Between ritual and technology: Social articulation of prehistoric metallurgy from a cross-cultural perspective

The present paper explores the relevance of ethnographic data on ritual metallurgy for the understanding of the intersection of ritual and technology in prehistoric metallurgy. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, the paper details ritual practices surrounding iron smelting, including gendered roles, the use of ?medicines?, and accompanying rituals and taboos. The case study of Chalcolithic copper metallurgy in the Southern Levant is compared to patterns of social articulation of African metallurgy, and it is concluded that the ?Transformer pattern?, where technological and ritual roles of the metalworkers are most intertwined, was found to be the most relevant for extractive metallurgy. The study concludes that while direct analogies between ethnographic and archaeological data should be avoided, ethnographic research provides valuable insights into various ways in which prehistoric metalworking could be socially and ritually articulated.