process using crucibles based on the archaeo-logical examples as reaction vessels. The experiments produced matte, of different compositions according to the charge used, along with metallic copper and slag. The ratio (1:1) of malachite/chalcocite resulted in products comparable to the Vilabouly Complex evidence and thus strengthens the hypothesis.
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Papers by Melissa cadet
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Aug 1, 2021
Abstract Copper-base drums are among the most iconic artefacts of mid-late 1st millennium BC Sout... more Abstract Copper-base drums are among the most iconic artefacts of mid-late 1st millennium BC Southeast Asia and southern China, and more specifically of the Vietnamese Đong Sơn culture and the Yunnanese Dian culture. The wide distribution of these drums, in public museums and private collections, renders their technical and stylistic study difficult, and their comparison complex. In this paper, we focus on a copper-base miniature drum assemblage, discovered in a tightly delimited area of northern Vietnam, associated to the Đong Sơn culture. This multi-disciplinary study incorporates morphological, stylistic, technological, elemental and lead isotopic analysis of a large proportion of a regional drum assemblage for the first time. With this combined approach was intended to improve our knowledge of the people who produced and consumed miniature drums; a class which, until now, has not aroused much interest. The present paper details the archaeometric results of this original analysis, based on 25 samples from the National Museum of History (Hanoi). The results indicate a wide variety of alloy types was used, alongside a range of raw material sources, both with weak correspondence to morpho-stylistic classification. We propose these data evidence Đong Sơn drum miniature production was practiced in a decentralised manner, using materials at hand, but questions concerning their emergence and their link to burial practices seen in contemporary southern China remains unsolved from an archaeometallurgical point of view but will be the subject of another paper (Le Meur et al. (forthcoming).
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Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Jul 4, 2022
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Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Historical phenomena often have prehistoric precedents; with this paper we investigate the potent... more Historical phenomena often have prehistoric precedents; with this paper we investigate the potential for archaeometallurgical analyses and networked data processing to elucidate the progenitors of the Southwest Silk Road in Mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. We present original microstructural, elemental and lead isotope data for 40 archaeological copper-base metal samples, mostly from the UNESCO-listed site of Halin, and lead isotope data for 24 geological copper-mineral samples, also from Myanmar. We combined these data with existing datasets (N = 98 total) and compared them to the 1000+ sample late prehistoric archaeometallurgical database available from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan. Lead isotope data, contextualized for alloy, find location and date, were interpreted manually for intra-site, inter-site and inter-regional consistency, which hint at significant multi-scalar connectivity from the late second millennium bc. To test this interpretation statis...
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Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
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Journal of Archaeological Science
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Archaeometallurgy in Europe 2019, Jun 19, 2019
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Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2021
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HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jul 6, 2022
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Journal of Archaeological Science, 2019
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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Abstract Field experiments in copper smelting were carried out in order to test assumptions about... more Abstract Field experiments in copper smelting were carried out in order to test assumptions about the copper production processes employed at the Vilabouly Complex (VC), an Iron Age extraction and production site in central Laos. VC is one of only three primary production sites known in Southeast Asia and appears to be a major copper production and mining locale. Analytical results on the VC assemblage (ores, crucibles, slag fragments and copper alloy objects), along with the geological information, allowed us to generate hypotheses on the smelting process. The identification of macroscopic layers of matte associated with copper suggests the introduction of sulfidic ores during the process. Co-smelting with carbonate ores (likely malachite) and a secondary copper sulfide, chalcocite (Cu2S), seemed to be most likely. Therefore, experimental reconstructions were performed to test this co-smelting of malachite with chalcocite in a one step-process using crucibles based on the archaeological examples as reaction vessels. The experiments produced matte, of different compositions according to the charge used, along with metallic copper and slag. The ratio (1:1) of malachite/chalcocite resulted in products comparable to the Vilabouly Complex evidence and thus strengthens the hypothesis.
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Experimental archaeology by Melissa cadet
Papers by Melissa cadet