Impact of Materials on Society

IMPACT OF MATERIALS ON SOCIETY

First Edition
Eds. Sophia Krzys Acord, Kevin S. Jones, Marsha Bryant, Debra
Dauphin-Jones, and Pamela Hupp
With support from the Materials Research Society, Department of Defense,
National Science Foundation, and the University of Florida

LIBRARYPRESS@UF
PERRY COLLINS, EDITOR
TRACY MACKAY-RATLIFF, COVER DESIGN
GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA

ufl.pb.unizin.org/imos/
Impact of Materials on Society by Sophia Krzys Acord, Kevin S. Jones, Marsha Bryant, Debra Dauphin-Jones,
Pamela Hupp, Susan D. Gillespie, Kenneth E. Sassaman, Mary Ann Eaverly, Florin Curta, Sean Adams, and Bonnie
Effros is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where
otherwise noted.

Copyright © 2021 Sophia Krzys Acord, Kevin S. Jones, Marsha Bryant, Debra Dauphin-Jones, and the
Materials Research Society. Authors retain copyright to individual chapters.

This book was produced with Pressbooks (https://pressbooks.com) and rendered with Prince.
Contents

Publication Information vii

Acknowledgments ix

Understanding the Material World 1

Sophia Krzys Acord and Kevin S. Jones
Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay 15
Susan D. Gillespie
Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone 44
Kenneth E. Sassaman
Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces 67
Mary Ann Eaverly
Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy 88
Florin Curta
Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage 110
Florin Curta
Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction 126
Sean Adams
Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust 144
Sean Adams
Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America 158
Marsha Bryant
Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge 176
Bonnie Effros
 535 Library West • PO Box 117000 • Gainesville, FL 32611-7000
librarypress.domains.uflib.ufl.edu • [email protected]

ISBN13: 978-1-944455-12-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Acord, Sophia Krzys, editor, author. | Jones, Kevin S., editor, author. | Bryant, Marsha,
editor, author. | Dauphin-Jones, Debra, editor. | Hupp, Pamela, editor. | Gillespie, Susan D.,
author. | Sassaman, Kenneth E., author. | Eaverly, Mary Ann, author. | Curta, Florin, author.
| Adams, Sean, author. | George A. Smathers Libraries, publisher.
Impact of materials on society / by Sophia Krzys Acord, Kevin S. Jones, Marsha Bryant,
Debra Dauphin-Jones, and Pamela Hupp.
Gainesville, FL : Library Press @ UF, 2021 | Includes bibliographic references | Summary:
This textbook supports the Impact of Materials on Society course and teaching materials,
developed with the Materials Research Society. The textbook offers an exploration into
materials (including ceramics, clay, concrete, glass, metals, and polymers) and the
relationship with technologies and social structures. The textbook was developed by
an interdisciplinary team from Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences, including
anthropologists, sociologists, historians, media studies experts, Classicists, and more.
LCSH: Materials science. | Material culture. | Science and the humanities. | Engineering
and the humanities. |Materials–Study and teaching.
LCC TA401 / TA492 (ebook)

Publication Information | vii

viii | Publication Information
Acknowledgments
This book serves as a textbook for the Impact of Materials on Society (IMOS) course. The
editors and authors wish to acknowledge the support of the University of Florida that
made the creation of this textbook possible: especially the Center for the Humanities and
the Public Sphere, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Creative Campus
Catalyst Fund, Office of the Provost, George A. Smathers Libraries (especially Perry Collins
and Laurie Taylor), University Press of Florida (especially Meredith Babb), and the College
of Education. We would also like to acknowledge the Office of Corrosion within the
Department of Defense, specifically Dan Dunmire and Greg Redick, for their support and
guidance in developing the IMOS course. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the
Materials Research Society (MRS) and the many MRS scientists who provided content
and input when developing the course, and specifically Richard Souza for believing in the
project and his constant encouragement. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the National
Science Foundation for supporting the dissemination of the IMOS course and this
textbook within the United States, as well as internationally.

Acknowledgments | ix
Understanding the Material World
SOPHIA KRZYS ACORD AND KEVIN S. JONES

Innovation often happens at an interface. In materials science and engineering (MSE),

groundbreaking discoveries have occurred at the interfaces of two or more different
materials. For example, the modern computer chip relies extensively on the properties
exhibited where metals meet semiconductors. Similarly, innovative thinking can happen
at the interface of multiple academic disciplines. To revisit our example, the modern
computer chip operates at the intersection between technological devices, the personal
lives of those who create and use these devices, and the communities in which they live.
This textbook brings the humanities and humanistic social sciences into dialogue with
MSE to explore the synergies between human life and materials innovation in societies
ranging from pre-civilization to the present. It is only in dialogue between the properties
of the “stuff we make” (the domain of MSE) and the sociocultural forces that shape and are
impacted by this “stuff” (the terrain of the humanities), that we can fully understand our
material world.
The need for close dialogue between the humanities and sciences has been echoed
since the origins of the academy. As stated in an article in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, “An educational system that merges humanities and sciences, creating whole-
brain engineers and scientifically inspired humanists, fosters more than just innovation. It
yields more-flexible individuals who adapt to unanticipated changes as the world evolves
1
unpredictably.”
This is particularly important today, as we increasingly see science not only as the
pursuit of natural truths but also as a portfolio of solutions to national and global
problems. In addressing these problems, it is important for scientists and researchers to
proceed intentionally and with comprehensive knowledge of the social and cultural worlds
in which these problems are manifest. Two federal funding agencies, the National Science
Foundation (NSF) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) were established in
the United States in 1950 and 1965, respectively. In the report leading to NEH’s founding,
the authors wrote, “If the interdependence of science and the humanities were more
generally understood, men would be more likely to become masters of their technology
2
and not its unthinking servants.” The report’s authors, hailing from leading universities as
well as the US Atomic Energy Commission, IBM Corporation, and New York Life Insurance,
knew that connecting the humanities and sciences would help us make informed
judgments about our control of nature, ourselves, and our destiny.

Understanding the Material World | 1

 The 1980 Commission on the Humanities again revisited the relationship of the
humanities and sciences, noting that “social and ethical questions are intrinsic to science
and technology. In these respects, science and technology have been a domain of the
3
humanities in Western culture since its Greek origins.” The same can be said of the
close relationship of science and technology to the humanities in all cultures because
cultural beliefs and social needs guide how humans fabricate and adopt materials in
any context. The humanities and so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics) fields are allies in world making. Advances in science and engineering are
themselves social products, expressions of the cultural drives of a society. Furthermore, as
the disciplines that seek to understand the values and choices of human decision-makers,
the humanities can “awaken scientists and technicians to problems of which they may not
4
have been aware.” These problems may involve questions as to the ethical dimensions of
technical innovation or possible unintended consequences, but they can also be human
needs addressed through technical innovation. As noted more recently, in the 2013 Heart
of the Matter report produced by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission
on the Humanities and Social Sciences, all disciplines must come together in addressing
the grandest challenges of our time, including the provision of clean air and water, food,
5
health, energy, education, and human rights and safety.
There is a growing recognition of the importance of holistic thinking among scientific
agencies as well. The National Academy of Engineering has categorically stated that
today’s engineers need to be more than individuals who simply like math and science.
They must be “creative problem-solvers” who help “shape our future” by improving our
6
“health, happiness, and safety.”
And in 2012, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) added
two new criteria for engineering education that emphasize the social ends of engineering
7
work. These criteria were modified in 2017 to the following:

1. (2) an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified
needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global,
cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors
2. (4) an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering
situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of
engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts

Effectively, these ABET criteria recognize that engineering is truly multidisciplinary.

Engineering does not just engage our scientific knowledge of the physical world; it also

2 | Understanding the Material World

engages social and cultural awareness of the world in which engineers (and the eventual
consumers of their work) live.
Unfortunately, the need for social and scientific dialog in technological innovation is not
being met by coursework at most colleges and universities. A 2014 report published by
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences discovered that humanities and STEM majors
8
largely dwell in different silos during their educational pathways. This is an impediment
to addressing problems that require working with people from other disciplines, as well
as recognizing the importance of diverse backgrounds within individual disciplines. Prior
research has shown that discussing case studies of how technical products affect people
in their daily lives is one demonstrated way to meet the ABET criterion of “understand
9
the impact of engineering solutions in a global. . . societal context.” Moreover, existing
studies demonstrate that teaching science through the lens of social context and issues
contributes to students having more nuanced understandings of engineering solutions as
10
well as a more interdisciplinary and problem-centered conception of scientific inquiry.

The Impact of Materials on Society

This textbook is intended to accompany a freshman-level undergraduate course created
by University of Florida faculty with support from the Materials Research Society,
Department of Defense, and National Science Foundation. The course examines the
discovery, development, and use of materials over time in order to distill lessons from the
past that may guide materials engineering innovation in the future. Developed by a team
of materials engineers and humanities scholars, this textbook operates at the intersection
of material culture and materials science and is intended for use by students of both
engineering and the humanities. The stories in this textbook may also accompany a range
of academic initiatives including high school coursework, museum exhibits, and lifelong
learning programs.
If the goals of these authors are to create curricular dialogue between the humanistic
social sciences and engineering, why choose the terrain of MSE to begin? Put simply,
everything in our lives is made from a material. MSE is possibly the most ubiquitous form
of engineering that we encounter on a daily basis. We have even named societal epochs
after materials (e.g., the Stone Age, the Iron Age, etc.) Moreover, the basic properties
of materials (e.g., ductility, melting point, density) are intuitive, requiring little advanced
mathematics, chemistry, or physics knowledge. The artifacts that we make with
materials—from skyscrapers to quarters to microchips—are shaped into cultural currency
in our world. Writing about the unfortunate mistrust between the sciences and
humanities in 1958, British botanist Sir Eric Ashby noted that technology could be “the

Understanding the Material World | 3

cement between science and humanism” because technology is concerned not with
11
science per say, but rather with the “application of science to the needs of society.”
MSE as a field has grown out of our desire to make things that better our lives; there
has always been an interest in the stuff we use to make these things. From manipulating
materials existing in nature like wood, bone, stone, and clay, to creating new materials
through the smelting of metals or firing of clays to create ceramics, civilization evolved
alongside our ability to manipulate materials. For millennia, people have learned through
trial and error how to manipulate existing materials to create new materials with new
properties. They have handed this knowledge down through generations. In some cases
new materials were discovered by alchemists seeking to create gold. As the science of
chemistry evolved, we began to create completely synthetic materials such as polymers,
and eventually we developed the tools to examine the microstructure. This led to the
ability to correlate how processing the material affected its structure and how that in turn
affected the properties of that material. Understanding how this relationship influenced
the performance of a material led to the birth of the discipline of MSE in the middle of the
twentieth century. By combining earlier fields like ceramics and metallurgy with MSE, our
understanding of materials continues to evolve rapidly with novel innovation occurring at
the interface of the study of different materials.
But it would be foolish to end a
discussion of a material’s properties at
what is physically discernable. After all,
materials innovation does not happen in a
vacuum. Materials are themselves caught
up in social regimes of power and value. A
diamond may be “a girl’s best friend,” as
Carol Channing and Marilyn Monroe once
crooned, but diamonds have also been
mined by children or sold to finance wars
or used to create highly conductive thin Figure 1.1 Engineering perspective on the
materials tetrahedron.
films with potential applications in
microelectronics. A material also has a lifespan, which begins at its mining or synthesis
and fabrication and continues through its recycling or disposal; at each stage it is involved
with a network of people, technologies, and other materials. A material can have social
properties, such as health, environmental impact, economic value, and social status. And,
as demonstrated here in the chapter on plastics, a material can mean different things to
different people. This study of how people imagine, fabricate, understand, and use the
things they need in community with others is the basic terrain of the humanities and

4 | Understanding the Material World

humanistic social sciences. This socio-cultural literacy can be as important to engineering
innovations as technical literacy.
In creating this textbook, we have been
inspired by other texts exploring the
products of materials engineering at use in
the world, such as The Substance of
Civilization (1998) and Stuff Matters (2014),
12
both written by materials engineers. In
its focus on the sociocultural values that
shape our use of materials, however, this
textbook is more closely inspired by The
13
Social Life of Materials (2015). Its
Figure 1.2 Sociocultural perspective on the collaborative ethos echoes an earlier
materials tetrahedron.
anthology edited by University of Florida
engineering and classics faculty entitled Engineering and Humanities (1982), which
represented an effort to share the lessons of the liberal arts with engineers to encourage
14
them to entertain ambiguity and complexity rather than straightforward solutions. We
are also indebted to work in the interdisciplinary area of science and technology studies,
which unites the study of scientific practices with the study of the use and social impacts
of technological artifacts.
This book is unique in that it explicitly aims to generate social concepts from different
humanities (and humanistic social science) disciplines that create ways to examine
materials from different perspectives. This book is not “humanities for engineers” or
“engineering for humanities”; rather, it is an attempt to show how humanists and
engineers can improve interdisciplinary communications through innovations afforded by
materials. The chapters examine the social contexts of the kinds of problems material
scientists are challenged to solve, and the social-political and material consequences
of their solutions, many of which are unintended. In so doing, it produces a usable
history, or distills lessons from the humanities that can guide the development of future
engineering solutions and anticipate their social impacts, thus allowing us to prepare
for them thoughtfully and intentionally. By sharing lessons from a variety of different
disciplines for the study of materials, this text gives students the tools to connect the
fundamental concepts and methodologies that they are learning across the curriculum to
help address future challenges.

Enduring Knowledge Statements

Taken together, these chapters provide case studies that support five big ideas necessary
Understanding the Material World | 5
to understand and predict the impact of materials on society. We refer to these as
“Enduring Knowledge Statements”:

1. Materials shape the human experience, and vice versa. Just as the technologies
created through the discovery and use of new materials have extended possibilities
for human action, materials are themselves dependent upon humans to create and
sustain them. (As we make things, things make us.) Increasingly, this is quite literal as
materials are extending our bodies through tissue engineering, polymer scaffolding,
even nanomaterials for everything from drug delivery to sensory augmentation. This
relationship of mutual dependency between materials and society is further
elaborated through the principle of “entanglement”, discussed in the chapter on clay.
2. Materials can be manipulated to solve technical and sociocultural problems.
Material scientists and engineers have played important roles in civilizations
throughout human history, even if they have not always looked like today’s engineers
in white lab coats or “bunny suits.” In addressing technical problems such as building
sustainable shelters, creating durable tools, and controlling matter at the nanoscale,
materials engineers are also developing technologies that are put to use to address
basic human needs for shelter, food, healthcare, security, and communication
around the world. As a result, MSE is involved directly in addressing social, cultural,
economic, political, and ethical challenges as well as technical challenges.
3. Materials have intrinsic physical properties, only some of which are selected as
more relevant in shaping society based on cultural perspectives. The use of a
material can change. It is important to dispel the notion in engineering that “if we
build it, they will come.” The history of materials engineering is littered with
examples of discoveries and inventions that were never adopted in society because
they were not well suited to their society’s social needs and cultural values. (The
chapters on aluminum and polymers in this textbook tell two such stories.)
Moreover, engineers are themselves members of the societies in which they work,
and unavoidably hold some of the cultural biases and social assumptions of their
non-engineering peers. These assumptions can shape the ways in which engineers
decide to manipulate materials in a particular time and place. Engineers need to
understand how social and cultural forces shape their own work and the reception of
their inventions in order to think broadly and creatively.
4. The impact of materials on society varies with the cultural and historical context.
Higher education tends to teach the same set of values that are shared by the
scientific community; people who disagree with science, particularly on religious
grounds, do not disagree about the facts, they disagree with the values that underpin

6 | Understanding the Material World

 15
certain scientific claims. In this context material impacts can be negative.
5. Understanding the impact of materials on society requires a variety of approaches
in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. As is already evident, the impact of
materials on society can be understood only by examining the many intersections of
materials and their properties, the technologies they have enabled, social needs, and
cultural values. It is important not only to look at what we do with materials-based
technologies, but also how our own mindsets shape how we do and do not choose to
manipulate these materials in the first place. In taking this holistic approach to
understanding materials in our world, we can also combine expertise from multiple
disciplines to build more sustainable technologies. For example, we may be able to
make more efficient solar cells using cadmium, but if we consider the negative
impacts associated with cadmium’s toxicity from the beginning, we can insist upon
making the cells with an alternative material and innovate in that direction. Thinking
broadly ensures that we do not build something with negative social consequences.

This in-depth case study approach to examining materials in past societies also raises
several other themes for study across these chapters. For example, looking historically
at materials raises the point that materials have a temporality: some last longer than
others. Do we want to plan for the obsolescence of materials when we first create
and begin to use them? More and more, we are taking a cradle-to-cradle approach
in the lifecycle of a material, meaning we are moving away from the use-and-discard
approach. To take another example, history tells us that materials innovations often
come from unpredictable places, and that contemporary researchers can still learn quite
a bit from how earlier humans manipulated and used materials (for example, Roman
concrete). The chapters on steel and plastics also note the undercredited roles of some
entrepreneurs and their home experiments. Finally, humanistic inquiry can point out
critical issues related to the use of materials. Our applications of materials discoveries
to social needs are seldom, if ever, neutral. Materials can be used in ways that reinforce
disparities based on class, gender, race, and ability, as well as power imbalances between
societies. Materials can also be used in ways that impede the health and security of
certain communities involved in their production and consumption. Rather than see the
humanities as critics of the sciences, however, we must remember that skepticism is itself
part of the scientific process.

Summary of textbook chapters

This textbook is designed to be used as part of the Impact of Materials on Society
curriculum, hosted on the LibraryPress@UF and Materials Research Society websites.

Understanding the Material World | 7

The curriculum is made up of weekly modules that examine different materials and their
impacts on society, from human prehistory to the future. Each week discusses a different
material or class of materials. It begins with an introductory lesson as to the material
properties, processing and structure of a material from a MSE perspective, followed by a
historical case study of that material that introduces a social principle, a video of future
material innovations, and finally an activity that links the study of the past and its social
principle to the material of the future.
Each of these chapters provides an overview of the social use of a particular material.
Some of the chapters focus on a particular place and time in human history, such as 1960s
America, the Neolithic settlement Çatalhöyük, or ancient Rome. Other chapters use cross-
cultural comparison to study the impacts of materials beyond individual societies, such as
the development of inter-society trade networks ushered in with bronze, or the ways in
which writing materials contributed to different forms of political power within ancient,
medieval, and pre-modern societies. In addition to articulating the ways in which this
material was enabling to society at particular points in time, each chapter also provides a
lesson on the impact social and cultural systems played in the development of materials.
Taken together, these social lessons (e.g., entanglement, creative destruction, etc.) provide
a toolkit for future researchers and scientists to design materials more intentionally to
address human needs, anticipate and prevent associated pitfalls, and appreciate the role
of collaborative inquiry in innovating future materials.
This book is in no way exhaustive of the lessons that can be taken from the history of
materials, and from the many disciplines that make up the humanities and social sciences,
to examine the impact of materials on society. The current chapters draw lessons from
cultures around the globe, with a focus on the history of societies within present-day
Europe and North America. This is a living textbook that invites diverse contributions of all
human cultures. We hope that the modular template of these chapters will inspire other
humanities instructors to collaborate with materials scientists and engineers to expand
and add further case studies from all corners of the globe to this open textbook.
It is also important to discuss the organization of this textbook. Certainly, our readers
will be familiar with the common practice of applying a chronological order to the human
use of materials, (e.g., moving from the “ages” of stone, to bronze, to silicon). More
recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that this framework is an instrument of
colonialism in that it seeks to privilege the use of certain materials as more advanced than
others. It also implies that the use of some materials replaces others, which is incorrect.
After all, in our current “age of silicon,” we still create stone tombstones. The use of some
materials is more appropriate to certain contexts than others. An indigenous society today
may find that stone tools remain completely appropriate for their uses; this does not

8 | Understanding the Material World

mean that their society is somehow stuck in the past. Materials do not follow a historical
chronology. So, while the historical case studies presented in this textbook loosely follow
a chronological order, each chapter stands on its own and chapters may be read in a
different order or adapted as needed to learn about the past and ongoing impacts of
different materials.
Although this textbook seeks to eschew the idea of a chronological, sequential order
of materials use throughout time, the case study focus of each chapter on a different
material at a different point in human history does underline another important theme
in this textbook: materials that we may neglect or consider ordinary today have actually
had major multifaceted impacts that continue to be felt in contemporary societies. For
example, while most of our readers will be familiar with the better-known “revolutions”
such as the “Neolithic Revolution” that ushered in the transition of hunter-gatherer
societies to agriculture, the “Industrial Revolution” and role of iron and steel, and the
“Information Revolution” and role of silicon, there are lesser-known but equally significant
revolutions that we must consider alongside these. Other chapters examine the “Soils
Revolution,” the “Concrete Revolution,” and the “Polymers Revolution.”
“Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay” by Susan Gillespie introduces
us to the widespread social significance of clay, effectively the “steel of early man.” In
an archaeological investigation of Çatalhöyük, an important Neolithic settlement (7400
BCE–5200 BCE) in then Mesopotamia and present-day Turkey, Gillespie reveals the many
ways in which humans at this time depended on clay for shelter, food, community, and
family identity. By investigating these dependencies, we see that clay is also dependent
upon humans to manipulate, strengthen, and source it. Gillespie introduces the
foundational notion of “entanglement” (originally coined by anthropologist Ian Hodder) as
a way of understanding the interdependent relationships between humans and materials
that shape how we selectively use materials. The concept of entanglement also illustrates
how humans become so comfortable with a particular material that adopting alternative
materials is challenging.
“Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone” by Ken Sassaman builds on this earthy work
to examine early ceramics including glass-like rocks such as obsidian and flint. These
adaptable materials can be used in a wide variety of ways. By looking at human
transformations of ceramics ranging from around 10,000–13,000 years ago, Sassaman
examines how ancestral humans developed the evolutionary skills to manipulate materials
with greater and greater precision. Focusing on the particular example of the spear-point,
Sassaman introduces the anthropological concept of “operational sequence” to study how
the ways in which humans interact with materials reveal new potential uses for these
materials even as they cordon off other uses. In addition, by comparing the energy used

Understanding the Material World | 9

to manufacture materials with the energy they can generate, this chapter suggests ways
in which future ceramics can usher in a more energy-efficient world.
“Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces” by Mary Ann Eaverly introduces
us to the little known “Concrete Revolution” through an in-depth look at ancient Rome
(800 BCE–400 CE). Complementing Gillespie’s discussion of Mesopotamian wall
construction, Eaverly examines how, as the first human-made structural material,
concrete was used by ancient Romans to create monumental public spaces such as the
Coliseum, public baths, and a major series of aqueducts stretching across the Roman
Empire. But as Eaverly describes, the ways in which Romans used this material directly
reinforced and reflected their ideas about social status and imperial power. By comparing
the cultural values of ancient Roman leaders to societal ideas today, Eaverly asks us to
consider how our own limited cultural perspectives may shape how we think about using
material advances in the future.
“Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy” by Florin Curta
takes a unique look at the material and alloy that ushered in the so-called “Bronze
Age” (3000 BCE–1000 BCE). Scholarship generally ascribes the significant social
transformations often associated with this time—in agriculture, militarization, and
learning—to the technological innovations associated with smelting and casting. Indeed,
we might refer to copper and bronze as the first materials refined by humans. However,
Curta also highlights the significant roles of trade and political complexity that gave birth
to metallurgy. Seen in this way, Curta demonstrates that the advance of materials is due
as much to the development of expertise of early engineers and the circulation of their
know-how as it is due to the availability of the materials themselves.
“Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage,” also by Florin Curta, examines the first
uses of precious metals to create widespread systems of exchange within and across
societies. By examining the development of currency systems in complex societies around
the world, Curta explains how the unique material properties of gold and silver facilitated
the development of coinage systems that citizens trusted to hold value. To explain how a
society can give particular value to a material, Curta introduces the important distinction
between intrinsic and extrinsic value, or the value of the metal itself versus the value that
we give to the metal by inserting it into a political, economic, or social system. In this way,
this chapter reveals how societies can, quite literally, take something made of one metal
(such as nickel) and give it the same worth as gold.
“Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction” by Sean Adams examines the Industrial
Revolutions made possible by significant processing advances of iron and steel in the
19th-century United States. Unlike the previous chapters, which examined the large-scale
context of materials innovation, this chapter focuses our gaze on the important role of

10 | Understanding the Material World

particular individuals in spurring this innovation. In particular, Adams introduces us to
Andrew Carnegie’s aggressive model of entrepreneurship which reorganized factories,
supply chains, and market relationships to build one of the largest American companies of
the time: Carnegie Steel. Adams also introduces the concept of “creative destruction” to
reveal the double-edged sword of materials innovation; the creation of one material-social
system can result in the destruction of another one with associated repercussions for
workers and competition. This chapter asks us to consider how future materials creations
can recognize the industries they may be destroying and avoid social and economic
pitfalls.
“Aluminum: Alcoa and Antitrust,” also by Sean Adams, tells another 19th- and 20th-
century American story, this time of aluminum. Aluminum, a metal enabled by electricity,
was a modern material in search of an application. As one American company, Alcoa,
slowly discovered marketable applications of aluminum, it also grew in size and scope to
control a majority of the world’s aluminum supply. This represents a unique case study to
understand federal policy related to antitrust issues and competition in the marketplace,
and asks readers to consider whether materials monopolies are harmful to society. As
future materials research and manipulation will create more materials without immediate
application, this question is important to grapple with to prepare an effective business
environment.
“Plastics: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America” by Marsha Bryant examines the modern
“Polymers Revolution” in postwar, mid-20th-century America. As synthetic polymers
produced in modern research laboratories, plastics have made an indelible mark on
popular consumer culture. Bryant outlines the story of Earl Tupper’s invention of Poly-
T, an ingenious and flexible new material that was only made popular by the marketing
genius of Brownie Wise. Building on other chapters that demonstrate how cultural
systems shape our perceptions of the potential applications of materials, Bryant
introduces the idea of materials marketing to show how materials acquire (and can be
given) particular meanings that shape the ways we publicize and use them. As with the
story of Andrew Carnegie, this chapter also emphasizes that a material is not simply
made by its creators; its sociocultural impact is powerfully shaped by mediators and
entrepreneurs, and factors such as aesthetics are often critical to its success.
“Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge” by Bonnie Effros
surveys a variety of writing materials, including papyrus, parchment, and paper, from
ancient Egypt in 2500 BCE to Medieval Europe in 1400 CE. Together, writing materials
are significant in shaping patterns of human cognition and building communities of
individuals. But the material properties and shelf lives of these “information storage
media” suited different social uses ranging from government records, to biblical study, to

Understanding the Material World | 11

information sharing and community-building among early nation states. These materials
also reveal how the ways in which societies store and exchange information can reinforce
hierarchies of wealth and privilege. In applying this lesson to the digital age, Effros asks us
to think critically about whether future expansive materials for mass information storage
will truly democratize our societies, or exacerbate our differences.
We hope that our readers will also notice how many discussions of materials and their
impact span across chapters. Those with an interest in the social impacts of building
materials, for example, will find much of interest in the chapters on clay, concrete, and
steel. (Indeed, even a materials application as niche as stadium roofing is discussed in both
the concrete and plastics chapters.) Those with an interest in art and commemoration will
find it interesting to examine the various materials that we’ve used to express ourselves
and what we stand for as a society, from the use of concrete to build monumental
structures to glorify the Roman Empire, to the US government’s use of the very new
aluminum to top the Washington Monument and symbolize its country’s innovation.
Comparing these case studies also reveals some larger lessons about the social role
of materials. For example, although clay in Çatalhöyük and plastics in modern America
seem like worlds apart, both materials were used in ways that reinforced a gendered
division of labor in and for the home. In addition, these chapters show the importance
of considering the many mediators involved in between materials and society: those that
extract, process, transport, market, and even regulate material science and industry. And
readers interested in knowing more about how technological innovation happens can pay
particular note to discussions of the economies of scale in the writing material, steel,
and aluminum chapters. Although a more sobering note is offered by the steel chapter
about the possibilities of humans being replaced by machines, the lessons of creative
destruction ask us to anticipate and address this issue.
Taken together, the contributions in this volume, and those potentially added in the
future, aim to show how expertise from multiple disciplines is necessary to create a robust
and effective engineering workforce. We hope these case studies will not only teach our
readers facts about the past and present, but also generate questions that we must ask
of our societies and engineering and technology industries looking into the future. We
must discuss the kind of world that we want to live in, and imagine the ways in which new
16
materials will enable us to build the technologies that inhabit this future. To do this, we
need to move away from our opinions about materials, to understanding the facts of their
development and the values of the societies that embrace them. Just as materials impact
societies, societies shape how materials are employed. Only by understanding all of the
physical, cultural, and social elements that make up a society can we act in an informed
way.

12 | Understanding the Material World

Notes

1. Julio M. Ottino and Gary Saul Morson, "Building a Bridge Between Engineering and the
Humanities," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 14, 2016, https://www.chronicle.com/
article/building-a-bridge-between-engineering-and-the-humanities/.
2. Commission on the Humanities, Report of The Commission on the Humanities (New York:
American Council of Learned Societies, 1964), 3, https://www.acls.org/uploadedFiles/
Publications/NEH/1964_Commission_on_the_Humanities.pdf.
3. Commission on the Humanities, The Humanities in American Life: Report of the Commission on
the Humanities (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1980), 13, http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/
ft8j49p1jc/.
4. Commission on the Humanities, The Humanities in American Life, 18.
5. Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and
Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation (Cambridge, MA: American Academy
of Arts & Sciences, 2013), https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/
HeartOfTheMatter_AroundTheCountry.pdf.
6. National Research Council, "Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public
Understanding of Engineering (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2008),
https://doi.org/10.17226/12187.
7. ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs:
2013-2014 (Baltimore, MD: Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, 2012),
https://web.archive.org/web/20130118205535/http://www.abet.org/DisplayTemplates/
DocsHandbook.aspx?id=3149.
8. Norman M. Bradburn and John G. Hildebrand, Enclosed in a College Major? Variations in Course-
Taking among the Fields (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2014),
https://www.amacad.org/content/research/dataForumEssay.aspx?i=1571.
9. National Research Council, "Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to
the New Century," National Academies Press: Washington, D.C. 2005, https://doi.org/10.17226/
11338.; Nicole DeJong Okamoto, Jinny Rhee, and Nikos J. Mourtos, “Educating Students to
Understand the Impact of Engineering Solutions in a Global/Societal Context,” in 8th UICEE
Annual Conference on Engineering Education. Kingston, Jamaica, 2005.
10. John Bryant, La Velle, and Linda Baggott, “A Bioethics Course for Biology and Science Education
Students,” Journal of Biological Education 37, no. 2 (2003): 91–95, https://doi.org/10.1080/
00219266.2003.9655858.; Jennifer L. Eastwood, Troy D. Sadler, Robert D. Sherwood, and Whitney
M. Schlegel, "Students’ Participation in an Interdisciplinary, Socioscientific Issues Based
Undergraduate Human Biology Major and Their Understanding of Scientific Inquiry," Research in
Science Education 43, no. 3 (2013): 1051–78, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-012-9298-x.; Zuway R.
Hong, Huann-Shyang Lin, and Frances P. Lawrenz, “Effects of an Integrated Science and Societal
Implication Intervention on Promoting Adolescents’ Positive Thinking and Emotional Perceptions
in Learning Science,” International Journal of Science Education 34, no. 3 (2012): 329–52,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2011.623727.; Jonathan Stolk and Katherine C. Chen, “Creating
a Project-Based Curriculum in Materials Engineering," Journal of Materials Education 31, no. 1–2
(2009): 37–44.
11. Eric Ashby, Technology and the Academics: An Essay on Universities and the Scientific Revolution
(London: Macmillan, 1958), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/727427138. Quoted in James A. Kent,

Understanding the Material World | 13

 “The Role of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Technological Education,” Engineering
Education 68 (1978): 725-34.
12. Stephen L. Sass, The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History from the Stone Age to
the Age of Silicon (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1998), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
855969222.; Mark Miodownik, Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our
Man-Made World (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
855969222.
13. Adam Drazin and Susanne Küchler, eds., The Social Life of Materials: Studies in Materials and
Society (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1159404744.
14. James H. Schaub, Sheila K. Dickison, and M.D. Morris, Engineering and Humanities (New York:
John Wiley & Sons, 1982), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1105242973.
15. John H. Evans, in “Scientific Advances and Their Impact on Society,” Bulletin of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences (Winter 2016): 46–48, https://web.archive.org/web/
20200818004649/https://www.amacad.org/news/scientific-advances-and-their-impact-
society.
16. Jameson Wetmore, Ira Bennett, Ali Jackson, and Brad Herring, Nanotechnology and Society: A
Practical Guide to Engaging Museum Visitors in Conversation, (Nanoscale Informal Science
Education (NISE) Network; The Center for Nanotechnology in Society, 2013),
https://www.mrs.org/docs/default-source/programs-and-outreach/strange-matter.green-
earth/nanotechnology-and-society-a-practical-guide-to-engaging-museum-visitors-in-
conversations.pdf.

14 | Understanding the Material World

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the
Age of Clay
SUSAN D. GILLESPIE

“There is no such thing as ‘stone’; there are many different types of stones with
different properties and these stones become different through particular modes
1
of engagement.” —Chantal Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials

Abstract
This chapter showcases human engagements with the most primal material of all—earth
itself—beginning in the Neolithic period (which began ca. 9000 BCE in the Fertile
Crescent), when people relied on domesticated plants and animals for their livelihood.
The Neolithic has also been called the Age of Clay because clay and soils were critical
materials for many aspects of daily life. A case study of an important Neolithic settlement,
Çatalhöyük, demonstrates how people and clay became interdependent on each other,
resulting in an “entanglement” that influenced human actions and values. The Neolithic
entanglement with clay, multiplied countless times all over the globe, led to significant
historical changes in human society that still reverberate today. This case study also
provides general insights for understanding the relationships between humans and
materials. How people engage with the potential and actualized properties of materials in
production processes is key to understanding the historical trajectories of the impacts of
materials on societies.

Introduction
How have archaeologists, and philosophers before them, made sense of human history?
From the beginning of the discipline in the 19th century, archaeologists focused on the
different materials manipulated by humans over time. Thus they began to organize the
human past in a logical way—a series of progressive stages—that is still influential today.
But it is only much more recently that archaeologists and other scientists have begun to
investigate the impacts of specific materials on human societies. It is not an exaggeration

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 15

to say that human-material interactions changed history. People continue to be shaped
by relationships with certain materials that began long ago. This chapter examines human
interactions with a humble material—earth in the form of clay—starting over 10,000 years
ago.

Thomsen’s Three-Age System

In 1816, Danish antiquarian Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (1788–1865) faced a major
challenge. The Danish Royal Commission for the Preservation and Collection of Antiquities
had been amassing collections of ancient artifacts from all over the country to house them
in what would become the National Museum of Denmark (Figure 2.1). The commission
asked Thomsen to organize the various objects for an exhibition to educate Danes
2
regarding their early history. How could he best make sense of them?
Thomsen decided to organize the artifacts
by their raw material, which provided clues to
their historical contexts. Nearly 2,000 years
earlier, the Roman philosopher Lucretius had
speculated that the first humans used stone
and wood for implements, and only later
developed bronze and then iron (see Curta,
“Copper and Bronze”). But this idea had never
before been tested.
Thomsen reckoned that ancient people still
used stone tools after bronze metal-working
appeared, and that they continued to employ
bronze artifacts after iron was introduced. But
to group objects solely by material was not
meaningful to the history of Denmark,
because it ignored cultural information about
how and when past peoples made and used
Figure 2.1 Thomsen with visitors in the these objects.
Museum of Northern Antiquities, Denmark, in To understand better when objects made of
an 1848 drawing. [Wikimedia Commons.]
these materials were used, Thomsen focused
on artifacts from “closed finds” such as burials and hoards (buried caches of objects). With
closed finds he could assume that all the items found together were in use at the same
time (Figure 2.2). In this way, he could determine which things were probably
contemporaneous and utilized by the same peoples. Thomsen ended up with distinct
groupings that, he suggested, formed a sequence in time, proving Lucretius’s early idea
16 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay
with material evidence. He proposed a series of “ages” in early Danish history: an initial
period with only stone artifacts (Stone Age), a later period with both bronze and stone
tools (Bronze Age), and a final Iron Age with objects of iron, bronze, and other materials.
Published in 1836, Thomsen’s innovative
chronological scheme energized the
developing field of archaeology. His
Three-Age System of Stone-Bronze-Iron
was later applied to all of Europe, Africa,
and Asia, although the “metal ages” do not
pertain to the Americas, Australia, or
Oceania. The “Stone Age” was
subsequently divided into sub-periods, the
earliest two being the Paleolithic (Old Figure 2.2 Engraving of early Bronze Age burial in
Stone Age) and Mesolithic (Middle Stone Britain. Visible in the drawing, this “closed find”
includes a ceramic beaker, bronze dagger, and a
Age). Both are characterized by tools made stone projectile point (just above the dagger in the
from the forceful removal of chips (flakes) drawing). [Llewellyn Jewitt, from Grave Mounds
and their Contents (London: Groombridge and
from stone (see Sassaman, “Ceramics”). Sons, 1870), 14. Internet Archive.]
The subsequent Neolithic period, or New
Stone Age, was distinguished by a new technology for grinding and polishing stones to
make implements.

What’s Missing in the Three-Age System?

Thomsen based his artifact groupings on hard, durable objects of some value, intentionally
buried in graves or hoards. His chronological scheme thus neglected the soft, perishable,
non-grave-worthy materials used by Denmark’s early inhabitants. Our ancestors used
many other “earthy” materials that are not represented in the Three-Age System.
Furthermore, there is no sense of how and why certain materials came to be used by
earlier peoples at different points in human history. Nor was Thomsen able to articulate
how those materials impacted the development of society in advantageous or
disadvantageous ways.
This chapter showcases human engagements with a material neglected by Thomsen
and Lucretius even though it is the most primal material of all—earth itself—during the
3
Neolithic period. The Neolithic “soil revolution” provides historical background for a case
study of the entanglement with clay experienced by the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, an
ancient settlement in modern-day Turkey.
Entanglement is the key idea introduced in this chapter. It refers to the
interdependency between humans and things, based on the properties of the materials
Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 17
 4
that things are made of. Entanglement becomes an entrapment that influences human
actions and ideas. The Neolithic entanglement with clay, multiplied countless times all
over the globe, led to significant historical changes in human society that still reverberate
today.
This case study from the deep past also provides a method for analyzing contemporary
and future relationships between humans and the materials they depend on. The final
section thus draws out some “material lessons” we can use to better understand the
impacts of materials on human society.

The “Soil Revolution” and the “Age of Clay”

Changes in the Neolithic Period
Although Thomsen’s Three-Age System is overly simplistic, the division of the Stone Age
into earlier (Paleolithic and Mesolithic) and later (Neolithic) components is still useful.
However, these terms no longer refer simply to changes in stone tool technology, nor to
exact periods of time. Instead, Neolithic now designates the shift from a nomadic food-
collecting to a settled food-producing way of life dependent on domesticated plants and/
or animals. This gradual transition occurred in different parts of the world at various
times, beginning about 9000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent area that stretches from Syria
into Iraq and Turkey.
Being tied to the land to raise crops or to
tend livestock required more durable
houses and other structures. Furthermore,
most Neolithic peoples developed pottery
vessels to store, serve, and sometimes
cook foods (Figure 2.3). These changes
were so substantial, modifying the course
of global history, that this transition was
5
dubbed a Neolithic “Revolution.”

Figure 2.3 Reconstructed Neolithic house interior

in Albersdorf, Germany. Note the use of clay or
earth for parts of the wall, the hearth/oven, and
pottery. [Photo by user Nightflyer (2012), shared
under a CC-BY 3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia
Commons.]

18 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

New Engagements with Soil and Clay
Although the shift from mobile to settled
village life varied tremendously where it
occurred across the world, there were
certain commonalities to the experience.
One of them was an increase in practices
that opened up the earth’s surface.
Excavations were necessary for new forms
of architecture and land modification.
These included holes for house posts, pits
Figure 2.4 The great henge (circular ditch and for storage or garbage, “borrow pits” made
embankment) at Avebury, England, near
Stonehenge. Most of the stones from its stone when removing soil for other purposes,
circles have been removed. [Photo by author graves for the dead, ponds for livestock,
(2006).] and ditches for drainage, irrigation, or for
ritual spaces, such as the circular ditches and embankments (henges) in Great Britain
(Figure 2.4).
Digging also exposed new earthy materials lying below the surface, such as flint,
limestone, and clay, which were utilized in new tool and building technologies. In the late
Neolithic people began to mine and process copper and gold. This early metal working
marks the Chalcolithic (copper-stone) period, precursor to the Bronze Age (see Curta,
Copper and Bronze). Archaeologist Julian Thomas described these actions of digging into
and mounding up dirt as a new “set of relations of reciprocity with the earth itself” with
6
new methods for transforming earthy materials. Put another way, Neolithic societies
were “soil-based societies” because soil (broadly speaking) is a common denominator in
all the major changes of this new way of life (Figure 2.5).

Key Concept: What is Clay?

Clay is technically defined as the finest sediments, with grain diameters of less
than 1/256th of a millimeter. The high surface area of these plate-like grains
makes true clay sticky and plastic. However, archaeologists use a less specific
characterization that refers to clay’s plasticity, treating clay as any fine-grained

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 19

 sediments capable of being molded to an internally cohesive form. “Clay” deposits
typically consist of both true clays and non-clays, both fine-grained and coarser-
grained sediments.

Soil was necessary to grow the crops, to

pasture the animals, to erect more durable
structures, and to make pottery. According
to archaeologist Nicole Boivin, a veritable
“Soil Revolution” occurred that has gone
unrecognized because we tend to think of
soil as the unchanging stuff beneath our
feet.

Figure 2.5 An artist’s rendering of an early

Neolithic village. [Science City of Kolkata. Photo by
Biswarup Ganguly, shared under a CC BY-SA 3.0
Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.]
On the contrary, soils underwent dramatic
modifications as they were drawn into Neolithic and
7
later technologies.

The dominant earthy material for Neolithic peoples

was clay. It was used to make all or parts of houses,
pottery, figurines, cooking balls, fishnet weights,
jewelry, gaming pieces, and many other artifacts
(Figure 2.6). In their everyday lives, people were
enclosed in clay, manipulated clay, ate from clay,
wore clay, and experienced its different forms in
Figure 2.6 Seated “Mother Goddess”
flanked by felines. Clay figurine close, personal contexts. In addition, clay objects
excavated by James Mellaart at lasted longer than those made of organic materials
Çatalhöyűk in 1961; the head is a
restoration. [ca 6000 BCE, Museum of such as fiber, wood, or bone, and their longevity
Anatolian Civilizations. Photo by Nevit gave people a new sense of their own enduring
Dilmen, shared under a CC BY-SA 3.0 histories.
Unported License. Wikimedia
Commons.] The remarkable increase in material production of
clay objects and structures along with emerging

20 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

transformative clay technologies motivated archaeologist Mirjana Stevanović to insert an
8
“Age of Clay” between the Stone and Bronze Ages.

Properties of Clay
Why was clay so important? A major reason, besides its abundance and ease of acquisition,
is that clay exhibits the property of plasticity or malleability. Clays are fine-grained
sediments that, mixed with the right amount of water, can be formed into a variety of
9
shapes. )
Clay was critical to the development of many innovative transformative technologies
of the Neolithic period. These transformations were not merely mechanical—as in the
polishing of hard stones to make axes to cut trees and grinders to process grains—but
were increasingly structural and chemical.
Mixing clay with water created structural
changes, allowing it to be formed into figurines,
bricks, vessels, jewelry, and other objects.
Heating and drying those objects—using the sun
or with an oven or hearth—effected structural
modifications that made them harder and more
durable. The innovation of a high-temperature
open or closed kiln for firing dried clay objects
produced chemical changes, transforming them
Figure 2.7 Pottery in the backyard of a
into ceramics (Figure 2.7; see Sassaman, potting household in Atzompa, Oaxaca.
10 Mexico. The pots in the center are drying;
“Ceramics”).
those in the lower left corner have already
been fired in the kiln (out of the photo, on the
Disadvantageous Properties left). [Photo by author (1984).]

However, Neolithic peoples also had to deal with certain problems of working with clay.
Clay is heavy and bulky to move from wherever it is mined from the ground to where it is
needed. The potters must then process the mined clay, usually by pounding it into a gritty
powder and removing impurities. Adding water to clay makes it heavier still and difficult
to maneuver.
Clay objects require water to be formed, but as the water evaporates, they tend to shrink
and crack. Temper (a non-plastic material) was typically mixed in with the prepared clay
to reduce shrinkage. Various materials served as tempers, including plant fibers, sand,
volcanic ash, limestone, shell, and even ground-up ceramics. Clay objects are also fragile;
they break easily, and once broken, lose most of their value.

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 21

 Activity: Watch a video

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO0F8y3aNOo) features

potters in Botswana’s Kgatleng District.

• How do the women prepare the clay they have mined to make it usable?
• How do know how much water to add to the clay?
• Do they shape the clay into forms such as bases or coils before they make a
pot? Do they use a potter’s wheel?
• What kind of fuel do they use to fire (heat) their pottery?
• How would you describe the kiln they use? Is it what you expected?
• How does pottery-making create opportunities for social interactions
among women?

For these reasons, adopting a clay-centered technology meant a loss of mobility. Neolithic
peoples were less free to move about because of their accumulating possessions and
the desire to be close to both clay and water. At the same time, they required more
stable settlements in order to consistently control their agricultural fields or livestock.
This growing “investment in place,” requiring more permanent settlements, was often
accomplished by making more durable residences out of earth and maintaining them
11
across generations.

The Entanglement of Clay at Çatalhöyük: Background

Çatalhöyük was one such long-lived Neolithic settlement. It is also an unusually large site,
located in south-central Anatolia, southeast of the modern city of Konya (Figure 2.8) in
modern-day Turkey. People lived at Çatalhöyük continuously for over 2,000 years, from
7400–5200 BCE.

22 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

 Archaeologist Ian Hodder, who has
directed excavations at Çatalhöyük since
1993, demonstrated the extent to which its
Neolithic inhabitants became entangled
with clay throughout their settlement’s
long history. His analysis helps to explain
the impacts of clay over time on this and
Figure 2.8 Map of modern Turkey showing the other ancient societies. It also illustrates
location of Çatalhöyűk.
aspects of the relationships between
people and the materials they use that can be applied to many other materials in the past
and present.

Çatalhöyük
Like many Neolithic sites in the region, Çatalhöyük (“forked-mound”) is a human-made
mound (höyük in Turkish) created by the continuous building of clay houses atop one
another over many generations (Figure 2.9). Excavations in the late 1950s and 1960s led by
archaeologist James Mellaart first brought to light its unusual settlement plan. The town
consisted of contiguous multi-room rectangular houses all made of clay, including sun-
12
dried clay bricks (called mudbricks).
As of yet, archaeologists have not
discovered a town center or non-
residential structures. The settlement
seems to be all houses.

Because houses abutted one another, most

people entered and exited their dwellings
through a hole in the roof. Streets are
absent, and residents used the flattish
roofs as both outdoor space and to walk
about the settlement (Figure 2.10). Families Figure 2.9 Satellite photo of Çatalhöyűk. The
apparently controlled their own houses white areas on the main (east) mound are roofs to
protect the north and south excavation areas. Note
across generations, even making their own
the modern agricultural fields all around the
mudbricks, as no two households utilized mounds. [Google Earth.]
the same clay materials in the same way
for their residences.

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 23

 After a period of 50-100 years, the
occupants collapsed the roofs, tore down
the house walls to about midway, and filled
the remaining cavity to serve as the
foundation for a new house atop the old.
They did not recycle mudbricks from
earlier buildings, so each subsequent
construction phase required new bricks.
As a result of these multiple independent
building decisions, the mound developed
Figure 2.10 Excavations under the north shelter in
unevenly, with roofs of individual houses
2010 revealed adjoining houses. There are single
walls within a structure, but two adjacent at different elevations. Ladders were likely
structures each have their own exterior wall (see used to go up and down over house roofs
center of photo). [From excavation, shared under
CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 Generic License. Flickr.] to get off the mound to tend agricultural
fields and livestock (goats, sheep, and
13
cattle). The people of Çatalhöyük made and lived in a dynamic world constructed of
clay, which impacted every major aspect of their lives.

Clay and the Founding of Çatalhöyük

Besides being integral to the form and growth of Çatalhöyük, clay was essential to its
location. The settlement was established on the Konya Plain, the bed of the drying Ice-Age
14
Lake Konya. The absence of stone and scarcity of trees here meant that clay would be
the primary material for building and for many other needed objects. In Neolithic times,
this lakebed was a source of multiple kinds of clay sediments: marls (highly calcareous
clays); backswamp (alluvial) clays formed from the deposition of sediment in the lake;
reddish clays with silt; colluvium that accumulated at the base of the growing mound; and
gritty clays.
However, the scarcity of fuel and the enormous number of clay bricks needed for
construction also meant that people relied on the sun to dry the bricks rather than firing
them in kilns. This “subceramic” technology extended to other clay objects, including
figurines, clay balls, and some pottery.
Çatalhöyük’s first settlers placed their houses in an area of the lakebed with thicker
deposits of backswamp clays, rather than on nearby areas elevated by marl deposits.
Mudbricks are heavy, especially when wet. By building directly on this chosen clay source,
the inhabitants sought to avoid high transport costs. The decision to locate the initial
settlement directly on the low-lying, clay-rich areas rather than on natural rises exposed

24 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

it to flooding. However, as more houses were stacked upon the earliest one, the resulting
mound elevated them above the flood zone (Figure 2.11).

A World Heritage Site

Çatalhöyük has many unusual characteristics and provides significant
information on the transition to an agricultural way of life. The main mound
was continuously occupied between 7400–6200 BCE and experienced
eighteen distinct building levels. At its maximum size, it was twenty-one
meters tall and extended over thirteen hectares. At different times
approximately 3,500–8,000 people lived here, a population size equivalent to a
large town or even a small city. A shorter mound, dubbed Çatalhöyük West,
was subsequently occupied from 6200–5200 BCE in the Late Neolithic
(Chalcolithic) period. Because of its importance, Çatalhöyük was designated a
World Heritage Site.

Çatalhöyük is also well known for its mural art, consisting of paintings and
low-relief sculptures on clay walls, as well as clay figurines and unique clay
supports for erecting cattle horns (bucrania) in the walls of some houses. The
Çatalhöyük Research Project, directed by Prof. Ian Hodder of Stanford
University, is a 25-year program of excavation, conservation, interpretation,
and presentation of findings.

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 25

 In addition to mudbricks, backswamp clay
was the principal material for clay cooking balls
and some early pottery. But as residents
continued to dig out the backswamp clay, they
depleted this resource in their immediate
environs, while also exposing other clays and
marls underneath. The whitish marls (highly
calcareous clays) beneath the backswamp clay
had their own uses, especially to make the
Figure 2.11 South area excavations in 2014 plaster that covered and protected the
show multiple levels of houses, with the
individual bricks visible in some places. mudbrick walls and served as mortar for the
Sandbags help conserve the walls against mudbricks (Figure 2.12). Thus, at Çatalhöyük
continued slumping and deterioration. Both
the alluvial and colluvial sediments were there was “no such thing as clay”; many similar
utilized to make bricks and other clay objects materials were differentiated by their specific
later in the sequence of occupation. [Photo by properties, locations in the landscape, and uses
Jason Quinlan, shared under a CC-BY-NC-SA
2.0 Generic License. Flickr.] over time by the inhabitants.
Extracting clays changed the local landscape.
Digging for clay disrupted the flow of water in what was a wetland environment,
changing the drainage and thus vegetation patterns. A rough estimate of the amount of
clay needed for Çatalhöyük’s residential uses during the life of the settlement is an
astonishing 675,000 cubic meters! The borrow pits excavated to obtain clay were
regularly flooded, filling with additional water-deposited sediments (alluvium). As the
mound grew higher, erosional sediments accumulated at its base (colluvium), mixed with
artifacts.
In sum, even as clay shaped the
Çatalhöyük community, their collective
actions also impacted the clay deposits
themselves, changing their composition.

Hodder’s Entanglement Model

Drawing upon his excavations at
Çatalhöyük, Ian Hodder devised a model of
how humans and materials become
dependent upon one another, creating an Figure 2.12 Repaired patches of clay mortar
15 preserved finger impressions.[Photo from
entanglement.
excavation, shared under a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
This model is a highly useful method for Generic License. Flickr.]

26 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

analyzing the impact of materials on society. It is based on four simple-sounding premises:

1. Humans depend on things.

2. Things depend on other things.
3. Things depend on humans.
4. Humans depend on things that depend on humans.

(Note that Hodder takes as axiomatic that humans depend on other humans.) His fourth
premise, which builds upon the first three, is the entanglement—a human-thing
interdependency. Applying these premises one by one, Hodder analyzed how the
inhabitants of Çatalhöyük became entangled with clay, and how that entanglement
changed their lives and their history.

Activity: Watch a video

Ona Johnson and Karis Eklund made this video, “Welcome to Çatalhöyük,” in
2004 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNZRzKChn84&t=84s) to introduce
the site to visitors.

• What is so special or unique about Çatalhöyük?

• What does the video tell you about the original wetland environment of
Çatalhöyük?
• How was Çatalhöyük unlike a modern city? Why were houses so important?
• What did you think of the ancient artworks made by the Neolithic
inhabitants of Çatalhöyük?

Humans Depend on Things

Regarding “things” made of clay, the first premise is indisputable. The earliest houses were
built directly upon thicker deposits of backswamp clay needed for structures. Residents of
Çatalhöyük and other Neolithic sites depended on their houses of mudbrick walls; interior

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 27

hearths, ovens, and benches made of clay and plastered with marl to help make them
waterproof and durable; and many other clay objects (Figure 2.13).
As Hodder explained, the residents of
Çatalhöyük lived in an intimate, sensory
world of clay. Clay dust was ubiquitous and
got into their hair, skin, and lungs. It also
got into their food because they used
heated clay balls to cook their meals, such
as animal stews. The dead were buried
under the floors (within the earlier filled-
in houses), where the clay absorbed the
liquid and odors of bodily decay.

Things Depend on Other

Figure 2.13 Overhead view of a house (Building Things
56) in the South Area. Note the extensive use of clay
for all the house features, including benches, The second premise is a little more
partitions, and the hearth (center left). [Photo from
excavation (2006), shared under a CC-BY-NC-SA difficult to understand and requires a
2.0 Generic License. Flickr.] close examination of the word “thing.”
Although this word is so generic it is
difficult to agree on a definition, Hodder relied on the influential insights of German
16
philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger observed that the original meaning of “thing”
in Germanic languages (including English) was a “gathering” or “assembly.” Things actively
gather: they gather their individual properties, other things, processes, people, and places.
There are several ways to understand how clay things gathered or assembled. The clay
sediments used to build Çatalhöyük “gathered” (were dependent on) such other things as
the hydrogeology of the former Lake Konya and the extraction of the backswamp clay
to make the mound. This gathering includes the resulting alluvial clay deposited in the
borrow pits and colluvial sediments coalescing at the base of the mound. And all of this
movement of clay depended on the actions of people and the force of gravity.
Making a clay object, whether a vessel or a brick, also required gathering component
parts, each with its own properties, and correctly assembling them. The parts depended
on one another to create the object. Hodder describes this assemblage in detail in making
the paste, the prepared clay ready to be molded or modeled into an object (Figure
2.14). The clay itself brings its own qualities to the paste: grain size and shape, chemical
composition, shrinkage factor, cohesion, any impurities not previously removed, thermal

28 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

properties, and so forth. A mineral temper (a non-plastic addition) will have similar
properties added to the mix.
However, the temper for the early clay
artifacts at Çatalhöyük consisted of
organic fibers, including wild grasses,
straw, and cereal chaff that had to be
collected and stored when the grains were
17
harvested. Those activities and materials
are part of the gathering process as well.
Finally, the water added to mold the clay
mix would vary in terms of its proportion
to clay and any impurities it might contain.
Figure 2.14 Paste as a “thing” is an assembling of Therefore, making any composite material,
the properties of clay, temper, and water. [Adapted such as paste, requires a gathering or
by the author from Hodder, Entangled, figure 6.1.]
assembly.
At a higher scale, a thing is an assemblage because other things, people, and places must
come together to manufacture, use, repair, or discard it. As an example of this level of
gathering, Hodder diagrams (Figure 2.15) how the marl plaster used to cover the mudbrick
walls is a thing.
Plaster assembles the raw material, the
marl (calcareous clay), which required
certain tools to excavate it from below the
backswamp clay deposits and baskets or
other containers to transport it to the
places for processing. Lime was added to
the marl, obtained by acquiring limestone
and heating it at a special place (see
Eaverly, “Concrete”). Water also had to be
carried in containers from its place of
origin. Once made, the plaster was applied Figure 2.15 This diagram illustrates how clay
with certain implements and then (marl) plaster (center rectangle) as a “thing” gathers
tools, materials, activities, and processes. [From
burnished to a hard surface with pebbles. Hodder, Entangled, figure 3.2.]
This work was dependent on the season of
the year and the availability of sufficient laborers. All of these components were “gathered”
according to a specific “operational sequence” (see Sassaman, “Ceramics”) to make the
plaster to maintain the walls, which required frequent resurfacings due to wear and tear.
And consider, of course, that the walls were dependent on the plaster to function properly.

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 29

 A more straightforward example of how things depend on other things comes from the
houses themselves. Families in two adjoining houses came to build their own house walls
next to each other rather than share a common outer wall (see Figure 2.10). This was not
due just to a concern for property boundaries. Over time the mudbrick walls would slump
or crack, and they depended on the adjacent wall to help them stay upright. Thus Hodder
concluded, “All things depend on other things along chains of interdependence in which
many other actors are involved. . . . Things in their dependence on other things draw
18
things and people together.”

Things Depend on Humans

While things such as mudbricks and pottery depend on humans to come into existence,
they also retain that dependency over time because they are unstable. Materials and
objects decay, transform, break, fall apart, and sometimes just run out. This dependency is
well-illustrated by the mudbrick walls of Çatalhöyük.
As noted, the earliest walls and bricks were made of the backswamp clay. This is a
smectitic clay, the name for a category of phyllosilicate minerals that have the high
propensity to shrink and swell. In other words, smectitic clays expand quickly when
mixed with water, but they shrink a great deal as they dry, and continue to shrink long
afterwards. The bricks required tempering with plant material and thick layers of marl
19
mortar to even them out when they were laid because they warped as they dried.
The walls of shrinking mudbrick became more unstable over time, requiring greater
human investments to prop them up and keep their surfaces from cracking. As Hodder
observed, “The relationships between molecules in the clay produced relationships
between people in society at Çatalhöyük as they worked together to solve the problem
20
of collapsing walls.” They tried various solutions, including additional layers of plaster
and double-walls for mutual support. They also tried to prop up the houses with wooden
posts, although this meant reducing the already low numbers of trees in the area.
Over time, larger and heavier bricks were made to create thicker walls, and sandier clays
began to be employed. This last change in clay material was likely related to the over-
exploitation of the backswamp clays and the use of the sandier or gritty clay deposits
underneath them. New technologies were also introduced to manufacture bricks.
All in all, this greater investment of labor and resources in maintaining existing walls
and building new houses limited the time and effort that could have been spent on
other activities. As Hodder concluded: “People increasingly got trapped by bricks at
21
Çatalhöyük.” And the bricks are still a trap today! Keeping the exposed 9,000-year-old
mudbrick walls from crumbling is a constant chore for archaeologists and conservators,
22
requiring regular injections of chemicals, consolidants, and grouts.
30 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay
Entanglement: Things Depend on People Who Depend on Things
Entrapment is the historical consequence of entanglement as a self-propelled spiral of
consequences. Hodder represents the entanglement of clay as a tanglegram, or
interconnected web of dependencies (Figure 2.16). The increasing dependence of
Çatalhöyük’s residents on the clay for their structures required ever greater investment
in maintaining and repairing them. As a result, they changed their activities, their
environment (as they dug up the clay), and their social relations. This cascade of
consequences well illustrates how an entanglement traps people into doing some things
and limits their abilities to engage in alternatives.

Figure 2.16 A “tanglegram” graphically shows the interdependencies of people and things centered on
clay (clay is the oval in the lower right corner, connected to “oven,” “hearth,” and “mudbrick”). Click on
the image to inspect these relationships more closely. [From Hodder, Entangled, figure 9.2.]

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 31

Entanglement and Social Change
The entanglement of Çatalhöyük’s residents with their mudbrick houses reveals how
impossible it would have been for them to change basic architectural materials or
construction technology. They were far too invested in their current practices and
material dependencies to abandon them.
Entanglement thus provides a framework for understanding how people undergo
societal changes—or alternatively, how and why they attempt to prevent change from
happening. Hodder’s thesis is that the entanglements of humans and things create a
historical trajectory that influences the success or failure of specific social and cultural
traits. Because of the entrapment caused by one or more entanglements, people are
generally unable to adopt a new material or technology, or cannot realize its benefits,
unless it fits into an existing technology and labor regime.

From Cooking Balls to Cooking Pots

A good example of this latter scenario from Hodder’s case study is the gradual shift from
23
clay cooking balls to cooking pots.
Archaeologists uncovered massive numbers of clay balls from the lower, earlier levels of
occupation (Figure 2.17). Many of them were likely used to cook food, as this is a common
technology found at equivalent time periods elsewhere in the world.
The cook would heat the balls in the
house’s hearth and then transfer them,
probably with stick-tongs, to containers.
These were likely clay-lined baskets that
held water, bits of meat (usually sheep or
goat), and other foods. However, the balls
quickly lost their heat in the water and had
to be put back on the hearth. Imagine the
cook in every family carefully monitoring
the movement of several balls back and
forth from fire to basket for each cooked
Figure 2.17 A stash of clay balls excavated at meal, making this a tedious and labor-
Çatalhöyűk. [Çatalhöyűk Image Collection File
#061401_080517 (1963), shared under a CC-BY-NC intensive daily task.
4.0 International License.] The early balls were made of the same
fiber-tempered backswamp clays as the
mudbricks. And the same paste was used to make the earliest clay vessels, appearing
around 7000 BCE. However, this fiber-tempered pottery was unsuitable for cooking, so
32 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay
these early pots probably functioned to serve food or drink. As such they did not directly
modify the entanglement with cooking balls.
Nevertheless, the use of clays was changing. Digging for the siltier backswamp clays
exposed underlying sandy clays. These clays did not require the addition of organic
24
temper, and they were more efficient at heat-transfer than the fiber-tempered pastes.
By about 6600 BCE, the clay balls started to diminish in frequency as larger, thinner,
sandier clay pots appeared. These typically show exterior smudging, which indicates they
were placed directly on a hearth as cookpots (Figure 2.18).

Cookpot Consequences
Cooking food in a pot frees the cook from
having to constantly reheat the clay balls
to do other tasks. This change in cooking
technology modified the scheduling of
labor for domestic activities. It would have
transformed gender relations and the
division of labor within the household,
assuming that women and girls were in
Figure 2.18 This vessel excavated from a later
charge of food preparation. Ceramic occupation level at Çatalhöyűk shows the marks of
cooking vessels also required more skill, having been put over a fire for cooking.
investment of labor, and new resources, [Catalhoyuk Image Collection File
#20020801_mal_041 (2002), shared under a
including non-local clays and fuel for firing CC-BY-NC 4.0 International License.]
pottery (see Sassaman, “Ceramics”).
Thus, one form of the entanglement of clay gradually replaced another over several
centuries, with profound reverberations for Çatalhöyük society. It was at this same period
of transition that the settlement reached its greatest extent and was most densely packed
25
with houses, now made of the larger, sandier mudbricks.

Material Lessons
The entanglement of clay at Neolithic Çatalhöyük illustrates more general insights for
understanding the relationships between humans and materials, and the impacts of
materials on society. These include how people engage with properties of materials in
production processes, the critical difference between potential and actualized properties,
and the recognition that some properties are advantageous while others are
disadvantageous. In treating materials as bundles of properties, the notion of a “thing” as

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 33

gathering or assembling is again revealed as a useful way to comprehend the interactions
between people and materials.

Materials? Or Properties?
A long-standing bias implicit in Thomsen’s Three-Age System, which introduced this
chapter, is the notion that stone, bronze, and iron are homogeneous material categories
that peoples throughout time and space perceived in an equivalent manner. That is,
his scheme narrows our attention to materials as seemingly defined strictly by certain
natural, essential qualities. In criticizing this bias, archaeologist Chantal Conneller argues
to the contrary that people engage with the properties of materials, not with some
26
universally recognized substance in nature (Figure 2.19).
Importantly, specific properties of a
material will actually vary depending on
human experiences with it and with the
other materials and objects brought into
relationships with it. These relationships
include making comparisons and contrasts
between materials—how is clay like or
unlike stone (or metal)? They also more
literally refer to physically combining
materials (e.g., clay and water) or
manipulating them with tools (e.g.,
polishing dried clay objects such as mortar
Figure 2.19 Copper knife, spearpoints, awls, and or pots to harden the surface).
spade, from the “Old Copper Complex” of the Thus Conneller can assert in the above
western Great Lakes, Late Archaic (pre-farming)
period, 3000–1000 BCE, in the Wisconsin epigraph that “there is no such thing as
Historical Museum. [Photo by user Daderot (2013), ‘stone’.” Instead, a variety of materials may
shared under a CC0 license. Wikimedia Commons.]
be lumped together at different times and
in variable situations by the word “stone.” Alternatively, materials we would treat as all
“stone”—running the gamut from talc to diamond—might be distinguished as different
substances by other peoples.

“Making”
Materials, and the objects made of them, come “bundled” with multiple potential
properties. “Making”—which includes “unmaking”—is an umbrella term introduced by
anthropologist Tim Ingold to encompass the production processes by which people

34 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

engage with the bundled properties of materials as part of the various projects they
27
undertake. In some cases, properties are known and are drawn into strategic, intentional
plans. In other cases, they emerge as unintended consequences of human practices. Thus,
what a material is in the technical jargon of a modern scientist is not as relevant to those
28
who use it as what it does in particular situations (Figure 2.20).
Because situations will vary, what a material does is subject to change. This means that
any material should be treated as mutable, variable, and dynamic—not inert, fixed, and
static. To comprehend the impact of materials on society we must attend to the activation
of the properties of materials in human interactions with them, and also to the historical
consequences of those interactions, as the Çatalhöyük case study demonstrates so well.

Potential and Actual Properties

In the process of making, some of the potential properties of materials are actualized
29
out of that practical experience. However, other properties are not, or not immediately
so, and remain virtual or latent, unrecognized or unvalued by people. Some properties
may emerge as a consequence of physical processes, such as rust or decay, which are
dependent on certain environmental circumstances (In Figure 2.19, the copper has
oxidized, turning the surface green.). At Çatalhöyük, only the passage of time revealed the
continued shrinkage of the smectitic mudbricks well after they were first sundried.
The actualization of potential properties may also result from transformations that
reveal hitherto unrealized effects. For example, we consider clay to be useful because it (1)
is easily molded into shape, and (2) can be made into hard and durable objects. However,
these potential properties of clay emerge only through the application of a certain amount
of water in the first case (Figure 2.20), and additional pyrotechnologies in the second.
In many other instances, the potential properties of materials remain latent because
they are not relevant to human projects (making). For example, ancient peoples used
iron ores such as hematite and ilmenite as a source of red and yellow pigment, or they
polished the minerals to make mirrors. All of this happened long before iron-working was
invented or introduced. Thus, “material reality is teeming with virtual or potential qualities
30
or properties which never get actualized.” Making is what brings out these potentials. To
understand a material requires knowing the history of how its various properties emerged
31
as a result of the changing situations of human encounters with it.

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 35

 Significantly, actualizing and realizing formerly
unobserved or unimportant virtual properties is a
32
source of innovation. For example, humans used clay
for millennia in many ways other than by firing it at high
temperatures to bring about its potential to make hard,
durable, waterproof vessels. Once that technology
(ceramic pottery) emerged, it changed the courses of
human histories. At Çatalhöyük the innovation of clay
cooking vessels (Figure 2.18)—brought about by
actualizing sandy clay’s potential properties—resulted in
major social changes.

Affordances and Constraints

Although materials are teeming with properties, not all
of them prove advantageous to whatever human
projects they are brought into. Going back to the fired
clay (ceramic) example, its durability is usually
Figure 2.20 Properties of
considered a desirable result of that pyrotechnology, materials are engaged in their
but ceramics are also brittle—they break easily. making or using, as here in the case
of a potter at work in Jaura,
An analytical concept for differentiating desirable
Madhya Pradesh, India. Note the
properties from undesirable or unrealized properties bowl of water kept next to the
comes from the work of ecological psychologist James wheel. [Photo by user Yann (2009),
33 shared under a CC-BY-SA 3.0
Gibson. He devised the term affordance to refer to the Unported License. Wikimedia
recognized potential properties—for good or ill—for a Commons.]
particular set of actions in a certain situation or
environment. Subsequent researchers have modified this term to distinguish
advantageous properties—such as the durability of ceramics or the thermal properties of
clay cooking balls—from those that create constraints on human action. Examples of
constraints are the fragility of pottery that mandates careful handling, and the heavy
weight of wet mudbricks that increases transport costs.
Affordances as recognized beneficial properties play a disproportionate role in the
manufacture or use of objects, but they are always dependent on their context. This
means that affordances must be readily apparent to the humans involved in that context
or situation. And because humans do not act in isolation but rather in cooperation with
others, affordances have a social aspect. Not everyone will agree on whether properties
are advantageous or not, so any material or object affordance may require social
negotiation.
36 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay
 Backswamp Mudbricks: Affordance or Constraint?
We can only imagine the discussions and disagreements to establish the
first houses of what would become the höyük now called Çatal. Should the
pioneer settlers erect their mudbrick dwellings directly on the deposits of
backswamp clay, which would put them at risk of flooding? Or, should they
build on the higher natural rises, taking them out of the flood zone but at a
greater distance from the backswamp clays preferred for bricks?

We know the answer only in historical retrospect. Note that in this

example, affordances include the location and abundance of backswamp clay.
They are not limited to some intrinsic properties of clay as scientifically
defined, because affordances are situational.

Thus affordances are produced or become evident out of human interactions (making)
with materials in a particular context. This means that affordances are dynamic or
34
changeable because humans, materials, and situations will vary in time and space.
Archaeologist Chris Doherty argued that the diversity of clays available at Çatalhöyük
seems obvious to us today, but that affordance was not realized until the inhabitants
began removing the backswamp clay. In so doing, they disrupted the natural environment,
35
changing the affordances of the original landscape. The concept of affordance is another
reason to avoid treating materials as stable, universally defined categories.

Things as Assemblages
In similar fashion to Martin Heidegger’s dynamic and mutable conception of a “thing,”
other 20th-century philosophers have referred to materials or objects as “assemblages” or
36
“networks.” Individual materials are assemblages of their particular potential properties.
For example, at Çatalhöyük backswamp clay, marls, and sandy clays bundle different
properties.
The fluid nature of materials, with their individual histories of potential and actualized
properties, as well as the constant negotiation of those properties in social projects,
impact the objects made from them. Objects are “bundles” of different materials brought
together in a certain way, their properties emerging from dynamic and situational human

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 37

interactions. Although we tend to view objects as solid and stable, they are just as
changeable as the materials that compose them. The mudbricks that the residents of
Çatalhöyük depended on for 2,000 years exemplify this instability.
Objects as assemblages are unstable in another way. They do not naturally endure in
terms of their original networks of associations or meanings, even though some of their
physical components may persist. The people of Çatalhöyük regularly razed their houses,
transforming them into platforms for subsequent dwellings on top. In some cases these
former-houses-as-foundations became places of the dead, with new meanings and values.
Thus the mound endures into the present some 9,000 years after it was started; yet, as a
network of things, people, and values, it was constantly changing (see Figure 2.11).
The users of objects are generally aware of the inevitable changes they undergo. The
Çatalhöyük data reveal how much the people labored, sometimes to an extraordinary
degree, to stabilize mutable objects and try to maintain the networks in which the objects
participated. These efforts indicate the interdependence of people and materials, and
the assembled objects made from them, and how these dependencies played out over
thousands of years. Appreciating this complicated history is important to more fully
comprehending the impact of materials on society.

Conclusion: Entanglement and its Consequences

The entanglement of clay at Neolithic Çatalhöyük thus provides two important lessons
for understanding the impact of materials on societies. The first is that entanglement of
materials is a historical process, meaning it has material and social consequences that
play out over time. The entanglement begins as materials are deployed to meet human
needs and desires. Clay was essential for many daily life-sustaining activities. However,
at Çatalhöyük there was no such thing as “clay.” The inhabitants differentially utilized the
multiple clay-bearing deposits, both in the Çatalhöyük vicinity and from outside the area,
according to their particular perceived properties and the contexts of their extraction,
transport, processing, and use or reuse.
These clays, and the non-clay materials with which they were naturally or humanly
assembled, had their own properties. Some properties were actualized, while potential
others remained latent or virtual. Some properties were advantageous to human projects.
Besides being abundant and easy to acquire, clay could be formed into multiple, relatively
durable objects with a minimum of skill or tools, and could dry in the natural heat of
the sun. Other properties posed constraints, such as the weight of wet clay and the
high shrinkage rate of the smectitic clay. Both actualized and virtual, advantageous and
disadvantageous properties, in their proper contexts, must be thoroughly accounted for
in assessing the impact of clay on the Neolithic societies that were ancestral to our own.
38 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay
 This case study further reveals clay objects as assemblages, “things” that participated
in assembling higher order things. They gathered different materials, people, processes,
and places in their making and unmaking. Things depended on other things and they
depended on the people who depended on them.
The second lesson is that entanglement is a historical process whereby human actions
are intertwined over time with physical forces. The latter include decay, degradation,
corrosion, transformation, wearing out, and running out of materials. When things start
to fall apart, the usual reaction is to fix them or find equivalent replacements because
entanglement is an entrapment.
This means that all these intertwined processes play a central role in social change. New
materials or innovated actualized properties of existing materials are selected for use only
if they fit within the existing entanglements. Otherwise they may be ignored. Cook pots
at Çatalhöyük had to fit into the existing technology of cooking with clay and making clay
vessels, together with the gradual substitution of sandier clays for the siltier backswamp
clay.
Through the long lens of archaeology, we can begin to understand the consequences
of entanglement at Çatalhöyük. Exactly the same processes are occurring in our lives
today, constraining our alternative futures. However, because we are “trapped” by our
entanglements, with many new materials now, it is difficult to apprehend how much
we are dependent on things that depend on us. Even when we recognize our
interdependencies with materials, it is a challenge to overcome them if our entanglements
hold us back and prevent us from adopting new materials or alternative technologies for
societal needs.

Discussion Questions

1. Select an “earthy” material that is critical to our modern society (e.g.,

precious and utilitarian metals, fossil fuels, rare earths). Using the four
premises of the entanglement model, explain in detail our
interdependencies with that material. How can we potentially escape the
entrapment of the entanglement of this material?
2. Pick another “earthy” material and explain which of its properties are

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 39

 “affordances” and which are “constraints.” Remember that affordances and
constraints are context-dependent and not always inherent in the material
itself, so you must specify the context or situation. Were the constraining
properties known at the time objects of that material were made or first
used? What about potential affordances?
3. Understanding a “thing” as an assembly or gathering is important to
comprehending new approaches to how humans use materials and to
Hodder’s entanglement model. Using Figure 2.15 as an example, diagram the
clay cooking ball as a “thing” in the early history of Çatalhöyük. Consider
how it assembled other substances, people, places, tools, and processes as
it was made and as it was used.
4. Clay at Çatalhöyük was used to make primarily “subceramic” (unfired)
objects that were dried in the heat of the sun. The properties of ceramics
are generally considered to be superior to those of unfired clay, yet unfired
clay does have important advantages or affordances. What were the
specific affordances of unfired clay for the people of Çatalhöyük? What
purposes continue to be served by unfired clay materials in our modern
society?

Key Terms
entanglement
Neolithic
Soil Revolution
clay
Age of Clay
plasticity
temper
thing
paste
tanglegram
making
potential properties

40 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

 actualized
affordance
constraints

Author Biography
Susan D. Gillespie is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. She received
her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983,
specializing in the archaeology and ethnohistory of Mesoamerica. Dr. Gillespie has
directed archaeological projects in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico,
investigating the rise of complex society in the Formative Period (ca. 1500–500 BCE).
She is the author of The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History
(Univ. of Arizona Press, 1989), awarded the 1990 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize by the
American Society for Ethnohistory. She co-edited Things in Motion: Object Itineraries
in Anthropological Practice, with R. A. Joyce (School of Advanced Research Press, 2015),
Archaeology Is Anthropology, with D. L. Nichols (Archeological Papers of the American
Anthropological Association No. 13, 2003), and Beyond Kinship: Social and Material
Reproduction in House Societies, with R. A. Joyce (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

Notes

1. Chantal Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformation in Early Prehistoric

Europe (New York: Routledge, 2011), 82, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1040885381.
2. On Thomsen and the impact of his and subsequent work in the periodization of early history in
Europe, see Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989; 2006), 121–29, 147–48, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1102556484.
3. Suzanne Staubach, Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most
Primal Element (New York: Berkley Books, 2005; Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New England, 2013),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/864745156. Refers to UPNE edition.
4. The model of entanglement used in this chapter was the invention of archaeologist Ian Hodder
as explained in several of his publications: “Human-thing Entanglement: Towards an Integrated
Archaeological Perspective,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17 (2011): 154–77,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23011576.; Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationship between
Humans and Things (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
1151155585.; and “Becoming Entangled in Things,” in Substantive Technologies at Çatalhöyük:
Reports from the 2000–2008 Seasons, ed. Ian Hodder, Çatalhöyük Research Project Series Vol. 9
(London: British Institute at Ankara and Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press,
2013), 1–25, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/986819635.
5. In his 1934 book, New Light on the Most Ancient East, renowned archaeologist Vere Gordon
Childe proposed that humanity experienced two “revolutions”: the Neolithic food-producing

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 41

 revolution followed by the Urban Revolution that coincided with the Bronze Age in the Old
World (in Trigger, History of Archaeological Thought, 324).
6. Julian Thomas, “An Economy of Substances in Earlier Neolithic Britain,” in Material Symbols:
Culture and Economy in Prehistory, ed. John E. Robb, Occasional Paper No. 26 (Carbondale, IL:
Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois Univ., 1999), 75–76,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41561725.
7. Nicole Boivin, “Geoarchaeology and the Goddess Laksmi: Rajasthani Insights into
Geoarchaeological Methods and Prehistoric Soil Use,” in Soils, Stones and Symbols: Cultural
Perceptions of the Mineral World, eds. Nicole Boivin and Mary Ann Owoc (London: Univ. College
London Press, 2004), 174, 181, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56911728.
8. Mirjana Stevanović, “The Age of Clay: The Social Dynamics of House Destruction,” Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology 16 (1997): 334–95, https://doi.org/10.1006/jaar.1997.0310.
9. Chris Doherty, “Sourcing Çatalhöyük’s Clays,” in Hodder, ed., Substantive Technologies at
Çatalhöyük, 51.
10. Boivin, "“Geoarchaeology and the Goddess Laksmi," 177.
11. Boivin, 178.
12. James Mellaart, Çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/582727604. See also Ian Hodder, The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the
Mysteries of Çatalhöyük (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
1045442166; Hodder, Entanglement, 60.
13. Serena Love, “An Archaeology of Mudbrick Houses from Çatalhöyük,” in Hodder, ed., Substantive
Technologies at Çatalhöyük, 96; Burcu Tung, “Building with Mud: An Analysis of Architectural
Materials at Çatalhöyük,” in Hodder, ed., Substantive Technologies at Çatalhöyük, 78.
14. This section draws on the analysis of Çatalhöyük’s clay sources and how they were used by its
inhabitants, conducted by archaeologist Chris Doherty; see Doherty, “Sourcing Çatalhöyük’s
Clays.”
15. The premises of Hodder’s model are best explained in Hodder, “Human-Thing Entanglement,”
and Hodder, Entangled.
16. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a leader in the 20th-century philosophy of Continental
Phenomenology. His influential essay, “The Thing” (Das Ding) was published in English in
Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter (London: Harper, 1971), 165–82,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1070903602.
17. For tempering of the mudbricks, see Hodder, Entangled, 152; Mirjana Stevanović, “New
Discoveries in House Construction at Çatalhöyük,” in Hodder, ed., Substantive Technologies at
Çatalhöyük, 111; and Tung, “Building with Mud,” in Hodder, ed., Substantive Technologies at
Çatalhöyük, 79.
18. Hodder, “Human-Thing Entanglement,” 157.
19. Doherty, “Sourcing Çatalhöyük’s Clays," 64; Hodder, “Human-Thing Entanglement,” 160–61;
Hodder, Entangled, 65–67.
20. Hodder, Entangled, 66.
21. Hodder, Entangled, 67.
22. Hodder, Entangled, 65.
23. Hodder, Entangled, 152–56.
24. Doherty, “Sourcing Çatalhöyük’s Clays,” 65.

42 | Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay

25. Hodder, Entangled, 153–54.
26. Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials, 5–8.
27. Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2013),
20–21, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/840416927.
28. Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials, 19.
29. This is the distinction 20th-century philosophers have made between potential and actual
(Alfred North Whitehead, 1861–1947), or virtual and actual (Gilles Deleuze, 1925–1995) properties.
See Gavin Lucas, Understanding the Archaeological Record (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
2012), 167, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1162097299.
30. Lucas, Understanding the Archaeological Record, 167.
31. Tim Ingold, “Toward an Ecology of Materials." Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 434–35.
32. Lucas, Understanding the Archaeological Record, 167.
33. James J. Gibson (1904–1949) was a leader in the psychology of visual perception. See Gibson, The
Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1000427293. For revisions of his ideas see Carl Knappett, “The
Affordances of Things: a Post-Gibsonian Perspective on the Relationality of Mind and Matter,” in
Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, eds. Elizabeth
DeMarrais, Chris Gosden, and Colin Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research, Univ. of Cambridge, 2004), 43–51, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/60740603. See also
Hodder, Entangled, 48–50.
34. Knappett, 46; see also Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials, 1; Ingold, “Toward an Ecology of
Materials,” 435.
35. Doherty, “Sourcing Çatalhöyük’s Clays,” 65–66.
36. Lucas, Understanding the Archaeological Record, 188; Ingold, “Toward an Ecology of Materials”;
Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2005), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1156912903.

Clay: The Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay | 43

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking
Stone
KENNETH E. SASSAMAN

“Failure with clay was more complete and more spectacular than with other forms
of art. . . Any one of the old four—earth, air, fire, water—can betray you.” —A.S.
Byatt, The Children’s Book

Abstract
This chapter follows from the previous chapter on earthy materials to consider the
social impacts when transforming clay and rock into glass and other ceramic substances.
Introduced is the concept of operational sequence, or the process by which affordances
of both materials and societies are assembled and disassembled as things are made,
used, and discarded. In particular, this chapter contrasts how glass-like rock, such as
obsidian and flint, can be broken with human force with the firing of clay to produce
true ceramics. The operational sequence for making both an Ice-Age spear point and a
ceramic pot illustrates the contingent relationships of physical and social acts in making
things, while also showcasing the evolutionary conditions under which ancestral humans
developed the cognitive, motor, and social skills to achieve particular outcomes from
an array of possibilities. The application of thermal energy to first stone and then clay
introduced additional affordances, as well as constraints, that inform our understanding
of the potential for ceramic materials of the future. Examining the relationship of human
energy application to thermal energy application in different ceramics also provides
important lessons for how we can use future ceramics to store and generate energy at
lower costs and with fewer negative impacts than conventional technologies.

Introduction
Ceramics are among the premier materials that connect the distant past of our earliest
Homo sapiens ancestors to our future. From the first pottery vessels of ancient China
to the bone implants and fuel cells of tomorrow, ceramics have been developed to solve
human problems for over 20,000 years. With such a long history of research and
development, ceramics embody many impacts of materials on society. Since their

44 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

beginning, ceramic materials served social needs, such as preparing a meal to share with
others on a plate or decorating a place of ritual gathering with a ceramic mask. Future
applications in communications, medicine, and energy production ensure that ceramics
will remain integral to human societies for generations to come. As has long been the
case, innovations in ceramics arise from the novel interplay of the properties of different
substances—clay, temper, water, flux—and the application of heat. But they also arise from
changing relationships between producers and consumers, experts and novices, and men
and women. Before we delve into these sorts of issues we might first ask, what exactly is a
ceramic?

What Makes Something a Ceramic Material?

That plate in your kitchen sink and tiles on your bathroom floor are most likely ceramic.
So too are the insulators of your light bulbs, components of your microelectronics, the
brake linings of your car, and maybe even the crown on your tooth. The wide array of
applications for ceramics in our past and those of the future make it difficult to define
ceramics in simple terms. We can agree that ceramics are inorganic solids composed
of a combination of metals and non-metal or metalloid atoms that result in nonmetallic
materials. We might add that in many cases they are a refractory, that is, a substance
resistant to heat. It takes a great deal of heat to make a true ceramic, and some ancient
ceramic vessels were designed to convey heat efficiently, as with the wet cooking of foods
like corn and barley that required prolonged simmering to make them edible.
To sort through the array of materials broadly classified as ceramic, it is useful to
distinguish between traditional and technical (or functional) forms of ceramics.
Traditional ceramics include objects made from clay. A by-product of the weathering of
rock, clay is a fine-grained material consisting of often alumina silicates with traces of
metal oxides and organic matter. To reiterate key properties of clay (see Gillespie, “Clay”):
(1) size is critical (particles must be less than two microns in size); (2) the water content
of clay makes it plastic, capable of being molded while still wet; (3) dried and fired clay
becomes hard and brittle; and (4) most clays shrink when dried, causing cracks to form at
surfaces and requiring temper to prevent cracking. The utility of clay for humans depends
on how its properties are recognized and manipulated, including combining it with other
substances (e.g., water, temper), and usually subjecting it to heat.
Traditional ceramics are typically based on the firing of clay. A clay can become a
ceramic only if subjected to temperatures in excess of about 1,200 degrees Celsius. The
outcome is known as vitrification, or the fusing of the layers of clay together with a
glass. The first potters to achieve this goal lived in ancient China, under the Han Dynasty
(ca. 200 BCE–220 CE); their early porcelain was not only glassy in composition but also
Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 45
translucent because they used white kaolin clay. Pottery making for millennia before and
since the dawn of porcelain involved the production of terra cottas, earthenwares, and
other forms of subceramics, meaning they were not vitrified in the firing process because
the temperature was not hot enough to permanently bond the clay layers. For example,
clay could simply be sunbaked to achieve a relatively durable form for purposes such as
hot-rock cooking or house construction.
Technical forms of ceramic (functional ceramics) go well
beyond the vitrification of clay to include carbides, pure oxides,
and nitrides, among other materials. Ceramics can be either
crystalline or amorphous, whereas glasses by definition are
always amorphous (lacking long-range crystal structure).
Technical ceramics can utilize their crystal structure and
composition to create new, interesting properties and can also
include glasses other than silicates (e.g., chalcogenides,
tellurites, gallates, germanates, heavy metal oxide glass). A
naturally occurring silicate glass known as obsidian that was
used for millennia as raw material for stone tools is not usually
considered a technical ceramic. In fact, while materials
engineers consider glasses a subset of ceramics, archaeologists
generally do not lump glass and ceramics together, as each has a Figure 3.1 The difference
at the atomic scale
distinct cultural history.
between a crystalline and
For the purpose of this chapter, we will focus not on the an amorphous solid. By
physical or chemical composition of ceramics but instead on definition a crystalline
solid exhibits long-range
their production and use. We are most concerned here with the order, but an amorphous
transformation of matter in the manipulation of ceramics, a solid does not. [Image by
user Cdang (2011), shared
process that entails the harnessing of energy, which has also under a CC-BY-SA 3.0
entailed hidden costs and unintended consequences for Unported License.
societies of all sorts. Wikimedia Commons.]

Operational Sequences
A useful way to begin discussion of the impact of ceramic materials on society is to
examine the production process. Here we mean production processes in general, not any
particular one. All such material production processes have operational sequences, which
are a series of decisions and actions that lead to intended goals. We of course follow
operational sequences in many of the things we do, from cooking food, to painting a
room, to repairing a bicycle tire. And we all know, from experience, what happens when a

46 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

sequence is enacted out of order, especially when processes have irreversible outcomes.
For example, if you add the eggs to a brownie after it’s cooked, it’s probably not palatable.
From a humanistic perspective, there is much more to operational sequences than
the step-by-step procedure for getting something done. Doing work and making things
involve the interplay between persons and matter, notably the bodily and social acts
involved in production. Anthropologists often employ the concept of chaîne opératoire
(French for operational sequence) to describe how the technical, bodily, and social acts of
production are mutually dependent and collectively the basis for innovation and change.
In this sense, we might say that society is made as things are made, or that production
involves entanglements that reach deep into the fabric of society and its cultures (see
Gillespie, “Clay”).
In their study of artifacts, archaeologists develop models of operational sequences to
characterize the production of stone and bone tools, pottery, and rock art, among other
things. This aids them in understanding how the sociological aspects of the objects.
1
According to archaeologist Peter Bleed, such models take two general forms. Some simply
describe the sequence of operations towards a predetermined goal, much like recipes in
a cookbook. Others emphasize the potential for variation in sequences by looking at how
technical and social issues interact dynamically. This latter approach reveals how change
occurs over time and thus provides some basis for imagining how future innovations in
ceramics and glass may further impact societies. Let’s take a look at the possible futures
of glass by first looking back to the ancient past.

Breaking Ancestral Glass

Although our ancestors manipulated any variety of organic and inorganic substances since
the beginning of human time, things made from stone comprise the oldest archaeological
evidence for making things. Stones used for early tools were more durable than other
substances humans modified (like wood) so by default stone tools are often the only
materials we have to investigate the beginnings of human engineering. We have in the
archaeological record of Africa, for instance, evidence for the making and using of flaked
stone tools going back over three million years, well before the appearance of fully modern
humans at about 200,000 years ago.
To call a stone tool a flaked stone tool is to indicate it was made by the removal of flakes
from a parent core of rock. Flakes can be removed from cores with either percussion
(knocking them off) or by applying steady pressure (pushing them off). How the stone
breaks depends on a number of things, most notably what geologists call cleavage planes:
the planes of relative weakness in crystalline structures. Rocks differ in their type of
cleavage. Halite and galena break into cubes, calcite breaks into rhomboids, others into
Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 47
prisms, and so on. All of these geometric fracture tendencies tend to limit the shapes one
can achieve through fracture. To achieve more complex shapes, rock that is lacking in any
predetermined breakage pattern is needed.
Worldwide, rocks that lend themselves to “unnatural” breakage consist of
microcrystalline quartz (silica), such as chert, flint, jasper, agate, and chalcedony, as well
2
as a variety of lesser materials like quartzite and rhyolite. . In a class unto itself is obsidian,
a glass-like rock that forms when felsic lava (feldspar and quartz) is cooled rapidly after
being spewed from a volcano. Rapid cooling minimizes crystal growth, resulting in an
amorphous glass. Obsidian like the microcrystalline materials mentioned above is very
isotropic, which enables complex shape fabrication as will be discussed in the next
section. With the right application of force or pressure, obsidian can be flaked to produce
3
edges sharper than the sharpest metallic surgical scalpels. In fact, obsidian surgical
blades are commercially available.

Sequencing the Production of a Clovis Point

So let’s pick a traditional shape of stone tool and run through the technical operational
sequence for its production. Our shape of choice is a Clovis point (Figure 3.2), a lance-
shaped blade that was flaked on both sides (making it a biface) to achieve a thin, lenticular
cross-section.
Next a groove or flute on the bottom of the piece needed to be fabricated in order
to enable its attachment to a handle or shaft. Clovis points were made in North America
from about 13,200–12,900 years ago by hunters of mammoth, mastodon, and other Ice
4
Age creatures. Modern flintknappers (persons who flake, or knap, stone) have replicated
Clovis technology and attest to the high level of skill involved, particularly in removing
the distinctive flutes on either face at the base, a final, risky step in the process that is
successfully executed only if all other steps are followed in proper sequence.

48 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

 Acquire Raw Material
It goes without saying that the first step in
the production of Clovis point must be the
acquisition of raw material, in this case
stone. But as discussed above and in the
sidebar below, not any old stone will do.
The technical requirements for Clovis
points demand the highest-quality raw
materials. North America is blessed with
all sorts of quality stones for tool making
(toolstones) including obsidian, but
geological sources are scattered widely
across the continent and some locations
that were excellent for hunting and
dwelling were devoid of stone. Thus, for
Clovis tool makers, getting rock meant
Figure 3.2 Drawing of two sides of a replicated
Clovis point, showing some of the diagnostic
traveling to sources, either directly from
features mentioned in the text. [Adapted from places of dwelling or in the course of
illustration by Melanie Diedrich of replica made by moving from place to place over the year.
Scott Williams. Internet Archive.]
Many of the points made by Clovis hunters
were displaced from the geological sources of their raw materials by hundreds of
kilometers.

Activity: Watch a video

Jeff Boudreau, Massachusetts Archaeological Society, demonstrates how to

make a Clovis Point in this PBS video (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=jRax_a8t4C4&t=7s).

• Which tools were typically used to fabricate a Clovis point?

• Was it necessary to sharpen the Clovis point?

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 49

 • What was the most difficult part of fabricating a Clovis point?

Prepare Raw Material for Transport

If you have to travel far from home to get rock, you probably do not want to carry back
useless material. Archaeologist Charlotte Beck and colleagues researched the costs of
transporting rock from quarries to places of habitation and found that ancient
toolmakers minimized their transportation costs by reducing raw nodules of rock into
5
blanks suited to further reduction. The greater the distance between source and home,
they found, the greater the effort to remove rocky mass of limited value. Minimally, this
involved removing the cortex or exterior layer of the rock, which is not terribly
conducive to flaking, as well as protuberances and other irregularities.

How Can You Tell an Actual Stone Tool from Some Old Rock?

The late-20th-century comic strip Calvin and Hobbes occasionally featured

the efforts of its human protagonist to make big discoveries by digging into
the earth. The few dirty rocks Calvin found in the strip above were treasure to

50 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

 him, but were they artifacts—that is, objects of human modification? In the
case of flaked stone tools, the evidence for human agency is distinctive. Fine-
grained rocks that are isotropic or amorphous are usually shaped by removing
flakes from the surfaces that converge at edges. If you apply a force to an edge
you drive off a flake from one of more surfaces that is elongated, and
potentially very thin (instead of radial in shape if the force is applied naturally
toward the core). Experts in flake-stone tool manufacture (flintknappers) can
manipulate the shape of the edge and angle of applied force to essentially
“sculpt” the surface of a core, one flake at a time. Archaeologists are trained to
recognize the attributes of controlled reduction and can therefore distinguish
manufactured tools from “a few dirty rocks,” as well as the by-products of
manufacture, notably the many flakes that are removed in sequence to
achieve a desired end. Sure, rocks occasionally break in ways that mimic
human agency—for instance, when cobbles of chert or obsidian impact other
stones during a landslide. But the more steps involved in the reduction of a
core, the lower the chance a particular fracture pattern could be mimicked by
natural agents. For these and many more reasons, the “treasure”
archaeologists find in stone tools is the capacity they have for revealing so
much about human societies of the ancient past.

Prepare Core for Reduction

Once you acquire rock of acceptable quality and transport it home, it is time to shape it
into a core—a somewhat cylindrical starting piece—of appropriate form and size. At this
stage of reduction, the primary objective is to preform the final product, or simply “rough
it out.” It will take a hammerstone or billet (i.e., an antler or bone hammer) to achieve this
objective, along with good planning and motor skills. If the nodule of rock is large enough,
a large flake can be struck from its surface and used as a preform or starting point for your
Clovis point. Otherwise, the preform resides inside the core itself, and can be revealed
only through the careful removal of multiple flakes from across the surface. This is hardly
a random or haphazard process, but instead one whose successive steps are contingent
upon previous steps.

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 51

Shape and Thin Biface
The contingencies of core reduction become even more critical as you approach the
final shape of the intended product. Like many flaked stone knives and projectiles, Clovis
points are thin in cross-section; they have to be not only because an acute edge is needed
to cut and pierce animal tissue, but also because a thin cross-section is conducive to
edge maintenance, resharpening the edge to enable its ongoing use and to increase the
longevity of the tool. Clovis flintknappers often used an “overshot” technique to drive
flakes across the entire face of a core, a decidedly tricky move. Ultimately, however, they
had to leave an elevated ridge along the midline of each face of the tool in order to
accommodate the bottom flutes yet to come. To do this they had to terminate flakes at
the midline, halfway across the surface, an outcome best achieved by applying pressure
to the edge of the tool with an antler tip or some such implement to remove thin, narrow
flakes.

Remove Flutes
Now comes the fateful moment, when the distinctive flutes of Clovis points are removed
from the base of the tool on either side. Fluting will only be possible if the bifacial core
has been prepared to precise tolerances. It is risky business indeed, and few modern
flintknappers have mastered the technique. Experiments in percussion, pressure, and
even the use of levers show that flutes can be removed in a variety of ways. Most
impressive perhaps is when a flintknapper holds the biface in his or her palm and drives
off a flute with the free swing of a hammer.

Finalize Edges
Now the edges have to be finalized by removing small flakes along the margins from either
side. This too is done with pressure, or what is known as “pressure flaking.” Holding the
tool in the palm of one’s hand, an antler tine or tip is applied to the edge to remove flakes
in succession, from base to tip, or tip to base. The result is an incredibly sharp edge,
serrated if the tool maker desires. This same technique will be used to resharpen the tool
as its edges become dull through use.

Grind Basal Margins

Before we can attach our finished product to a handle or shaft, the basal or bottom edges
of the Clovis point must be ground. This will prevent the edges from tearing into the

52 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

materials used to bind the tool to its handle. An abrasive stone is good for this task,
perhaps the same one used to prepare edges for flaking.

Affix to Handle or Shaft

Your finished product is not terribly useful without a handle (if it’s a knife), or a shaft
(if it’s a projectile). Now that you have the basal margins or bottom ground, you can fit
it to a shaft of some sort, and this step requires even more materials and know-how.
A split wooden handle will accept the fluted surface of your tool nicely, but there are
other options available, some involving multiple parts. No matter the option chosen, you
will need some sort of binding material, such as sinew from a game animal, and perhaps
some type of glue. Blood works well, as does pine resin. Keep in mind that you may want
to remove your Clovis point when it breaks or is spent, because that handle was likely
time-consuming and costly to make. Tool maintenance and replacement are foremost
concerns.

Social Implications?
We have followed an operational sequence
for making a Clovis point, but so what?
Could not a single individual follow this
sequence alone, from beginning to end,
and have a Clovis point to show for their
effort? Sure, theoretically. But when we
consider that Clovis points were used to
dispatch mammoth and other
megamammals, we understand that the
application of these tools was inherently
Figure 3.3 Paleoindian Reduction Sequence for social: mammoth hunting was communal,
fabrication of both flake tools and Clovis Points. a social affair, involving many persons, as
[Adapted from Loren G. Davis, Samuel C. Willis,
was the processing and sharing of
and Shane J. MacFarlan, “Lithic Technology,
Cultural Transmission, and the Nature of the Far hundreds of pounds of meat, fat, bone
Western Paleoarchaic/Paleoindian Co-Tradition,” marrow, hide, and other useful products
in Meetings at the Margins: Prehistoric Cultural
Interactions in the Intermountain West, ed. David from the animal.
Rhode (Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2012), 47-64, Arguably, each step of the operational
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/41469.]
sequence for making Clovis points
involved social acts. Consider that in acquiring raw material from locations hundreds of
kilometers away from the manufacturing, toolmakers crossed over land occupied by

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 53

others. Alternatively, rock could have been acquired in the course of regional settlement
6
moves, what archaeologist Lewis Binford called embedded procurement. In that case,
acquisition was embedded in the movements of entire groups, not just individuals. Some
archaeologists think that people moved entire settlements or developed territories just to
be close to high quality rock.
As we move on to the planned reduction
of raw material into cores, the social acts
involved cross-generations of toolmakers
in networks of learning. Flintknapping is a
nuanced skill, one that is not readily
assimilated without apprenticeship and
mentoring. So too is knowledge of the
locations of raw materials, what
anthropologists call landscape learning.
The operational sequence of flaking and
the final form of the Clovis point were
matters of longstanding tradition, taught
and maintained from generation to
generation, Innovations arose that led to
regional variations in how fluted points
were made and used, and over time, as
Clovis disappeared as a tradition and was
replaced by descendent traditions, ancient
knowledge was lost to change. The upshot
is that technical know-how in cultures Figure 3.4 Bull Brook Site North of Boston, MA.
without Google and other literary forms of Clusters of fluted bifaces, end scrapers, and other
tools in oval array across area the size of two
information sharing was transmitted
football fields; Brian Robinson interprets this as a
socially, from expert to novice. The highly structured aggregation settlement
process of learning was situated in the associated with fall and winter caribou hunt. [From
Robinson et al., “Paleoindian Aggregation.”]
relationships people had to one another;
change those relationships and you impact the content and process of learning and vice
versa.
And finally, in the application of fluted points for communal hunting and food sharing,
core principles of society are revealed. This is exemplified best at an archaeological site in
northeastern Massachusetts, at a place called Bull Brook.
From the distribution of lithic (stone) artifacts from this site, archaeologist Brian
Robinson has reconstructed in detail a gathering of several dozen Paleoindian hunters and

54 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

 7
their families occupying this area 10,000–11,000 years ago. Family campsites were arrayed
in the large circle. The raw materials for making fluted points and a variety of other stone
tools came from various places across the region, signaling a gathering of communities
that otherwise spent time apart from one another. They came together to hunt caribou,
a migratory herd species that was targeted for communal hunts well after mammoth and
mastodons went extinct. To prepare for the hunt, toolmakers crafted many fluted points.
Evidently, the risky step of fluting was shared among toolmakers. They gathered in the
center of the camp circle to remove flutes, presumably under the guidance of a ritual
specialist, someone who knew how to minimize risk and enhance success through many
years of experience. Around the perimeter of the camp circle were clusters of flaked-
stone scrapers, tools used to process hides for clothing, bedding, and perhaps tent covers.
Is the spatial distinction between locations of fluting and hide working indicative of a
division of labor? Likely so, and most likely a division along lines of gender, given analogs
with historic-era bison hunters of the Plains (i.e., men hunted bison; women processed
hides). Attributing particular tasks to particular genders has its pitfalls in archaeology,
but such distinctions are nonetheless relevant to our understanding of the implications of
materials on society (see Bryant, “Plastics”).

Mind, Body, and Society in Evolutionary Terms

Our rather lengthy excursion into the operational sequence of a Clovis point can be put
into long-term evolutionary perspective to understand how modern humans came to be
different from other species, and how human societies were impacted by transforming
matter into useful products. On the first count, the mental and physical ability to make
a Clovis point was underpinned by a three-million-year evolutionary history of human
ancestry. If you know the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, you will recall the initial
attempts of protohumans or advanced primates to smash bones with hammers (Figure
3.5). Lacking a tradition for tool making and thus without knowledge of an operational
sequence for achieving a particular form, their results were haphazard. Still, the
connection between cause (application of force) and effect (breaking bone) was apparent
to these early tool makers, and, with time—and lots of trial and error—our ancestors came
to understand the process of tool and weapons manufacture.

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 55

 Captured in this gem of cinematic art is
the process by which mind and body
evolved in sync to produce a creature
capable of not only applying energy
(controlled force) to modify matter, but to
also anticipate each step of an operational
sequence to achieve desired outcomes.
The cognitive and somatic developments
Figure 3.5 An ancestral human in the 1968 film behind this evolutionary history are
2001: A Space Odyssey comes to realize through beyond the scope of this chapter, but
experimentation that the application of force
suffice to say that they arrived out of the
through the instrument of a hammer results in
bone breakage. interplay among planning, motor control,
problem solving, knowledge transfer, and
memory. By the time we get to the Clovis era millions of year later (only 10,000–13,000
years ago)—well beyond the evolution of fully modern humans—the level of strategic
planning is impressive, albeit hidden away in the design and use of fluted points, among
other tools. In this regard two aspects bear mentioning: (1) each step of the operational
sequence was contingent on the prior step, and the sequence was irreversible, so the
pressure was on to get it right; and (2) the costs of making a fluted point were so high that
an adequate return on its investment entailed long-term maintenance and even incentives
to recycle broken and worn tools into other products, a common practice at locations far
from quarries.
Tools were made by transforming matter into usable material forms. But societies were
also made in this process of transforming matter. Learning, sharing, cooperating and
competing, territorialism, divisions of labor, gender roles, and the flows of goods, services,
and personnel are all entangled in the operational sequence of making and using Clovis
points. If a process can be this entangled 13,000 years ago among relatively simple, small-
scale societies, imagine how much more entangled they are in complex, global-scale
societies of the modern era. Conversely, perhaps we are not all that much different than
these ancient toolmakers, as the history of making and using pottery suggests.

Harnessing Energy through Ceramics

As discussed earlier, a traditional ceramic is vitrified clay, essentially clay that has been
transformed into glass by heat of at least 1,200 degrees Celsius. It takes a kiln or furnace
to maintain temperatures this high; temperatures in an open-pit fire can exceed this
threshold, but air circulation is such that average sustained temperatures rarely exceed
1,000 degrees Celsius (Figure 3.6).
56 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone
 Potters using open-pit firing could
sinter clay into a hard, relatively durable
substance without vitrifying it, with
outcomes that we classify today as
subceramics. Kilns of various designs
show up in several places across the globe
as early as 10,000 years ago, but designs
capable of vitrifying clay date to only the
last 2,000 years, the earliest in China,
Japan, and the Roman world.

Figure 3.6 An example of open pit firing on a

large mound in Kalabougou, Mali (2012). [Photo by
Marco Bellucci, shared under a CC-BY 2.0 Generic
License. Wikimedia Commons.]
The long history of research and
development from subceramics to
ceramics is filled with twists and turns as
potters “discovered” the latent affordances
of clays, tempers, and other substances,
playing off and instigating, in many cases,
changes in society that inflected the
demand for innovations.

Pottery and Society at the

Figure 3.7 A beehive kiln in Chewelah,
Dawn of Agriculture Washington. [Photo by Catherine dee Auvil (1999),
shared under a CC0 license. Wikimedia Commons.]
The entanglements of clay and society at
Çatahöyük (see Gillespie, Clay) were experienced under various circumstances by
societies worldwide. Clay was particularly impactful on society when its processing
accompanied the advent of agriculture. In places where domesticated grain became the
staple of agricultural economies, pottery was needed to realize its nutritional value, to
render wild forms of wheat, barley, and rice palatable. Most often this entailed the process
of prolonged boiling or simmering. Many such grains require forty minutes or more of
sustained boiling to absorb moisture and make them digestible. Pottery conducive to
sustained boiling is tricky to make because one has to balance the need for thermal
conductivity against the risk of thermal shock, plus pottery is generally a refractory, an
insulator, not a great conductor of heat.

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 57

 As we learned in Gillespie’s chapter on clay, before there was pottery at Çatahöyük
there were clay balls. Similar technology was used in the American Southeast about 5,000
years ago, before clay pots were invented, and even afterwards for several centuries. The
first pottery in the Southeast was designed for hot rock (and clay ball) cooking, and was
thus intentionally thick-walled, to insulate internal heat. Similar technology appeared in
the American Midwest a millennium later, where local communities began to consume in
earnest the wild versions of weedy plants with starchy seeds, one of which (Chenopodium)
is related to the quinoa that is gaining popularity today as a gluten-free grain. Thick-
walled subceramics were just fine for traditional, hot-rock cooking, but if wild grains were
to find a foothold in the economy, and be set on the pathway to domestication, pots that
could be set directly over a fire were needed. That meant overcoming the poor thermal
conductivity of clay pots.
Archaeologist David Braun documented the steps Midwestern potters took to unleash
8
the potential of early pottery for prolonged boiling. New operational sequences arose,
all bent towards improving the thermal conductivity of pottery while reducing the risk of
thermal shock cracking from large changes in temperature. Local clays were sufficient,
but increasingly added to clay was fine quartz sand, a substance not only with decent
thermal conductivity, but also with a coefficient of thermal expansion slightly greater than
most clays, which left, after firing, microscopic voids in the fabric of the pottery walls that
arrested cracks before they propagated. Thinner walls also challenged traditional forming
techniques, which included simply molding clay into a vessel by hand, or assembling slabs
into a vessel shape. A coiling technique proved effective, where walls were assembled
gradually from bottom to top, like the courses of brick in a building. The walls were then
compressed by paddling. The paste had to be neither too wet nor too dry to make this
work. Likewise, traditional forms with angular bases and corners would no longer cut it.
Jars and pots with angular bases or shoulders gave way to globular vessels; their lack of
angles reduced thermal shock, and their tapered openings minimized evaporative heat
loss (Figure 3.8).
Social changes attending the rise of agriculture are legion. Communities became less
mobile, tethered now to patches of land they modified and to the plants they cultivated.
Populations grew as both the demand for labor rose and constraints on fertility waned
due to a more stationary lifestyle. Social concepts like property and inheritance emerged
to foster multigenerational connections among persons, things, and land. Perceptions of
time were altered to accommodate the delayed return on investments that come from
farming and food storage. Greater divisions of labor appeared to meet the increasingly
specialized demands of production and distribution.

58 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

 Intensify!
Above all, conditions were in place for what
anthropologists call intensification, which
means simply to increase production, often at
increased costs per unit. Pottery was at the
forefront of intensification, with numerous
innovations addressing the growing demands
of larger and more sedentary populations. Yes,
communities had more mouths to feed. They
also had other social incentives driving
increased food production such as public
works, military capacity, and institutions of
Figure 3.8 An ideal cookpot, in this case from
government and religion. Eventually, with the
the Intermediate Bronze Age of the southern
Levant of the Middle East. [Image by rise of markets and commerce, the production
Foundation for Archaeological Research of the
of pottery, like so many other commodities,
Land of Israel].
became specialized. Operational sequences not
only became more complex—with the addition of more steps and more substances, like
glazes and fluxes—but also segmented and distributed among different people, places, and
schedules. Gender roles and relations were most directly affected in some cases, as in the
commodification of pottery outlined below.

Key Concepts: Changing Gender Relations and the Commodification of Pottery

Visit Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico and you can buy a traditional, coil pot from
one of the elder women. It will cost you, but it will be worth it. Or you could
spend a lot less money on a knock-off. At Acoma, younger potters, many of whom
are men, offer pots for sale that were molded, not coiled. What is remarkable
from an anthropological standpoint is how the commercialization of pottery has
changed gender relations. In societies worldwide, where pottery was made
exclusively for domestic use, women were almost always the potters.
Commercialization changed that, not only at Acoma Pueblo, but worldwide, as
market economies transformed ancient ways of life. Changing gender roles in
pottery making did not have to await the arrival of capitalist markets. Consider

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 59

 the case of Lapita pottery from Polynesia. The presumed ancestors of many
Pacific cultures, people of Lapita culture began to migrate eastward across the
Pacific Ocean at about 1500 BCE, reaching Tonga and Samoa by about 1000 BCE.
Their pottery was a distinctive ware, decorated with repeating geometric
patterns of dentate stamping. Anthropologist Yvonne Marshall believes that pots
9
were made exclusively by women in traditional Lapita communities. However,
over time men got involved. Why? For Marshall, the answer traces to trade and
ceremonialism. Ocean-going trade and its associated rituals were the purview of
men, mostly. Increasingly, pottery production became geared towards non-
domestic uses, with the more elaborate vessels funneled into exchanges
controlled by men. Eventually, intensification of production broke down and
ornate decoration disappeared. Throughout this period of change, plain pottery
continued to be made by local communities (presumably women) for domestic
uses. The Lapita case goes to show that any inducement to manufacture products
beyond the level of domestic consumption introduces challenges to traditional
operational sequences and their underlying social relationships. In this case, the
expanding non-domestic “market” fueled demand for high-quality pots, while in
the Acoma case it allowed for the development of cheap knock-offs. Despite the
differences, both cases involved changes in gender roles and relations, reminding
us of the impact that changing operational sequences can have on fundamental
social dimensions.

Taking the long view on the history of traditional ceramics, many innovations effectively
met short-term goals, and introduced unintended consequences and some new problems.
The first kilns helped to concentrate heat, but they had higher construction costs and
required more specialized fuels than open-pit fires. (Kilns required hardwood and other
slow-burning fuels to attain and maintain temperatures in excess of 1,200 degrees
Celsius). These costs were potentially offset by the longer use-lives of pots (if used in
thermal applications, like cooking), but that would have dampened demand for new pots
and thus thwarted the investment return of expensive infrastructure, notably the kiln
itself. Over time innovations in kiln technology appeared—such as the Chinese climbing
kiln (Figure 3.9), which optimized conduction—in some cases to address production
demand, in others to decrease fuel costs. Clearly a major limit to production expansion
for technologies involving enormous thermal energy was fuel. Until coal was introduced

60 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

in the 19th-century Japanese ceramics industry, fuel consisted of wood or dung. Potting
industries worldwide have contributed to local deforestation, and ultimately demand for
more efficient kilns and alternative fuels, like coal and gas.
Unforeseen consequences beset the health of potters too, along with those who used
their wares. Like their counterparts who manufactured gun flints centuries ago and
unwittingly inhaled microscopic quartz, potters working with finely ground sand were
prone to silicosis, a deadly lung disease. Likewise, British potters steeped in the tradition
of lead glazing that fueled a worldwide demand for European tableware routinely suffered
from lead poisoning. Add to this the collateral damage of lead exposure by consumers
using pottery to process, store, and consume food. The lead threat continues today,
showing how the production of something so traditional invites social interventions over
labor rights, public health, and fair trade. Intensification always has its costs, direct and
indirect.

Generating and Storing

Energy
In our examples of flaked stone and
pottery, matter was transformed through
the application of mechanical energy,
mostly controlled human force. In the case
of flaked stone, force and know-how was
used to reduce rock from larger to smaller
sizes and from amorphous to formalized
shapes. In the case of pottery, force and
Figure 3.9 Chinese climbing kilns like the one
shown here date back as early as 5th century CE. know-how was used to assemble a variety
The harnessing of the fact that heat rises was of substances and manipulate their
essential to the success of this innovation. [Photo by
user Next-Exit (2007), shared under a CC-BY-SA respective properties to form various
3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.] things, finish their surfaces, and harden
them with fire. This last step goes beyond
human force to involve thermal energy. Applied to either rock or clay, heat altered the
physical properties of substances in ways useful to people. It may seem ironic that efforts
to make rock more like glass were aimed at making its breakage more predictable, while
efforts to make clay more glass-like were to lessen the risk of breakage while increasing
thermal conductivity.

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 61

Ceramic Fuel Cells
Is it ironic or poetic that glass-like substances offer affordances by alternately breaking
and not breaking? Take this to the microscopic level of transformation and we begin
to understand that putting things together and taking them apart are two sides of the
same coin. That is, at the level of physiochemical change—as in the process of
vitrification—energy is absorbed, stored, and released in microcosmic versions of
operational sequences. Change the conditions under which these transfers of energy
occur and you can produce different outcomes and create different products.
Ceramic or solid oxide fuel cells are among the more promising products that offers
an alternative to more traditional electricity generation. Consider their application in
domestic uses of energy. When electricity is produced at a centralized power plant and
distributed to homes via a grid, the electricity has to be used immediately and the source
is often the combustion of coal or natural gas. However, a fuel cell that uses hydrogen and
oxygen, for instance, produces power as it is needed, locally, in the home or a refrigeration
truck. It does this by using a solid oxide membrane (electrolyte) to transport oxygen ions
from one side of the fuel cell to the other. When these oxygen ions react with fuel such as
hydrogen or carbon monoxide, electrons are released and one produces a current.
Two limitations of solid oxide fuel cells
must be overcome before this technology
gains a better foothold in the competition
for energy production. These cells can be
extremely efficient at producing
electricity; however, they must operate at
high temperatures in order to help with
the production and transport of the
oxygen ions. So the search continues for
better solid oxide membrane materials to
help reduce this operating temperature.
The second limitation is that fossil fuels
are still involved in the process. Sure, they
are not being combusted like they are in a
conventional generator, but we still have
the costs and impacts of creating the
Figure 3.10 Solid oxide fuel cell. The electrolyte is hydrogen of carbon monoxide fuel. What
typically a complex ceramic. [Wikimedia
if, instead, fuel that is used to generate
Commons.]
electricity could be generated from

62 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

another source— say, the sun? Obviously, solar energy has been converted to electricity
for decades now, and we all know the limitations of this technology, especially in places
on the earth and at times of the year where sunlight is limited. In addition, storage of solar
energy is a major limitation as it is much less efficient than the chemical storage of energy
in the refined fossil fuels on which much of our energy-making infrastructure is based. So
solid oxide fuel cells offer a potential way of converting solar energy to a chemical form
that can be stored and used to create electricity when needed.

Getting the Most from the Sun

A promising innovation is the use of a ceramic substance, cerium dioxide, to
convert solar energy into methane. The promise is nicely summarized in a
short lecture by California Institute of Technology Professor Sossina Haile
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSIsc7xBX3A). In this lecture, Professor
Haile notes that conventional solar panels use only a portion of the spectrum
of sunlight and thus fall short of their full potential for energy production. If
we can capture and concentrate all the light, much like we do with a
magnifying glass, we can take advantage of the full spectrum and produce lots
of heat, which then can be used to drive the chemistry of fuel production. The
“magic” of cerium dioxide, as Professor Haile sees it, is that it can quickly
“breathe” oxygen at high temperatures. With nothing more than water, carbon
dioxide, and solar heat, methane can be produced from the repetitive cycles
of heating and cooling the ceramic surface. Not only is this sustainable from
the standpoint of fuel production, but it helps to remove one of the
greenhouse gases that is generated from combustion of fossil fuels.

Conclusion
Revealed in operational sequences are the sorts of entanglements between materials and
society you read about in Gillespie’s chapter on clay. In a sense, operational sequences
offer methods for analyzing entanglements by showing how bodily and social acts are
entangled with materials at every step of their extraction, processing, and refinement.
This is no cookbook method any more than any operational sequence is merely technical
steps in a production process. The broader historical, social, and cultural contexts of any
Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 63
process, at any point in time, is more than a backdrop for the materials engineering going
on. These social and cultural factors offer rationale, precedent, contradiction, aesthetic,
opportunity, creativity, value, and more. The manipulations of glass and ceramics involved
a community as a whole, and in that sense we are all materials scientists.
We saw how the making of a Clovis point was entangled with the social structure of
communal hunting, and how innovations in cooking pots were bound up in the emergence
and growth of farming, and how the next generation of ceramic fuel cells are constrained
by an existing infrastructure and social norms for fossil fuels, but capable of decentralizing
locations of production and thus making households more self-sufficient. The intrinsic
value of the analysis of operational sequences is insight on change that exists in the
potential relationships between materials and society. In the cases described here, heat
was a common medium for changing relationships between people and things. In all
cases, heat enhanced or revealed affordances that were latent to the materials being
manipulated by people. But the source of heat for realizing innovation had its limits and its
hidden costs, as in the higher fuel costs of kiln firing or the environmental impacts of fossil
fuel combustion. With such a long history of research and development, ceramic materials
of the future will continue to offer alternatives to existing technologies. And with a history
of impacting societies for millennia, the production and use of ceramic materials provide
ample lessons for avoiding failures and enhancing our future successes.

Discussion Questions

1. Define the concept of operational sequence and explain how it encompasses

social actions, as well as technical steps, in the making of things.
2. How is the manufacture and use of a stone tool like a Clovis point a social
act? Even though Clovis points may have been made and used by men, what
impact did the technology have on women?
3. What were the limitations of traditional subceramic cooking vessels in the
application of sustained boiling and what did potters do to overcome those
limitations?
4. What is intensification and how does it impact operational sequences?
What does it mean to say there are hidden costs to intensification?

64 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

 5. Do you see a promising future in ceramic fuel cells, and if so, what do you
imagine to be the potential impact on society?

Key Terms
ceramic
operational sequence
cleavage plane
coiling
flaked stone
fluting
kiln
intensification
isotropic
subceramic
vitrification
chaîne opératoire
embedded procurement
amorphous
crystalline

Author Biography
Kenneth E. Sassaman is Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of Florida Archaeology at the
University of Florida. He earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst in 1991 and has over thirty-five years of archaeological field
experience in the indigenous history of the American Southeast. His most recent work
centers on the challenges of climate change on the gulf coast of Florida over the past
5,000 years. He is the author of over one hundred articles and book chapters, and the
author or editor of nine books, most recently The Archaeology of Ancient North America
(with Tim Pauketat; Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone | 65

Notes

1. Peter Bleed, “Trees or Chains, Links or Branches: Conceptual Alternatives for Consideration of
Stone Tool Production and Other Sequential Activities,” Journal of Archaeological Method and
Theory 8 (2001): 101–27, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009526016167.
2. John C. Whittaker, Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools (Austin, TX: Univ. of
Texas Press, 1994), 65–72, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1041322933.
3. Bruce A. Buck, “Ancient Technology in Contemporary Surgery,” Western Journal of Medicine 136,
no. 3 (1982): 265–69, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1273673/.
4. Gary Haynes, The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2002), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49327000.
5. Charlotte Beck, Amanda K. Taylor, George T. Jones, Cynthia M. Fadem, Caitlyn R. Cook, and Sara
A. Millward, “Rocks are Heavy: Transport Costs and Paleolithic Quarry Behavior in the Great
Basin,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21, no. 4 (2002): 481–507, https://doi.org/10.1016/
S0278-4165(02)00007-7.
6. Lewis R. Binford, “Organization and Formation Processes: Looking at Curated
Technologies,” Journal of Anthropological Research 35, no. 3 (1979): 255–73, https://doi.org/
10.1086/jar.35.3.3629902.
7. Brian S. Robinson, Jennifer C. Ort, William A. Eldridge, Adrian L. Burke, and Bertrand G. Pelletier,
“Paleoindian Aggregation and Social Context at Bull Brook,” American Antiquity 74 (2009): 423–47,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0002731600048691.
8. David P. Braun, “Pots as Tools,” in Archaeological Hammers and Theories, eds. J. A. Moore and A. S.
Keene (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 108–34, https://doi.org/10.1016/C2013-0-11196-8.
9. Yvonne Marshall, “Who Made the Lapita Pots?: A Case Study in Gender Archaeology," Journal of
the Polynesian Society 94, no. 3 (1985): 205–33, http://www.jstor.com/stable/20705934.

66 | Ceramics: Firing Clay and Flaking Stone

Concrete: Engineering Society through
Social Spaces
MARY ANN EAVERLY

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
For what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors
by the records of history?” —Cicero

Abstract
The most popular building material in the world today, concrete was first developed and
exploited by the ancient Romans, who used it to create monumental public spaces such as
aqueducts, churches, baths, and the Colosseum. Although concrete is a durable material
with many building applications, the design of Roman concrete structures reinforced
Roman ideas about social status and imperial power. This chapter explores the rich history
of concrete and its legacy in the modern world, touching upon the role of concrete
in ancient Rome, today’s technical advances in concrete construction, and concrete’s
environmental drawbacks. The chapter also examines how concrete construction is
shaped by societal ideals today, just as it was by societal ideas in ancient Rome.

Introduction
Pourable, moldable, durable, waterproof, and relatively easy and inexpensive to
manufacture, concrete is the world’s most popular building material. We live, work, and
play on and in buildings and roads constructed from it. Architects exploit its properties to
create artistic tours de force as well as utilitarian monuments (Figure 4.1).

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 67

 Concrete is such a part of our daily lives
that we may not stop to think about who
invented it or why builders create certain
types of buildings from it and not others. Is
there a connection between buildings and
larger societal forces? Have you ever
wondered why we use concrete the way
we do? Do buildings reflect a society’s
ideals for social organization? To try to
answer these questions we need to
examine the role concrete played in the
society that first developed it—ancient
Rome during the late Roman Republic era
(200–100 BCE). This chapter explores how Figure 4.1 The Guggenheim Museum, New York
City [Photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist (2012),
the use of concrete in a society has shared under a CC BY 3.0 Unported License.
historically been connected to the forms of Wikimedia Commons.]
social organization that structure that
society.

Origin of Concrete
As far back as the sixth millennium (6000–5000 BCE), the ancient Mesopotamians knew
that heating calcium carbonate, a substance occurring naturally in limestone rocks,
creates a new substance, known today as quicklime, in a process described chemically
as CACO₃ + heat(1000° C) =CO₂ + CaO. This chemical reaction releases carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere (more on this later). The resulting material, when mixed with water,
bonds to other surfaces. The early residents of Çatalhöyük, an ancient city in modern-day
Turkey, as explored in Gillespie’s chapter on clay, used this substance to coat their walls,
providing a surface for painted decoration.

Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii

In 79 CE, long after the architect Vitruvius’s death, Mount Vesuvius erupted
and destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii, preserving its buildings and

68 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

 construction practices (as well as many of its human inhabitants and even a
few dogs) for modern archaeologists to study. This greatly enhanced our
understanding of early concrete. Find out more from Cyark.

The Egyptians of the third millennium

(3000–2000 BCE) used quicklime as
mortar to join stones in stone
1
construction. In both of these cases,
concrete was simply joined to other
materials as decoration or adhesive; it was
not yet a primary building material.
However, the Romans in the 3rd century
BCE discovered that by mixing quicklime
and sand with a local volcanic
stone—pozzulana—they could create
Figure 4.2 Pozzulana from the Area of Vesuvius something much stronger and more
[Shared under a CC BY-SA 2.5 Generic License.
Wikimedia Commons.] durable than simple quicklime (Figure 4.2).
The Romans called their new material opus
caementicum; it is the forerunner of modern concrete.
Because of its durability, many ancient Roman buildings stand today, over 2,000 years
later, providing evidence of the strength of Roman concrete and Roman construction
practices. Questions of materials’ durability also are important when we talk about
recording and storing information (see Effros, “Writing Materials”). In addition to the
physical structures, we have ancient testimony concerning Roman buildings from the
Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote during the reign of the emperor Augustus (27
BCE–14 CE). Vitruvius wrote a 10-volume history of Roman architecture entitled De
Architectura. An architect himself and a former catapult operator (catapults hurled
projectiles at walls during sieges) in the Roman army, he was interested in many of the
practical aspects of Roman construction. In the second volume of his history, Vitruvius
describes several building materials, including concrete. About pozzulana, the additive
that makes Roman concrete possible, he says, “There is also a type of powder that brings
about marvelous things naturally. It occurs in the region of Baiae and in the countryside
2
that belongs to the towns around Mount Vesuvius” (De Architectura, II, 6, 1) Since Italy is
a volcanic region, pozzulana was easy to find.

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 69

 While opus caementicum had many of the same properties as modern concrete, it
was strong, moldable, and lighter in weight than stone and lacked the smooth, pourable
consistency of concrete today. In addition to pozzulana, the mix included
aggregate—rubble, pieces of rough stone, and broken brick. These materials were not
blended into one seamless product, but were instead bound in a rough mass. The resulting
mixture then had to be laid by hand rather than poured. The Romans found its rough
appearance unsightly and covered or faced it with other materials, usually a surface layer
or veneer of brick or fine marble. Even with the added veneer, concrete construction
proved much more economical than the previous reliance on stone for large-scale
buildings. Stone carving required highly skilled laborers. Transporting blocks from the
quarry to the building site was time consuming and expensive, as we shall see later in this
chapter. Concrete, in contrast, could be made on site and laid by less-skilled workers, who
3
could be organized into quick-working groups. Covering buildings with a veneer of fine
marble or other exotic stones, the Romans achieved the appearance of an expensive solid
stone structure more efficiently and with less cost than they would have for an all-stone
building.

Roman Concrete Revolution

Concrete freed the Romans from the
constraints of traditional architecture.
Before concrete, buildings made of wood
or stone used what was known as the
post-and-lintel construction system, in
which vertical elements (posts) support
horizontal elements (lintels). You can see
post-and-lintel construction in the
columns of such famous ancient Greek
4
temples as the Parthenon in Athens
(Figure 4.3). With this system, it is almost
impossible to create a large, unsupported, Figure 4.3 Post-and-Lintel Construction. The
Parthenon, Temple to Athena, 5th century BCE,
roofed space. While some Greek temples Athens, Greece [Photo by Tim Bekaert (2005),
were massive—the Temple of Apollo at shared in the Public Domain. Wikimedia
Commons.]
Didyma in modern Turkey had a total area
of 18,000 square feet and columns that were 64 feet tall— their usable interior space was
limited because of the need for internal roof supports (columns or posts), which took up
5
much floor space.

70 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

 Because of their light weight and
moldability, concrete roofing systems did
not need to be supported. By using
concrete to create intersecting arches and
vaults, the Romans designed interior
spaces on a far grander scale than post-
and-lintel construction allowed.
Archaeologists called the Roman
exploitation of concrete arches, vaults, and
domes to create interior space the
Figure 4.4 The Pantheon, Rome (2nd century CE) “concrete revolution.” Among the most
[Photo by Maros Mraz (2008), shared under a
CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia dramatic of these buildings is the
Commons.] Pantheon in Rome (Figure 4.4).

The Pantheon
From the exterior, the Pantheon looks
like a traditional temple with columns for
support, but the interior is a spectacular
domed space. Compare its interior with
that of the Parthenon, considered the
most perfect of Greek temples (Figures 4.5
and 4.6).
Because the diameter and the height of
the Pantheon are the same, the building’s
interior encloses a complete sphere of Figure 4.5 The Pantheon Interior, Rome (2nd
century CE) [Photo by Stefan Bauer (2005), shared
space, which may be an allusion to the under a CC BY 2.5 Generic License. Wikimedia
totality of the gods (the word pantheon, Commons.]
6
derived from ancient Greek, means “all of the gods”) since a circle is a complete form.
While columns built into the walls appear to support the ceiling, concrete arches and
vaults actually bear the weight. By using increasingly light materials in the concrete
aggregate as they moved to the top of the dome, the builders were able to ensure that it
did not collapse. Until the 21st century, the Pantheon was the largest unsupported dome
in the world. All of the structural, load-bearing work of the concrete is hidden beneath
elaborately colored marble veneer. Note that despite its “revolutionary” interior, the
Romans gave the building the outward appearance of traditional post-and-lintel building
style. They admired the architectural achievements of the Greeks, so they retained the
column styles that the Greeks had created (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian), even when these

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 71

columns had no true structural role in a building. This tradition continues today in modern
buildings, such as banks or government offices, in which ancient Greek architectural
elements on concrete buildings evoke the perceived glory of the Classical past.
The exterior columns of the Pantheon were not, as
is typical in ancient temples, made from segments, but
were instead each carved from a single block of
granite brought to Rome from Egypt. Costly and
difficult to carve and transport, they, along with the
exotic marble veneers inside the building, emphasized
the reach and power of the Roman Empire. Using
concrete cut down considerably on construction time.
Including the time to transport the columns from
Egypt, the Pantheon took just six years to complete
(118–125 CE), while the all-stone Greek temple of
Apollo at Didyma took almost 500 years (332 BCE–130
CE) to complete.

Bread and Circuses

As impressive an engineering feat as the Pantheon is,
temples did not provide the impetus for Roman
exploitation of concrete. Instead, spectacles, bath
complexes, and military operations drove the
development of this technology. As archaeologist
Lynne Lancaster writes: “The two cultural institutions
Figure 4.6 Plan of the Interior of the
that had the greatest effect on the advances in vaulted
Parthenon. Each dot represents a
column. [Image by user Argento technology during the imperial period were public
(2006), shared in the Public Domain. 7
bathing and public entertainment.” Ancient Roman
Wikimedia Commons.]
writers attest to the importance of these cultural
practices. In the 2nd century CE, the Roman writer Juvenal, despairing of what he
perceived as the decline of the Roman national character, states in Satires:

The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now
meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things—Bread and Games. (Satires,
8
10.81)

This phrase, usually translated as “bread and circuses,” refers to the government-
sponsored daily distribution of free bread to the populace and spectacles such as

72 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

gladiatorial games that took place in amphitheaters, large concrete structures designed
to house such events. What role did these games play in Roman society, and how did they
contribute to the rise of concrete technology?

The Colosseum and Roman Gladiatorial Games

The most enduring statement of the
Roman love of spectacle is the Colosseum
in Rome (Figure 4.7). Designed to hold
50,000 spectators, the building covers an
area of 615 feet by 512 feet, or almost
315,000 square feet, and is 159 feet tall.
Eighty exits facilitated easy entrance and
exit. The building fully exploits the
properties of concrete. While from the
exterior it looks as if columns, a feature of
post-and-lintel construction, are doing
the supporting work, they are simply a Figure 4.7 Drawing of the Colosseum, Rome. In the
cut-away sections, note the use of vaults and
façade (a decorative surface) covering the arches for support. [Drawing by Jaakko Luttinen
actual structural elements—concrete (2012), shared under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported
License. Wikimedia Commons.]
arches and vaults that support the sloped
(stadium) seating. These arches and vaults allowed the Romans, unlike the Greeks, to build
stadium seating in the round. While the Greeks had developed stadium seating for their
theaters, they needed a hillside to provide the inclined angle for the seats. Concrete
9
obviated the need for a naturally occurring slope.

Activity: Take a video tour

This aerial video of the Colosseum (https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=B4GvcCWzZZg) offers a bird’s-eye view of the exterior and interior, with
a detailed look at the concrete arches and vaults that supported stadium seating.

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 73

 Begun in 72 CE and completed in 80 CE,
this amphitheater hosted one of the
favorite forms of Roman
entertainment—gladiatorial games (Figure
4.8). The games included not only man-to-
man combat, but also a daylong program
comprised of public executions, man-vs.-
beast and animal-vs.-animal contests, and
even mock naval battles in which
participants fought to the death. While
Figure 4.8 Pollice Verso, by Jean-Léon Gérôme scholars debate the origin of these blood
(1872). This 19th-century painting attempts to
recreate the moment of death for a defeated sports, most believe that they derive from
gladiator. The crowd is condemning him to death early funeral rituals involving games and
by pointing thumbs down. We do not, however,
actually know what gesture was used to determine
blood sacrifice offered to appease the
life or death. [Phoenix Art Museum. Wikimedia spirits of the dead.
Commons.]
By the time of the Colosseum, however,
these activities were intended to reinforce
social and imperial identity throughout the
empire. How did this work? First, where
one sat was determined by one’s social
class. Roman society had four sharply
delineated main divisions. The
patricians—hereditary noble
families—formed the top (aristocratic)
class. The most important member of this
Figure 4.9 Map of the Roman Empire at its
group was, of course, the Emperor, greatest extent. The darkest areas (green) on this
absolute ruler of a vast empire (Figure 4.9). map was controlled by the Romans. [Map by user
Angelus (2011), shared under a CC-BY-SA 3.0
Next in importance were the Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.]
plebeians—the majority of Roman citizens
(free-born but not patrician). They were followed by freedmen—individuals who had once
been enslaved but who had, through various means, earned their freedom. Finally,
enslaved people formed the lowest level. This group included prisoners captured in
Rome’s many wars throughout the ancient Mediterranean, but also included Romans who
had been sold into slavery because of debt and those who had been born to enslaved
parents. The best seats, in the Colosseum and other Roman amphitheaters, near the arena
floor and thus closest to the action, belonged to the patricians. The remainder of the

74 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

spectators sat in descending order of importance (plebeians, freedmen, and slaves). The
higher the seats, the lower the status. Women—who were not eligible to vote or to
participate in government—sat at the very top with enslaved individuals, indicating their
inferior status regardless of social class. Amphitheaters were a vital part of every Roman
town and this arrangement was repeated throughout the empire.
Gathered to watch the games, Romans
could, while surveying the audience,
reaffirm their own place in society. Seating
provided physical and visual confirmation
of society’s rules. Compare the Colosseum
with our modern stadiums. If we look at an
American college football stadium during a
Saturday game, we see that some status
Figure 4.10 “The Swamp.” Ben Hill Griffin functions are also at work, although in this
Stadium, University of Florida, Gainesville [Photo case we see that our seating reverses
by Douglas Green (2005), shared under a CC BY 2.0
Roman practice. In American football
Generic License. Wikimedia Commons.]
stadiums the most expensive seats, and
therefore the seats belonging to those who might be called “the most important people,”
are the skyboxes at the top of the stadium (Figure 4.10). These are enclosed and provide
food, beverages, and the best view of the game. Yet, in at least one respect, the Colosseum
had innovations lacking in the modern world. While only a few American football stadiums
are domed, the Colosseum and many local Roman amphitheaters provided a retractable
awning called a velarium to protect the audience from the sun. American professional
basketball arenas, where the seats do follow the Colosseum pattern, also inform us about
status in the modern world. In this case, the “patricians,” seated closest to the action, are
those whom our society seems to value most—celebrities from sports, film, and recording
industries.

Key Concept: Gladiators

Highly trained combatants wearing different types of specialized armor fought

against each other in single combat. For example, a heavily armored man with a

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 75

 sword (Myrmillo) would fight a lightly armored man with a net and three-pronged
pitchfork (Retiarius). The net man had the advantage of speed and the armored
man the advantage of protection. The Romans enjoyed seeing each man exercise
his skill against the other. The loser was typically killed by his opponent, although
if he had fought well he might be spared by the administrator of the games to
fight again. The combat always paused for the moment when the loser
confronted his own death. The crowd admired those who faced their deaths
bravely.

The Colosseum performed an additional societal function. Showcasing creatures from all
parts of the ancient world (elephants from Africa, tigers from India, etc.) in the animal
combats, the emperor showed people the extent of the empire and the power of an
emperor able to control such a vast territory. While acknowledging the emperor’s
authority, they could take pride in belonging to a society that had seemingly mastered
the entire world, as they knew it. The message of unity presented at the Colosseum
also finds echoes in the modern American college football stadium. Students and alumni
gather to confirm their identity and unity as members of a collegiate community despite
different majors, academic programs, and class years. Professional football teams can
unite the disparate members of a city as well when fans fill the stadium on a Sunday to
cheer their team. World Cup Soccer fever shows the intensity of the connection between
athletics and national pride today. Concrete stadiums and arenas continue to reinforce
social ideals.
The Colosseum also served as propaganda supporting Emperor Vespasian. It was a
public building placed over the demolished remains of the private villa of Vespasian’s hated
predecessor, Nero. The land had originally been the site of Roman private homes. Nero
had confiscated it for his own private pleasure palace after a tragic fire destroyed much
of Rome in 64 CE. The building takes its name not from its size, but from its proximity
to a colossal statue of Nero, in the guise of the sun-god, which Vespasian left standing.
The contrast between the two monuments, a public place of entertainment and an ego-
enhancing statue that once decorated a private luxury palace, provided a continued
reinforcement of Vespasian’s message of benevolence toward the people of Rome.
Mock naval battles, naumachia, in the Colosseum provided another affirmation of the
power of the emperor. Ancient sources tell us that the Colosseum floor could in fact
be flooded (remember the waterproof nature of concrete). These battles did not reenact
76 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces
contemporary Roman victories, but instead depicted battles from the past. Choosing
historical battles allowed the emperor to show that he had control not only over the
physical terrain of his empire, but also over time.

Water Supply
The naumachia were supplied with
water by aqueducts, another feature of
Roman engineering connected to
concrete. An aqueduct is a water transport
system. To bring water from its source, a
spring or lake, over long distances
required keeping the water constantly
flowing. Lacking modern electrical pumps,
the Romans relied on raising and lowering
the water‘s level (Figure 4.11). Aqueducts,
carried on arched stone or concrete
substructures, spanned valleys and other Figure 4.11 Diagram showing how aqueducts keep
topographical obstacles to keep water water flowing across obstacles such as valleys. The
angle of descent was carefully calculated so that the
moving. They supplied an enormous water would continue moving without pumps.
volume of water to the city. At the height [Wikimedia Commons.]
of Rome’s population of one million people,
eleven aqueducts supplied the city with the equivalent of 540 liters, or about 142 gallons,
10
of water per person per day. Reading this, one might think that every Roman had running
water at home, but that was not the case. Though water did flow at public fountains, the
Romans primarily used piped water for lavish fountain displays in gardens in the homes of
the wealthy. An example of this is seen at the home of an aristocrat in Pompeii, in the
fountain remains preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. These aristocrats proclaimed
their power and wealth by having purely decorative water displays in their homes (Figure
4.12).

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 77

 While such display was important to promote
status, an important function of the aqueducts was
supplying water to the public bathhouses, another
major factor in the development of Roman concrete
technology. One of the earliest domed concrete
structures in the Roman world is a 2nd-century-
BCE bath complex in the Italian city of Baiae. The
need for water was two-fold. Baths, which
exploited concrete in their construction, needed
water for bathing as well as for manufacturing the
concrete. Once again, societal needs for public
spaces drive concrete construction.
For the Romans, bathing in public bath houses
was a vital daily activity. A 1st-century-BCE Roman
felt that such baths were so important that he
inscribed the following on his tombstone: “Wine,
sex, and baths ruin our bodies, but they are the stuff
11
Figure 4.12 Water Feature from the of life.” Every city had numerous baths. The
Gardens of Loreius Tiburtinus, Pompeii, bathing process followed a progression through
1st century CE. Water flowed through
this channel to create a man-made river
baths of different temperatures, from cool to hot
in this aristocratic home. [Photo by user and back to cool. Patrons could also exercise, buy
Magistermercator (2010), shared under a snacks, and partake of beauty treatments such as
CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License.
Wikimedia Commons.] hair plucking, activities similar to those found in
modern health-and-fitness centers. The hottest
rooms were heated by a hypocaust system—raised floors and tile pipes—that allowed air
heated by furnaces beneath the floors to rise through pipes in the walls. The air was forced
from the furnaces by bellows, hand-pumped devices that produced a strong current of air
when squeezed. The addition of water in some rooms created steam. There were also
unheated pools for plunging. The fact that concrete is waterproof made it ideal for bath
buildings. Not only did baths provide for public cleanliness, but they also functioned as a
social safety valve. While the Colosseum, and life in general, emphasized class distinctions,
the baths allowed for a temporary dissolution of those same social levels. Everyone,
regardless of social class, “got naked together” (albeit with men in one section and women
in another section or in separate facilities).

78 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

 These buildings were designed to be
luxurious and a large domed hot room,
called a caldarium, became a standard
feature. Beginning with the emperor Titus
in the first century BCE, emperors
sponsored lavish imperial bath buildings in
Rome. Such elaborate constructions
curried favor with an often restless
population by emphasizing the emperor’s
benevolence (or seeming benevolence,
since many emperors were violent,
unstable individuals), while highlighting
the power and expanse of the empire he Figure 4.13 Baths of Caracalla, Rome, 2nd century
CE. Note the fragments of mosaic decoration.
controlled. Like the Pantheon, these [Photo by user Karelj (2011), shared in the Public
buildings often used expensive and exotic Domain. Wikimedia Commons.]
marble veneer to cover the concrete. Succeeding emperors tried to outdo each other by
building larger and larger complexes. One of the grandest of these, portions of which still
stand, was constructed during the reign of the emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century CE.
Elaborately decorated with colossal mythological statues, it enclosed an area 1,315 feet by
1,076 feet. Its size and grandeur continued the tradition of imperial display and provided a
needed social outlet for Rome’s populace (Figure 4.13). Even the poorest Roman could
briefly enjoy beautiful—and, in winter, warm—surroundings thanks to the emperor.
Military expansion and trade made possible the vast empire celebrated in imperial
buildings such as the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla. Concrete was also exploited
for these goals. Because concrete could set underwater, it was perfect for creating ports
that needed strong underwater substructures. Vitruvius does not fail to mention this
important characteristic of the composition of opus caementicum:

Hence, when these three ingredients (lime, fired rubble, and pozzolana), forged in
similar fashion, by fire’s intensity, meet in a single mixture, and put into contact
with water the ingredients cling together as one and, stiffened by water, quickly
solidify. Neither waves nor the force of water can dissolve them. (De Architectura,
12
II, 6, 1)

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 79

 Thus secure, deep pilings could be put in
place for ports throughout the Roman
world. Concrete allowed the Romans to
spread their military forces and to develop
trade routes by creating ports in areas that
did not naturally have adequate facilities.
Ports provided part of the infrastructure
for expanding, consolidating, and ruling
the vast territories that comprised the
Roman Empire. Along with baths and
amphitheaters, these man-made harbors
reflect the societal values that dominated
the development and exploitation of
Figure 4.14 Traces of Roman Port at Hersonisos,
concrete’s inherent properties (Figure
Crete [Photo by Jose Mario Pires (2009), shared
13
under a CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. 4.14).
Wikimedia Commons.] The emperor’s desire for control is
evident in the Colosseum and imperial bath complexes. Social class is emphasized in the
Colosseum and social tensions are relaxed in the baths. By creating concrete ports,
Romans controlled distant territories through transport of troops for military campaigns
and movement of goods through trade. They were thus able to spread their values and
social organization throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Their particular
worldview shaped the ways in which concrete could be used. While we might expect other
types of monuments—durable public housing, perhaps, or water delivered directly to
every home—these were not important to the Romans and thus were not among the
reasons for their development of concrete forms. The Colosseum, baths, and port facilities
promoted Roman identity and power. Although the Roman Empire eventually collapsed,
its concrete structures endure. In fact, modern engineers and archaeologists are studying
Roman port construction to see if these installations can teach us something about
durability.

80 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

Modern Concrete
We have seen how concrete technology
was driven in certain directions by Roman
social forces. What about us? What
societal factors determine concrete’s use
today? We use concrete for many types of
buildings and infrastructure—museums,
houses, and bridges, for example. Some of
these remain much the same in style and
form as those the Romans created. For
example, modern athletic complexes are
Figure 4.15 Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois. Note
startlingly similar in shape and seat
the combination of modern concrete and classical
arrangement to ancient amphitheaters columns. [Photo by J. Crocker (2010). Wikimedia
(Figure 4.15). Although our athletes do not Commons.]
literally fight to the death, we continue to place a high value on athletic competition and
on venues designed to showcase it. Universities and cities pride themselves on their
multimillion-dollar sports complexes. Professional teams can threaten to leave cities if
taxpayers do not fund updates to their stadiums or new stadiums. Modern consumer
culture drives other types of concrete structures, such as shopping malls. Transportation
needs promote airport construction. Concrete continues to be, as it was for the Romans,
a relatively inexpensive and timesaving material. Yet, in the modern world, it has
tremendous hidden costs.

Problems and Challenges

Despite more highly mechanized manufacturing techniques, the process of creating
concrete still relies on the basic chemical reaction exploited by the Romans, the reaction
that releases carbon dioxide, a major pollutant, into the atmosphere. The absence of many
other man-made pollutants in ancient times and the Romans’ smaller manufacturing scale
meant that they did not suffer from pollution to the same degree we do. The world’s
yearly production of concrete has been rising steadily and today is over four billion tons.
Concrete production is responsible for nearly eight percent of the anthropogenic (human-
made) greenhouse gases released into the air. By some estimates, the external climate and
health damages caused by concrete production amount to approximately 74 percent of
the value of the industry itself, putting the external costs of concrete higher than natural
14
gas and oil and only slightly less than coal. . As even more concrete is produced, the
amount of carbon dioxide will also rise unless we develop smarter, greener methods of

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 81

production. Concrete manufacturers recognize this problem, but any solution will have to
be cost effective for worldwide adoption to take place.
An additional cost of manufacturing concrete is the need for sand as a component
of the finished product. Today, sand is becoming an increasingly rare and sought-after
commodity. As the Romans knew, only sand worn by water (river or ocean sand), not sand
that has been exposed to the elements (desert sand), is suitable. As Vitruvius states:

When sand beds lie exposed for any stretch of time after they have been worked,
subjected to sun and moon and frost, they break down and become earthy. And
thus when such sands are mixed into the mortar, they cannot hold the rubble
together. Instead, the rubble comes loose, and the weight of the masonry, which
15
the walls can no longer sustain, collapses. (De Architectura, II, 4, 3)

The vast deserts of the world cannot supply the right kind of sand. Excessive removal
of river and sea sand is already destroying fragile ecosystems. Modern battles over this
dwindling resource have resulted in murder in some parts of the world. Residents opposed
to sand mining in one community in India were killed by groups controlling the
16
manufacture of concrete for shopping malls and stadiums.
While these problems are connected with new construction, older concrete structures
pose other issues. Most modern concrete is reinforced by metal bars that lead to eventual
cracking as the metal expands and contracts. Can we recycle ruined concrete buildings?
How can we stabilize and repair buildings? Engineers are working to develop new
technologies that can sense imminent structural issues before a bridge or building
collapses. To prevent damage in new construction, engineers developed Smartcrete, a
form of concrete that can repair itself. New methods of concrete construction such as
Ductal, which requires no metal, and the use of cloth as a framing material are also
potential answers to this problem.
Although some striking modern architectural monuments have been built from
concrete—the Guggenheim Museum in New York, for example—many consider modern
concrete stark and ugly because of the many utilitarian buildings constructed from it.
Because, unlike the Romans, we can make concrete with a smooth surface, it is not
necessary for us to cover it with other materials. After World War II, when a devastated
17
Europe was in need of quick and cheap housing, architects turned toward concrete.
While answering a key societal need and advancing the idea of an affordable and equal
form of housing for everyone, they filled cities with identical, unappealing structures.

82 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

 Liquid Stone: New Architecture in
Concrete, an exhibition held in 2004–2006
at the National Building Museum in
Washington, DC, identified a new design
direction in concrete architecture, a
movement toward more dramatic and
aesthetically pleasing buildings. Using
fabric to mold concrete, creating
translucent concrete, and embedding
fiber-optics in concrete all create
dramatic new visual effects. In addition,
Figure 4.16 Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et newer forms of concrete can create
de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France. Note the use
sculptural embellishments for buildings at
of Ductal for the lacy lattice work. [Photo by
Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (2014), shared under a CC BYa fraction of the cost of stone (Figure
2.0 Generic License. Wikimedia Commons.] 18
4.16). New concrete technologies
continue to emerge. Among the
19
possibilities is concrete laid by robots. Acknowledging the close link between buildings
and social structure allows us to wonder if there might be hidden costs to this technology.
What types of workforce changes would occur if machines took over this aspect of
building construction? Would using robots free humans to do other things or would it
merely eliminate a large category of jobs?

Future of Concrete
Concrete’s connection to social organization continues. In 2015, it was reported that a
group of environmentalists, marine biologists, and nautical engineers were designing a
floating city (seastead) on concrete piers, with plans for 300 people focused on examining
pressing world problems such as hunger and health issues to inhabit the city. As of
2020, the idea continues to be explored. Legal standing and sovereignty of the proposed
settlements have been thorny issues for the proposed projects.
Building construction remains the primary use of concrete today. Like the Romans,
we limit concrete to certain types of applications that fit our society’s needs. We build
apartments, shopping malls, stadiums, and airports.
Might there not be other uses for such a versatile material beyond architecture?
Architects, engineers, and others are beginning to address this question. For example,
kitchen designers are using concrete for countertops, taking advantage of its durability,
cost effectiveness, modern appearance, and ability to resist water. People are even

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 83

considering how ancient Roman concrete might be used to address sea level rise
20
associated with global warming.
To encourage thinking about a common material in a different light, the American
Society for Civil Engineering sponsors an annual concrete canoe contest. This challenge
forces students to broaden their ideas about possible applications for this common
material. Engineering students from across the US attempt to build and race a concrete
canoe. They are judged not only on the results of the race, but also on their design
concept. Concrete is certainly not the first material that comes to mind when thinking
about canoes, although it is waterproof. But a concrete canoe suggests that if we think
beyond the limits imposed on the use of concrete by our societal worldview and historical
traditions, we may be able to find newer and more effective ways to use this versatile
material.

Activity: Learn about the Concrete Canoe Competition

As shown in this video

(https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=au0dTOridug&t=39s), the
annual Concrete Canoe Competition
offers students “an opportunity to gain
hands-on, practical experience and
leadership skills by working with
concrete mix designs” as they build
and race their canoes. Hosted by the
The 2012 competition, hosted by the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln. [Photo by Missouri S&T American Society of Civil Engineers,
Student Design & Experiential Learning the competition dates back to the
Center, shared under a CC BY-ND 2.0 Generic
License. Flickr.] 1980s.

Conclusions
Concrete has been used for thousands of years and has enabled many architectural
revolutions starting around the time of the Romans. Today it remains the most used

84 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

material in society by volume and weight. There is no doubt concrete will continue to be
used extensively. However given the concern for the adverse environmental impacts of
making concrete, it’s clear that future concrete innovations will require not only creative
applications but also creative manufacturing methods to help mitigate its carbon
footprint.

Discussion Questions

1. What types of construction were the driving forces behind Roman concrete
construction?
2. What societal needs did these building types reflect?
3. What was the composition of Roman concrete and how does it differ from
modern concrete?
4. What new uses can you think of for concrete?
5. Is there anything in its inherent properties that limits it to current uses or
are other avenues waiting to be explored?
6. What additional societal needs could concrete fill?
7. If it cannot be produced more cleanly, does its environmental impact mean
that concrete is not worth the cost?

Key Terms
aqueduct
amphitheater
concrete revolution
hypocaust
opus caementicum
post-and-lintel construction
pozzulana

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 85

 Author Biography
Mary Ann Eaverly, Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at the University of
Florida, received her AB in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr
College and her PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. She
was the Vanderpool Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Among
her publications are Archaic Greek Equestrian Sculpture (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1995)
and Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative
Approach (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2013) She is also interested in the use of mythological
and archaeological imagery in the work of modernist women poets and has co-authored
several articles on this topic with Marsha Bryant (UF Department of English), including
most recently “Modernist Migrations, Pedagogical Arenas: Translating Modernist
Reception in the Classroom and Gallery,” in The Classics in Modernist Translation, ed. Lynn
Kozak and Miranda Hickman (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

Notes

1. Jean-Pierre Adam, Roman Building: Materials and Techniques, trans. Anthony Matthews
(Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1994), 65, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/54913642.
2. Ingrid D. Rowland, trans., Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1999), 37–38, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/779894769.
3. On this point see Lynne C. Lancaster, Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome:
Innovations in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 18–20, https://doi.org/
10.1017/CBO9780511610516.
4. Judith M. Barringer, The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2014), 225–240, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139047418.
5. Barringer, 292–96.
6. Nancy H. Ramage and Andrew Ramage, Roman Art: Romulus to Constantine, 5th ed., (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009), 235–39, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
465462707.
7. Lancaster, Concrete Vaulted Construction, 169.
8. Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, Peter Green, trans., (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 78,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/961141620.
9. Ramage and Ramage, Roman Art, 170–74.
10. Adam, Roman Building: Materials and Techniques, 241.
11. Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Source Book in Roman Social History (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1988), 308, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/468344608.
12. Rowland, Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture, 37.

86 | Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces

13. C.J. Brandon, R.L. Hohlfelder, and M.D. Jackson, Building for Eternity: the History and Technology
of Roman Concrete Engineering in the Sea, ed. John Peter Oleson (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/886881715.
14. Sabbie A. Miller and Frances C. Moore, "Climate and health damages from global concrete
production," Nature Climate Change 10 (2020): 439-43, https://doi.org/10.1038/
s41558-020-0733-0.; "Cement Statistics and Information," U.S. Geological Survey, National
Minerals Information Center, https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/cement-statistics-and-
information.
15. Rowland, Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture, 37–38.
16. Vince Beiser, “The Sand and the Fury,” Wired, June 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/
20201108131154/https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-sand-and-the-fury.
17. Jean-Louis Cohen and G. Martin Moeller, “Introduction,” in Liquid Stone: New Architecture in
Concrete, eds. Jean-Louis Cohen and G. Martin Moeller (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
2006), 6, https://issuu.com/papress/docs/liquid-stone.
18. Franz-Josef Ulm, “What’s the Matter with Concrete,” in Liquid Stone: New Architecture in
Concrete, eds. Jean-Louis Cohen and G. Martin Moeller (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
2006), 218–42, describes these new techniques.
19. Ulm, 243.
20. Ben Guarino, “Ancient Romans made world’s ‘most durable’ concrete. We might use it to stop
rising seas," Washington Post, July 4, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20201208033810/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/04/ancient-
romans-made-worlds-most-durable-concrete-we-might-use-it-to-stop-rising-seas/.

Concrete: Engineering Society through Social Spaces | 87

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching
Consequences of Metallurgy
FLORIN CURTA

“Bronze is the mirror of the form.” —Aeschylus, frg. 384

Abstract
Historians and archaeologists have long viewed the discovery of metals and the invention
of metallurgy as a revolutionary step in the history of humanity. But metallurgy was
more than a technical revolution; its invention in the Bronze Age was primarily a social
revolution. This chapter introduces the technological innovations associated with the
manipulations of metal by smelting and casting, and the economic and social problems
that came with the development of this early metallurgy. At the same time, the chapter
highlights the role of trade and its connection to the rise of metallurgical, proto-
industrial centers across Europe and the Middle East. The ensuing social and political
complexities, disparities, and military conflicts are direct results of that connection and
of the competition for resources inherent for metallurgy. Finally, the chapter points to
the rise of a class of material specialists in society, forerunners to our contemporary
engineers.

Introduction
We can make tools, jewelry, toys, kitchenware, furniture, and almost any other item from
metal. Useful though metals are, they are sometimes less than perfect for the jobs we need
them to do. That is why most of the “metals” we use are not actually metals at all but
alloys—metals combined with other substances to make them stronger, harder, lighter,
or better in some other ways. For example, copper is good in some ways, but bronze is
far better. Thus, the exploration of copper in this chapter is a way to introduce not only
the discovery of metals in human prehistory, but also the invention of metallurgy, the
manipulation and alloying of those metals to meet human needs. Understanding the social
and political implications of introducing these new materials—alloys—is crucial for the
engineers of the future, who will find ways of using and improving existing materials, and
will create new ones.

88 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of

Metallurgy
The Revolutionary Role of Metals and Alloys
The revolutionary aspects of discovering the properties of metals and, particularly, alloys,
has long been recognized by scholars seeking to explain the social changes that led to
our modern civilizations. As introduced by Gillespie in her earlier chapter on Clay, the
idea that even the (pre) history of humanity could be divided into “ages” on the basis
of the materials out of which humans made their tools and weapons is relatively new.
It originated with Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (1788–1865; Figure
1
5.1).
He studied Greek and Latin in Paris, and
was very fond of the Roman poet Lucretius
(99–55 BCE), the author of a philosophical
poem entitled De rerum natura (“On the
Nature of Things”). In that poem, Lucretius
describes how the first tools humans used
were “hands, and nails, and teeth, and
stones and branches torn from trees,”
before they discovered bronze and iron.
With bronze, men “tilled the soil” and
“roused the waves of war,” before “the
sword of iron came forth,” and, as they
despised “bronze sickle’s curving blade,”
2
they began to “cleave the earth” with iron.
Inspired by Lucretius, Thomsen invented
the so-called Three-Age System still used
in prehistoric archaeology. That we still
Figure 5.1 Portrait of Christian Jürgensen refer to one of those chronological
Thomsen, the “inventor” of the Three-Age system,
divisions as Bronze Age underscores the
in which bronze and iron represent the “Metal
Ages,” the most advanced stages in the significance of metallurgy for the history of
development of human technology. [J.V. Gentnerhumanity.
(1849), National Museum of Denmark. Wikimedia
Commons.]
It is easy to overstate the importance of
discovering metals and alloys. However,
the invention and practice of metallurgy were not the most important developments, as
Lucretius and Thomsen thought. On one hand, metallurgy remained in some parts of the
world a secondary activity without any substantial cultural and social impact (see below).
On the other hand, the same techniques were used both in societies with a low level of
organization and in complex societies such as those in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 89

Metallurgy and Social Innovation
Metallurgy consists of a series of complicated operations, from finding and extracting
the metal ore to smelting and processing it with heat and specialized tools. Using metals
considerably shortened the time necessary for the production of tools or weapons
(previously made through a complicated flintknapping process as discussed in Sassaman’s
chapter on ceramics), and allowed for the mass production of identical, or at least similar,
artifacts. A key component of metallurgy is mastering a great number of physical and
chemical reactions and processes, as well as the precise sequence of operation and its
timing, the chaîne opératoire also mentioned in a different context in Sassaman’s chapter.
That is why the first metals used for metallurgy were those that could be extracted and
processed without too much of an intellectual and technological effort. The Bronze Age
came before the Iron Age, as Thomsen put it, because iron metallurgy is much more
complicated and involves a lot more knowledge and advanced technological processing
than bronze metallurgy. In a very fundamental sense it was easier to smelt copper and
bronze from copper ore than it was to smelt iron from iron ore.
In certain parts of the world, for various reasons early metallurgical knowledge was lost
at some moment in time and the technology for producing bronze had to be reintroduced
at a later time. People with metalworking knowledge must have therefore moved around
for metallurgy to spread. One way for that to happen involved specialists moving into
new territories, thus gradually spreading their knowledge. Another was to have people
learning the trade in one place, under the direction of specialists, and then moving to
new territories or returning to their own communities with the skills to produce metal
objects. Either way, the demand for copper preceded the actual movement of specialists
and/or their apprentices. However, both in the Far East (northeastern Thailand and
China) and in the New World (Mexico and Peru), copper and bronze metallurgy was
invented independently, without any contacts with the centers in the Near East and the
Mediterranean region.
In short, metallurgy implies a long process of learning and professional specialization.
Unlike pottery, for example, metallurgy cannot be done “on the side” of other external
work or domestic activities, at least not when the goal is to produce a large number
of similar artifacts. In other words, someone involved, for example, in agriculture on
a regular basis cannot do some metallurgy during his or her spare time. The learning
process is long and complicated, and that requires time and dedication. That is the main
reason that metallurgy cannot spread as a diffusion of ideas from person to person.
Rather, metalworking needs to be taught by a specialist to another person. Metallurgy
implies not only the existence of specialists, but also a complex process of learning, which

90 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

sets it apart from other technologies, the spread of which was simply based on diffusion.
Put simply, while the products made through metallurgy impacted societies by addressing
immediate needs, the process of metallurgy also impacted society by creating a new class
of professional specialists in the social order.

Copper and Smelting

Copper was fashioned into artifacts as early as the 7th millennium BCE. Some of the
earliest artifacts—tubular beads and other dress accessories—are from Çatalhöyük in
Turkey (ca. 6500 BCE), the archaeological site most prominently featured in the previous
chapter on clay. There are good reasons to believe that the copper in those artifacts
was extracted from ore rather than created from native copper, copper in its pure
metallic state. This extraction process is called smelting. A copper axe was found with the
mummified body of a man who died in the Austrian Alps ca. 3300–3200 BCE. The axe was
smelted from copper ore. “Ötzi,” as this extraordinary mummy came to be known, was a
hunter, but possibly also a shaman, in which case the axe was not necessarily a tool, but
3
an object used in rituals. (Figure 5.2)
The earliest use of metal, therefore, had no
economic role, as most metal artifacts were
either dress accessories or objects of ritual
use.
Native copper is still available in regions of
the world such as Australia, France, China,
Namibia, and Iran, where it appears in the
form of distorted masses or extremely
distorted crystals. Native copper does not
have impurities, so it can be shaped by
hammering. The copper artifacts from
Çatalhöyük were hammered, possibly with Figure 5.2 The reconstructed copper axe
found with the mummified body of Ötzi, the
stone tools. Hammering can induce Neolithic hunter, in the Tyrolian Alps, near
dislocations or imperfections in the copper, Innsbruck (Austria). The axe is made of native
making it both harder but also more brittle (a copper. [Wikimedia Commons.]

process known as work hardening). Applying heat removes some of these dislocations
and renders copper less brittle, an operation known as annealing. These processes
initially served for the fashioning of durable cutting edges (e.g., for axes or knives). Such
artifacts were sometimes collected and deposited in the earliest hoards known to history,
but none of them show any wear and tear, a clear indication that their function was not
utilitarian, but ritual. In other words, these early metal artifacts were produced for
Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 91
storing a materials (copper or bronze), which due to the challenges of smelting were rare
and therefore precious. Why would metal be regarded as rare and precious? The first
worked copper was the native variety that was dug out of the earth’s surface (Figure 5.3).
Because native copper is not commonly found copper in general was perceived to be
rare.
The introduction of impurities in the
copper can increase the strength and
hardness of the metal. The mixture is called
an alloy. One of the most frequent impurities
is arsenic, which is present in such ores as
arsenopyrite, enargite, and especially
tennantite. The addition of arsenic creates a
copper alloy, which is called bronze.
Tennantite seems to have been a common
starting material for obtaining arsenical
bronze. During the bronze formation
process the arsenic mixed with the reduced
copper to create the alloy of bronze, and
thus it was possible to obtain copper mixed
with impurities without very complicated
technologies. Indeed, some of the halberds
(particular kinds of weapon combining a
Figure 5.3 Native copper from Ray mine spear with a battle-axe) that archaeologists
(Arizona). Copper sometimes appears as discovered in England, Ireland, and China
isometric cubic and octahedral crystals, but more
often as irregular masses and fracture fillings. are made of copper mixed with large
The specimen in the picture is only 5.25 cm long. amounts of arsenic, and have rivets of pure
[Photo by Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com (2010),
(and therefore more malleable) metal (Figure
shared under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License.
Wikimedia Commons.] 5.4).

92 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

 When the primary copper ores that
contain arsenic are heated in a process
sometimes called roasting, they turn into
copper arsenate (olivenite). Further
reduction of the copper arsenate by
heating with charcoal yields a copper-
arsenic alloy (bronze). During the heating
process, however, a very large quantity
(over 50 percent) of arsenic is lost as
As2O3. Roasting and alloy formation may
Figure 5.4 Chinese bronze halberd with
well be a relatively simple technology, but
bird-shaped decoration on top from between the
the production of copper-arsenic alloys 4th and 3rd centuries BCE (Eastern Zhou Period).
was challenging due to the difficulty of [Wikimedia Commons.]
controlling the arsenic content and the release of arsenic gas, which is highly toxic to the
craftsman.

Key Concept: Hoard

Collecting valuables either for display or for reuse at a later time seems like a
permanent dimension of human history. In reality, this social phenomenon starts
in earnest in the Bronze Age and is directly connected to metallurgy. The earliest
such collections contained precious but also practical items (some of them
deliberately broken in advance), jewelry, and weapons. The logic behind the
Bronze-Age deposits of collections of items has nothing to do with economic
security. Most hoards were found in or next to bodies of water and were probably
meant to be irretrievable. In other words, such collections are the only surviving
parts of complex rituals, which may have involved a conceptual association
between valuable metal objects and the divine.

Copper ores are typically of two kinds: carbonates (malachite) and sulfide ores (peacock
ore or fahlerz). The distribution of both kinds on the surface of the planet is very uneven.
The earliest evidence of copper ore mining was to source copper silicates and malachite

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 93

(copper carbonate). In order to extract copper from malachite, one needs to separate
the metal from carbon and oxygen and other impurities. This was possible only through
smelting, a new technology for processing copper ores that gained enormous importance
in early metallurgy.
A form of extractive metallurgy, smelting is based on the idea of bringing the ore to a
temperature sufficiently high for melting the metal. A reducing agent decomposes the ore,
thus separating the other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal base behind. The
reducing agent most commonly used in the past was charcoal, which produced CO upon
heating in a reducing environment. The reducing environment consisted of an air-starved
furnace, in which the incomplete combustion of carbon created CO, which subsequently
took the excess oxygen from the metal ore and left the metal behind. Copper smelting
involves high temperatures and a reducing environment, two conditions that characterize
pottery kilns. It is therefore possible that the process was discovered during experiments
with firing pottery. In other words, while playing with “cooking” copper ore, early potters
may have discovered smelting, and in the process became the earliest metallurgists.

Activity: Watch a video

Smelting can be done either in a crucible or in a furnace—a single or multiple

bowl-like feature over which a clay superstructure was built to contain the ore
and the charcoal. This video demonstrates the process of copper smelting in a pit
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHc4Hirexc).

What were the critical ingredients used in the smelting and what facilities were
necessary?

Smelting in furnace first appeared in the Near East, specifically in the lands now within
Israel and the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt) during the 5th millennium BCE. Probably the most
famous of the earliest smelting sites is Timna, where the earliest evidence of smelting
4
in furnace has been radiocarbon-dated to 4460–4240 BCE. Smelting at Timna released
impurities either as gas (CO2) or as slag (primarily silicates), which was tapped off, while
the copper sank to the bottom of the furnace, where it was collected in the form of plane-
convex ingots. In the Mediterranean region, however, pure copper was formed into ingots

94 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

of a special form—the so-called “oxhide ingots”—probably in order to be transported at
long distance (Figure 5.5).
The earliest such ingots have been found
in Hazor (northern Israel) and dated
between the 17th and the 16th centuries
BCE. Lead isotope analysis revealed that
the copper in those ingots actually came
from Cyprus, which implies regular and
quite intensive commercial contacts
between the Mediterranean island and
5
northern Israel. However, oxhide ingots
Figure 5.5 Oxhide ingot from Zakros (Crete), now appear as far to the north and to the
in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum (Greece). northwest as Bulgaria and Germany, and
How would you explain the shape of the below
they also appear in Egyptian wall
ingot? Can you think of any practical reasons for 6
the long sides being curved? [Photo by user Chris paintings. The trade connections made
73, (2005), shared under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported possible by the need to procure good
License. Wikimedia Commons.]
copper for metallurgy seems therefore to
have extended very far in a relatively short period of time.

Metallurgy, Alloys, and Trade

Because pure copper is soft and malleable, the idea of adding other minerals may have
come from the production of copper-arsenic alloys. The addition of other metals is
useful, because it reduces the temperature at which copper melts, while at the same
time increasing the hardness of the finished metal. Copper melts at 1,085 degrees Celsius,
which implies the use of an enclosed furnace and of forced draught or the introduction
of overpressure of air. By adding only 10 percent tin to the alloy (bronze), its melting
temperature drops to 1,000 degrees Celsius, which still requires a furnace, but not forced
draught. On the Brinell scale of hardness, the value of pure copper varies between 35
(for cast copper) and 110 (for copper altered by means of cold working) (in comparison
glass has a hardness of 1550) . The addition of 10 percent tin increases the hardness
to a value ranging from 70 (cast) to 230 (when the copper is fully cold-worked). It is
perhaps unsurprising, then, that beginning with the 16th century BCE, alloys produced
in Transcaucasia (between northern Turkey and Russia) mixed tin with copper, as
demonstrated by the metallographic analysis of artifacts found in Stepanakart
(Azerbaijan), Sengavit (Armenia), and Mekegni (Daghestan). The metallographic analysis
showed that the particular choice of ingredients for the alloy was not just a matter of

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 95

available materials, but also a component of careful planning, since specific artifacts
required specific alloys.
Tin for creating bronze came from tin ore (tinstone or cassiterite), which has an even
more uneven distribution on planet Earth. Tin for prehistoric bronzes came from Sardinia,
Brittany (France), Cornwall (England), Iran, or Bohemia. There is no tin in the Near East or
the Eastern Mediterranean, despite the fact that some of the earliest centers of metallurgy
were located there. It’s therefore no surprise that by 800 BCE, tin appears in lists of
commodities as a precious metal, along with such luxuries as gold, silver, iron, elephant
7
hides, ivory, and purple-dyed cloth. The rarity of tin, as well its importance for some of
the hardest and most durable copper-alloys, explains why the development of metallurgy
encouraged the development of long-distance exchanges and of trade.
Long-distance trade already existed in
the Neolithic period, to circulate lithic
materials (such as obsidian, mentioned in
Chapter 3) or amber, for example.
However, both the density and the
intensity of commercial exchanges
increased considerably during the Bronze
Age, which led to the establishment of
“fixed routes” along which goods were
moved from northern to southern Europe,
and from there to the Near East (western
Asia, Turkey and Eqypt) and beyond. The
exchange of these material goods
encouraged the exchange of ideas,
technologies, and ornamental patterns. Figure 5.6 The Nebra Sky Disk, a bronze disc of
Bronze-Age human communities, at least about 30 cm in diameter with representations of
the moon, the sun, and the stars. The disc was
in the Old World (Mediterranean region to found in 1999 in Saxony Anhalt, Germany, and is
China), were much more interconnected attributed to the Únětice culture (Early Bronze Age,
ca. 1600 BCE). The analysis of trace elements by
than ever before. Moreover, the x-ray fluorescence has revealed that the copper in
exceptional position of some the alloy originated in Austria and the gold in
communities, either close to raw materials Transylvania. The tin may well have come from
Cornwall. The Nebra Sky Disk is therefore a unique
or strategically positioned at the illustration of the astronomical knowledge of the
crossroads of important trade routes, led prehistoric inhabitants of Central Europe, as well
as an excellent example of the connections between
to unprecedented levels of economic bronze metallurgy and trade. [Photo by user
prosperity, as well as aggression. For Dbachmann, (2006), shared under a CC-BY-SA 3.0
example, with no tin resources in the Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.]

96 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

vicinity, the archaeological sites attributed to the Únětice culture in Central Europe
(2300–1600 BCE) reveal an abundance of bronze artifacts, some of which are ingots, an
indication that bronze moved up and down along the trade routes from the Baltic to
the Aegean Seas in both raw and manufactured form. Moreover, Únětice sites have also
produced evidence of contacts with the British Isles, the main source of the tin that went
into the alloy produced on sites in Europe and the Near East (Figure 5.6).
While copper and tin moved in one direction, other goods came from the opposite
direction (Figure 5.7). For example, originating from the southern coast of the Baltic Sea,
amber is found on many sites in the Near East and Transcaucasia in the form of beads,
8
pendants, or even cups. Many gold artifacts found on Mycenaean sites in Greece are
made of metal from Transylvania, while the silver axes from hoards discovered in Romania
9
have a decoration most typical for Mycenaean weapons.
In the Mediterranean region, long-
distance trade is also documented by
means of copper and tin ingots from some
of the earliest shipwrecks that underwater
archaeologists have discovered. A ship
went down before 1300 BCE at Uluburun,
off the south coast of Turkey, together
with a cargo of copper and tin, as well as
other rare goods, such as cedar and ebony
wood, terebinth resin, elephant tusks,
Figure 5.7 The connection between the diffusion of
the bronze metallurgy and the development of trade
tortoise shells, and ostrich eggshells.
routes is evidence on this map showing the There were no fewer than 354 oxhide
diffusion of metallurgy from 3800 to 1500 BCE. ingots on the ship, some of which were
[Wikimedia Commons.]
marked by incision, most likely upon
10
receipt or export, and probably as a warranty of their quality for export. To take another
example, the lead isotope analysis of oxhide copper ingots found in Sardinia—an island off
the coast of Rome, Italy, with clear evidence of copper smelting in the Bronze
11
Age—showed that they had originated in Cyprus (over 2,000 kilometers away). The
invention of metallurgy thus put a high trade premium on metals and spurred the
development of long-distance trade in response to a high demand in the emerging centers
of metallurgical production.

Metallurgy and Social-political Complexity

The movement of metals in the form of ingots along these long-distance trade routes led
to the rise of metallurgical centers in regions otherwise devoid of any local resources
Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 97
for alloying metal. Some of the most intriguing sites with abundant evidence of bronze
metallurgy appear in areas with no copper or tin ores. For example, Hacınebi, in
southeastern Turkey, was a proto-industrial center specializing in the purification and
casting of copper coming from the area farther to the north. The end products were
then exported to the southern part of the Near East to be further processed there
into local bronzes on the basis of imported tin. The excavations carried out in Hacınebi
provided evidence for every aspect and each step of the smelting process, including
slags, fragments of slag-accreted crucibles, clay molds, and smelting furnaces. Trade
contributed to the success of Hacinebi. But also there was a wealth of knowledge there
as well. There is even a fragment of tuyere (a tube through which air is blown into a
furnace), the shape of which indicates that it was used at the end of a reed blowpipe,
and not for actual bellows. In order for a temperature of 2,192 degrees Fahrenheit to be
maintained inside a furnace with an internal diameter of 25 centimeters, no fewer than
three adults had to blow continuously into pipes such as those that may have been used
for the Hacınebi tuyere. In other words, smelting was a labor-intensive operation and
12
clearly required craft specialization.
In fact, the archaeological evidence suggests that smelting was developed far beyond
cottage production and involved the existence of specialized workshops. Scanning
electron microscopy was used to examine a slag-accreted crucible from Hacınebi and it
was discovered that sulfide ores were utilized for smelting. The copper ores in question
came from at least 200 km (124 miles) to the northwest from the site. Metallurgy at
Hacınebi required organization and planning, special trade deals with the northern
neighbors to ensure a constant supply of ore, and special trade deals with various
neighbors to the south, who purchased the copper made in Hacinebi.
Moreover, sites similar to Hacınebi were often fortified, and probably inhabited
primarily by smelters who were brought there from somewhere else. This strongly
suggests that proto-industrial centers such as Hacınebi could not have existed without
some form of political organization guaranteeing the stability of the trade routes and
the safety and security of the specialists residing within their walls. Elsewhere, fortified
settlements seem to have operated as power centers. For example, Early Bronze Age
Lerna (in Greece) had a double ring of defense walls with gates and towers. Inside the
fortification, there was a palace or administrative center in a central building that
archaeologists called the “House of Tiles” (Figure 5.8). Many proto-industrial centers were
also power centers. The invention of metallurgy triggered a whole set of transformations
in society, some of them with far-reaching consequences for such things as labor division
and the rise of early states.

98 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

 Geographic factors have long influenced
political relationships. There were
significant changes in the geopolitics of
the Bronze Age. As discussed earlier in this
chapter, our knowledge of Bronze-Age
tools and weapons is primarily based on
deposits (hoards, or caches of objects
buried for safe-keeping). Some of the
largest hoards have been found in the
Figure 5.8 Lerna, stairs to the upper floor in the
central European regions of modern-day House of Tiles, which probably served as an
Hungary and Transylvania (western and administrative center inside the fortified site built
there in the Early Bronze Age. [Photo by Heinz
central Romania). Although both regions
Schmitz (2006), shared under a CC-BY-SA 2.5
lack tin, throughout the Bronze Age they Generic License. Wikimedia Commons.]
witnessed the rise of complex societies
clearly geared towards war and conquest. By developing contacts with other societies
located at a long distance (for example, Mycenae, in Greece), Bronze-Age communities in
central Europe were able to procure the raw materials necessary for bronze metallurgy.
They also borrowed from their trade partners techniques for the metallurgy of gold and
silver, of which they had more abundant resources. As a matter of fact, the development
of metallurgy in the Bronze Age involved not only copper, but also gold and silver, as well
as lead as will be discussed in the following chapter.
With a relatively low melting point at 621 degrees Fahrenheit, lead was one of the easiest
metals to process in ancient times. It was first employed for making rivets to be used
for repairing broken containers such as found at Phylakopi on the island of Melos and
Chalandriani on the island of Syros, both in the Aegean Sea. Lead ingots discovered on
both sites indicate a local production of lead, as well as trade with lead in the same form
and probably along the same routes as those used for copper and tin. In addition to
utilitarian functions, metallurgy served the needs for most sophisticated representation
of social status and political power. Lead, instead of tin, was in fact used as a substitution
alloy in the production of shaft-hole axes such as found in Belgium and Scandinavia.
By contrast, the earliest artifacts made of gold—ring- or disc-shaped pendants—appear
in the the 5th millennium BCE on sites attributed to the Gumelniţa and Tiszapolgár
cultures of Southeastern and East Central Europe, respectively (Figure 5.9). The jewelry
and decorations from the “Royal Tombs” at Alaca Hüyük (Turkey) are among the earliest
silver artifacts known and have been dated to the 3rd millennium BCE.

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 99

 The Use of Metallurgy: Bronze
Artifacts
Unlike gold and silver, bronze was initially used for
the production of daggers, axes, and swords.
Throughout the Bronze Age, tools continued to be
made out of stone. Only later did iron metallurgy
put an end to the use of stone as raw material for
tools. So what was copper used for at origin?
The first implements made of copper were
daggers, probably for ritual and not practical use.
Such daggers have been found in Beycesultan and
Alaca Hüyük, both in Turkey. The earliest axes were
flat or adze-like (e.g., palstave), much like the axe
found with Ötzi’s mummy. Those were not very
efficient tools, and some may have had only a
special, probably ritual function. By contrast, the
Figure 5.9 A high-status male burial earliest functional axes were shaft-hole specimens
from Varna (Bulgaria), dated to the 5th
millennium BCE. The grave goods include discovered on sites of the Tiszapolgár and
both bronze (axes, but also spear heads), Gumelniţa cultures. Saws (first documented
and gold artifacts (bracelets, beads, a
scepter and a pectoral disc). Note the
archaeologically at Los Millares, in Spain) and
abundance of semi-spherical gold mounts sickles appeared later, around 3000 BCE and 1500
that likely adorned the shroud that BCE, respectively. Except for harvesting tools such
covered the body. [Photo by user
Yelkrokoyade (2007), shared under a as sickles, there were no agricultural implements;
CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. the plowshare is an Iron Age, not a Bronze Age,
Wikimedia Commons.]
invention.
The most impressive artifacts of the Bronze Age are the weapons. The dagger appears
to be a Near Eastern invention, and the sword a European invention. Bronze Age swords
were made by casting, after which the edges were hammered. This type of weapon
originated in the region around, and especially north of, the Black Sea, probably as a
further development of the dagger. The technology to produce blades is first documented
archaeologically in the Aegean peninsula, where both copper-tin and copper-arsenic
alloys were used to produce swords around 1700 BCE. They were of course longer than
daggers, with blades in excess of 100 centimeters (over 3 feet).
A great diversity of swords existed in the Middle Bronze Age (1500–1400 BCE, some of
which originated in the Mediterranean (Mycenaean Greece) and others in the northwest
(Ireland). One of the most important weapon types of the Bronze Age, and the longest-

100 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

lasting sword of prehistory, is the so-called Naue II type (named after a German
archaeologist who first described such swords in the late 19th century). Such swords
produced in Europe were highly valued in the Near East, but were quickly replaced after
1200 BCE with iron blades.
While iron blades were also produced in
Europe, it was in China that bronze swords
remained in use the longest, the latest
being produced during the Han dynasty
(3rd century BCE–3rd century CE). An
equally European origin may be attributed
to the battle-axe, which makes its
appearance around 1500 BCE, followed
after two centuries or so by helmets,
13
shields, and armor (Figure 5.10). Thus it’s
clear that the desire for ever-better
weapons drove much of the innovation in Figure 5.10 Bronze-Age helmets from Viksø,
Denmark, now in the National Museum in
metallurgy. Copenhagen. Each helmet is made up of two halves
joined by riveting. The horns are riveted by means
Mold and “Lost-Wax” Casting of fixed circular fixings. Despite popular
misconceptions, those were not helmets used in
actual fighting (and definitely not by Vikings, who
The ability to manipulate copper was due came only 2,500 years later!), but most likely
to a variety of technological and social ceremonial helmets for various religious rituals.
[Photo by Simon Burchell (2011), shared under a
developments: trade and
CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia
professionalization as aforementioned, but Commons.]
also technologies of production such as
molding and lost wax casting. This is true for other materials as you will see in the case of
iron and steel. For example, molds were used extensively for bronze manufacturing. This
relatively rapid development of artifact form and complexity would not have been possible
without the parallel development of mold technology. Casting could be done in open one-
piece molds carved onto the sides of stone blocks (sometimes even into the native rock).
Molds composed of two identical halves were made first of stone, then of clay.

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 101

 Activity: Watch a video

Claudio Cavazzuti, University of Bologna, demonstrates the process of creating

a sandstone mold for casting an Early Bronze Age axe
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5npVVVyWYg).

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using molds for casting?
• What skill set would craftsmen need to possess in order to cast in molds?

For intricate forms, or for producing parts of larger objects, a new technique was invented
ca. 3000 BCE—the “lost wax casting approach.”

Key Concept: “Lost Wax” Casting

The “lost wax” technique allows for the casting of objects with complicated
shapes. The details of that shape are initially rendered in wax, after which the
negative space created by melting the wax is filled with molten bronze (1,600
degrees Fahrenheit). This technique also allows for the casting of larger objects,
including bronze statues, several components of which could be cast in a
sequence of “lost wax”-casting events. During the Renaissance (late 15th century
CE), the indirect lost-wax technique was developed, which made it possible to
make copies of statues. The surface of the statue was divided mentally into
different parts, and covered in clay placed over the designated segmented areas,
much like a jigsaw puzzle around a 3D object. When the pieces hardened, the
statue was removed, and the pieces reassembled and securely bound together.
The empty space was filled with molten wax to create what is known as an

102 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

 “intermodel.” After the latter was freed from the piece mold, wax rods (sprues)
were attached perpendicular to the surface of the intermodel to serve as the
vents for the evacuation of air and gasses during the casting process. Another
layer of clay was placed over the intermodel and the whole structure was baked
to melt the wax. The resulting mold was then filled with molten metal, as in the
traditional “lost-wax” technique.

One of the first free-standing bronze statues since Antiquity, Donatello’s David
(1440s), now at the Bargello Museum in Florence, was cast in this manner. Bronze
casting, however, is used not only by artists, but also to preserve original works of
art. Leonardo da Vinci’s horse (known as Gran Cavallo), for example, was part of
an equestrian statue of the duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro (1494–1499), but the
artist never managed to finish the work. The statue was meant to be the largest
equestrian monument in the world. Based on Leonardo’s sketches, two full-size
bronze casts were produced in 1998, one of which is now in Milan, the other in
Grand Rapids. The indirect lost-wax technique led to a proliferation of copies,
which in turn prompted the adoption of prohibitive laws. For example, in 1956, a
French law limited the number of copies of each Rodin sculpture to twelve—eight
to be purchased by anyone, and four to be in the exclusive possession of cultural
institutions.

The Social Implications of Metallurgy

The range of forms to be produced by various casting techniques increased enormously
throughout the Bronze Age. Perhaps more importantly, the practice of using the same
master object for the production of clay molds allowed for the production of sets of
identical end products in bronze. Some forging may have followed the casting, in order
to produce sharp edges (as in the case of swords and axes, but not always for sickles),
thin blades (of daggers), or to bend items to required shape. For the production of such
dress accessories as torcs (neck ornaments), bracelets, or composite rings, wiredrawing
was practiced by pulling red-hot metal between draw bars, which thinned the bars down.
Thin sheets of copper were produced by hammering metal bars onto an anvil. Both
wiredrawing and thin sheet hammering were techniques employed primarily in gold and
silver metallurgy. Another technique invented during the Bronze Age for the decoration of

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 103

objects made of thin gold or silver sheet is the so-called au repoussé. With this technique,
bosses, dots, rosettes and other motifs were produced by pushing the metal sheet into
wooden forms. The technological innovations accompanying the invention of metallurgy
thus created a vast field of artisanal expertise, and made room for a conceptual distinction
between craft and art and between artisan and artist.
Much evidence for Bronze Age
metallurgy comes from the analysis of
hoards that were deposited in locations
from which they were never retrieved for a
wide variety of reasons. There are also
hoards of gold artifacts, with a large array
of spectacular objects, such as the
bracelets, diadems, and gorgets from
Villena in southern Spain (Figure 5.11).
Besides being an illustration of the
Figure 5.11 The hoard of gold artifacts found in
Villena (Spain). The hoard includes of 59 objects
parallel development of bronze and gold
and weighs 10 kg, of which nine consist of metallurgy—often with comparable
23.5–carat gold. The hoard dates from the late techniques—the hoards testify to the
Bronze or early Iron Age, ca. 1000 BCE. [Photo by
Enrique Íñiguez Rodríguez (ca. 2000), shared under concern with accumulating (and storing)
a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia wealth, which must have been a direct
Commons.]
consequence of the social transformations
triggered by the introduction of metallurgy (see Chapter 6). One of the most famous
golden objects of the European Bronze Age, for example, is the mask found in 1876 in a
cylindrical shaft grave inside the fortified settlement at Mycenae in southern Greece
(Figure 5.12). The mortuary use of this gold mask is not unique; in fact, many gold and
bronze objects (especially weapons) were deposited in graves. The northwest European
equivalent of the rich burials in Mycenae is a number of large, circular barrows that appear
in the Middle Bronze Age on sites of the Wessex culture in England. Early Bronze-Age
barrows in Transcaucasia were often reserved for individuals of high status, buried with a
large collection of artifacts, including chariots with wooden wheels.
In the eyes of many, the complicated technological procedures involved in smelting and
casting must have turned the full-time specialists in bronze metallurgy into individuals
with extraordinary powers. The civilizing hero of Greek mythology, Prometheus, was a
metallurgist providing “divine knowledge” to humanity. In ancient Roman religion, Vulcan
(the god from whose name the English word “volcano” ultimately derives) was said to have
stared for hours at the fire, before discovering that, when making the fire hotter with

104 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

bellows, certain stones sweated silver or gold. Vulcan later fashioned thrones for all gods
of the Roman mythology.
Thor, one of the main gods of the Norse mythology, is known for his hammer (Mjölnir),
which was custom-made by the dwarves of Nidavellir, the quintessential blacksmiths of
the North. Both in antiquity and in contemporary times traditional societies (such as those
14
in East Africa, for example), smelters enjoy a much more prestigious status than smiths.
Part of the explanation for this may be
that while the work of smiths is a fairly
clear process of turning molten metal into
objects, the work of smelters looks more
like magic as it turns “stones” into metal
ingots.

Conclusion
Alloys of a metal are generally stronger and
harder but less ductile than the base metal.
The invention of metallurgy during the
Bronze Age, which was primarily geared
towards the production of alloys, had
several crucial consequences for societies
of that time and later. Figure 5.12 The gold death-mask from shaft grave
V, grave circle A, in Mycenae. The mask was
On a technological level, a series of new discovered in 1876 by Heinrich Schliemann, who
skills became at the same time necessary believed the grave to have been that of Agamemnon.
However, the mask is most likely from the second
and commonplace. Such skills required half of the 16th century BCE and thus at least 200
long-term learning processes and years older than the historical character believed to
apprenticeship, which transformed a have been the model for the king of Mycenae known
from the Homeric poems. [National Museum of
group of people in society into specialists, Athens; photo by Xuan Che (2010), shared under a
and set apart their social position, both in CC-BY 2.0 Generic License. Wikimedia Commons.]
lifetime and in death. A good parallel to that is the way in which nuclear energy is put to
use in the modern world. It is simply not sufficient to build a reactor; a number of highly
trained specialists are required as well. The modern use of nuclear technology offers
another parallel to the early bronze metallurgy. The potential for use in military
applications often advances the non-military or civilian applications.
From an economic point of view, even though bronze was not used for the production
of tools as much as iron would be during the Iron Age, raw materials (copper, tin, lead
in the form of ingots) and finished products (weapons or tools made of bronze) became
more abundant. The early history of metallurgy also reveals the connections between
Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 105
technology and the rise and development of trade routes. Not only does knowledge still
spread along trade routes, but there are still very good examples of industrial power-
houses developing in regions of the world devoid of resources, much like in the Early
Bronze Age. For example, “silicon valley” did not form because there was an abundance
of silicon present there. Rather it developed because innovators and engineers who could
manipulate silicon were there.
Perhaps more important from the point of view of this course is the fact that the
introduction of metallurgy had social implications far beyond setting apart a class of
specialists. The new artifact types made possible by metallurgy introduced the possibility
of new scales of value and new ways to demonstrate social divisions. Accumulating objects
made of bronze, gold, and silver was not just a way to store wealth. It was also a new way to
set a group of people apart from the others, not as specialists, but as elites made socially
distinct by means of economic privilege. The social disparities created by the adoption
of new technologies and their use for the display of power symbols and social status, as
illustrated by the archaeology of the Bronze Age, are still a matter of great concern in the
21st century.
Future engineers and their collaborators have much to learn from the lessons of the
past. The introduction of bronze—a new technology—called for an unprecedented
development of long-distance trade. Mastering the new technology required time- and
energy-consuming training of a class of specialists that, for the first time in history, came
to play a role in society clearly marked ideologically by their association with magic.
Metallurgy also opened new paths for the development of warfare and the symbolic
representation of power. Similarly, we should expect any new materials to change the
trade patterns around the globe, to create new social categories and inequalities, and to
have consequences in fields of human activity that may not have yet been designed.

Discussion Questions

1. During the Bronze Age, objects of bronze, gold, and silver produced
through complicated techniques were hoarded as valuables. What counted
more for their being regarded as such—the intrinsic value of the metal, or
the labor involved in producing them? Explain your answer.

106 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

 2. Silicon has a much wider distribution on the planet than either copper or
tin, for it is the second most abundant element of the Earth’s crust.
However, there is currently a high demand for silicon primarily because of
its use in building materials (such as Portland cement), the semiconductor
industry, and solar panels. Can you think of cities similar to Hacınebi, the
Únětice culture, or Uluburun that were created from the worldwide trade
with silicon, and its associated industries?
3. Are there any groups of specialists in 21st-century societies around the
globe that are remotely similar to the smelters of the Bronze Age? If so,
who and in what ways?

Key Terms
alloy
annealing
ingot
metallurgy
native copper
proto-industrial center
smelting

Further Reading
Hanks, Bryan K. and Katheryn M. Linduff, eds., Social Complexities in Prehistoric Eurasia.
Monuments, Metals, and Mobility. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511605376.
Mei, Jianjun, and Thilo Rehren, eds., Metallurgy and Civilisation. Eurasia and Beyond.
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Beginnings of the Use of Metals and
Alloys (BUMA VI). London: Archetype, 2009. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/928997914.
Pare, C.F.E., ed., Metals Make the World Go Round. The Supply and Circulation of Metals in
Bronze-Age Europe. Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Birmingham in
June 1997. Oxford: Oxbow, 2000. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45870233.
Weeks, Lloyd R. Early Metallurgy of the Persian Gulf. Technology, Trade, and the Bronze Age
World. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1025038005.

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 107

 Yener, K. Aslihan. The Domestication of Metals. The Rise of Complex Metal Industries in
Anatolia. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2000. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43569376.

Author Biography
Florin Curta, Ph.D. in History (1998), Western Michigan University, is Professor of Medieval
History and Archaeology at the University of Florida. He has published five monographs,
over 40 chapters in collections of studies, and more than 100 articles. He is also editor of
six collections of studies.

Notes

1. Bo Gräslund, "The background to C. J. Thomsen's Three Age System," in Towards a History of

Archaeology, ed. Glyn Daniel (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), 45–50,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7757964.
2. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, trans. Ronald Melville (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997),
173, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/858521823.
3. Michel Carrier, “Ötzi: the mummy from the cold,” Arts and Cultures 5 (2004): 47–59.
4. Beno Rothenberg and Tim C. Shaw, “Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age IV copper mining and
smelting in the Timna Valley (Israel): excavations 1984 and 1990,” in Ancient Mining and
Metallurgy in Southeast Europe. International Symposium, Donji Milanovac, May 20–26, 1990, eds.
Petar Petrović and Sladana Đurdekanović (Belgrade/Bor: Archaeological Institute/Museum of
Mining and Metallurgy, 1995), 281–94, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/490516020.
5. Noël H. Gale, “Copper oxhide ingots and lead isotope provenancing,” in Metallurgy:
Understanding How, Learning Why. Studies in Honor of James D. Muhly, eds. Philip P. Betancourt
and Susan C. Ferrence (Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press, 2011), 213–20, https://doi.org/
10.2307/j.ctt3fgvzd.
6. Anthony Harding, “Oxhide ingots in the European north?” Antiquity 89 (2015), no. 343, 213–23,
https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2014.5.
7. James D. Muhly, “Sources of tin and the beginnings of bronze metallurgy,” American Journal of
Archaeology 89, no. 2 (1985): 275–91, https://www.jstor.org/stable/504330.
8. Anna J. Mukherjee et al., “The Qatna lion: scientific confirmation of Baltic amber in late Bronze
Age Syria,” Antiquity 82 (2008), 49–59, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00096435.
9. Anthony Harding, “Trade and exchange,” in The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age,
eds. Harry Fokkens and Anthony Harding (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 377,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/859338044.
10. Andreas Hauptmann, Robert Maddin, and Michael Prange, “On the structure and composition of
copper and tin ingots excavated from the shipwreck at Uluburun,” Bulletin of the American
Schools of Oriental Research 328 (2002): 1–30, https://doi.org/10.2307/1357777.
11. Noël H. Gale, “Copper oxhide ingots: their origin and their places in the Bronze Age metal trade
in the Mediterranean,” in Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean. Papers Presented at the

108 | Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy

 Conference Held at Rewley House, Oxford, in December 1989, ed. Noël H. Gale (Jonsered: Paul
Åströms förlag, 1991), 197–239, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/489688081.
12. Hadi Özbal, Annemie Adriaens, and Bryan Earl, “Hacınebi metal production and exchange,”
Paléorient 25, no. 1 (1999): 57–65, https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.1999.988.
13. Marianne Mödlinger, “European Bronze-Age cuirasses. Aspects of chronology, typology,
manufacture, and usage,” Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 59 (2012): 1–49,
https://doi.org/10.11588/jrgzm.2012.1.15311.
14. Duncan Miller, “Smelter and smith: Iron-Age metal fabrication technology in southern Africa,”
Journal of Archaeological Science 29, no. 10 (2002): 1083–1131, https://doi.org/10.1006/
jasc.2001.0758.

Copper and Bronze: The Far-Reaching Consequences of Metallurgy | 109

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and
Coinage
FLORIN CURTA

“Gold is money; everything else is credit.” —John Pierpont Morgan

Abstract
Until the late 20th century, there were very few “technological” applications of precious
metals. Despite the occasional use of silver in medicine, or of gold in dentistry and the
production of stained glass, the primary use for both metals was the manufacturing of
jewelry, sacred vessels (such as liturgical vessels used in the Church), and coins (made
with gold and silver because of their high luster, pleasant colors, and tarnish resistance).
Complex societies, such as those in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, used both gold and
silver as money (standard of value and a means of exchange) but not as coins. Coins were
invented in three different places at three different times, but the earliest coins were in
fact struck not in gold and not in silver, but in a naturally occurring alloy of both, known
as electrum. When in the 6th century city-states in Greece began to strike coins in large
numbers, the metal they chose was silver, with gold coming into use on a large scale
only in the 4th century BCE. Coined money is based on the idea that the quantity and
quality of the metal in the coin is guaranteed by some authority, often that of the state.
The coin thus circulates at a value higher than that of the metal from which it is made.
This chapter discusses how coined money introduced the conceptual distinction between
intrinsic and extrinsic value. After being used for thousands of years for jewelry, gold
is now used in electronics, as well as medicine, which has increased its extrinsic value.
However, human sentiment also can increase the extrinsic value of gold. A ring may be an
heirloom, an object passed from one generation to another within the same family, which
means its value might be defined primarily in social terms rather than economic terms.
In other words, the extrinsic value attached to it by means of memories and feelings far
exceeds its intrinsic value deriving from a certain quantity of gold or silver of which it is
made. This chapter explores how the use of silver and gold as a means of exchange, as
well as the invention of coined money, have created a distinction between intrinsic and
extrinsic value of which modern engineers need to be aware when considering any new
applications of material.

110 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage

Introduction
The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value in the case of gold and silver derives
from their use for coined money. Coins came into being in three different places at three
different times: Asia Minor in the 6th century BCE, India in the 5th century BCE, and
China in the late 3rd century BCE. In all three regions, the invention of coined money
had a considerable impact upon the development of society. In all three regions, under
the illusion that money is an essential part of the human condition, people began to
define happiness as the possession of a as large a quantity of coined money as possible.
But “money” is not the same thing as “coin,” which in turn has to be distinguished from
“currency.” Money refers to anything that may serve as means of exchange and of storing
wealth. Salt bars, for example, were used as money in Ethiopia and Eritrea until well into
the 18th century.

Activity: Watch a video

This video explains the use of salt

bars as money, through a guided tour
of the Geldmuseum, or Money
Museum, in Frankfurt, Germany
(https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=gXxjdGhv54I).
Amole salt bars from Ethiopia [MoneyMuseum,
Zürich]

Currency commonly refers to a form of money, the value of which is guaranteed within
a given territory at a given time. For example, the dollar is the US currency, while the euro
serves the same purpose for some members of the European Union. Coins are both a form
of money and a form of currency. A currency such as the dollar exists in the form of both
banknotes and coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters).

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 111

 Key Concept: How did money come into being?

Some 2,400 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) believed
that “when the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of
another, and they imported what they needed, and exported what they had too
much of, money necessarily came into use. For the various necessaries of life are
not easily carried about, and hence men agree to employ in their dealings with
each other something which was intrinsically useful and easily applicable to the
purpose of life, for example, iron, silver, and the like. Of this the value was at first
measured simply by size and weight, but in process of time they put a stamp
upon it, to save the trouble of weighing and to mark the value” (Politics I 9.7–8). In
another work, the Greek philosopher has a different explanation: “The builder
must get from the shoemaker the product of his labor, and must hand over his
own in return. If, first, proportionate equality is established, and then
reciprocation takes place, the result we mentioned will follow. If not, there is no
equality, and the bargain falls through, since there is no reason why what one
produces should not be more valuable than what the other produces, and the
products must therefore be equated. . . This is where money comes in; it
functions as a kind of mean, since it is a measure of everything, including,
therefore, excess and deficiency. It can tell us, for example, how many shoes are
equal to a house or some food. Then, as builder is to shoemaker, so must the
number of shoes be to a house” (Nicomachean Ethics V 5.8–10). One definition is
based on the idea that money facilitates trade, the other definition emphasizes
money as a standard of value. Money is a substitute for all goods, but also
something that is needed for human justice. The second definition implies that
money is not just a practical solution to problems of exchange, but also a
necessary condition for a certain level of social complexity. Over the last two
millennia, philosophers and historians have debated which of the two definitions
should be preferred. Both, however, highlight the far-reaching economic and
social implications of money.

Wealth was not always stored or measured in money. Even today, a wealthy person is said
to be “free from pecuniary anxieties.” Few know, however, that the adjective “pecuniary”

112 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage

employed in that phrase derives from the Latin word for wealth or money (pecunia). Even
fewer know that that Latin word derives from the word pecu, which refers to a flock of
sheep or, in general, to cattle. How did cattle come to be associated with money? The
German economist and historian Bernhard Laum (1884–1974) first noticed that in the Iliad
and the Odyssey, the worth of most items is expressed in cattle, even though cattle did
not serve as a means of exchange. An ox in the Iliad was not only “wealth,” but also a
sacred animal, most appropriate for a ritual sacrifice or for a royal gift, but not for market
exchanges. Both bride price (a sum of money that in some traditional societies the groom
pays to the bride’s family) and dowry (money that in traditional societies a bride or a
bride’s family gives to the groom after the wedding) were paid in cattle. The same is true
as a fine for killing, originally a sacrifice meant to appease the victim’s soul. According to
Laum, the origins of money as a standard of value developed therefore not from trade,
but from the sacrificial practices of Classical Antiquity. The idea of money developed not
from exchange between humans, but from the status of the sacrificial animal (the ox) as
a substitute for the person performing the sacrifice. In other words, an ox replaced a
person, but could in turn be replaced by something else, such as cakes, spits, cauldrons,
1
or tripods (Figure 6.1).
Laum’s theory shifts the emphasis from a
pragmatic explanation of money to one that
stresses its profound symbolism. People chose
certain objects made of certain metals to represent
money because they had a distinct idea about what
the equivalent should be for all goods, and what the
general measure of value should look like. For
money to exist, it had to fulfill four major functions.
First, it had to serve as a means of exchange, for
without money, there is no complex economy.
Second, it had to serve as a standard of value, for
without it, buildings, shoes, and any other goods
could not be compared to each other. Nor could
the labor invested by humans in such goods be
compared, so the relative, social value of
individuals would be difficult to assess. Third,
money must serve as a means of storing value. In
Figure 6.1 A sacrificial tripod offered to the absence of any means to refrigerate or salt his
Apollo at Delphi. Painting on a ceramic, catch, a fisherman must sell his fish quickly. The
Red-Figure bell-krater from Paestum, ca.
330 BCE. [Wikimedia Commons.] only way for him to “store” the fruits of his labor is

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 113

therefore to “turn” the fish into money, by means of a fish sale. Incidentally, that is true,
albeit on a more symbolic level, for athletes who compete for Olympic gold, as well as for
actors and film directors who aspire to win an Oscar—literally a golden statuette. Finally,
money has to serve as a means of payment. The fine for killing mentioned above, the bride
price, and the dowry are all “payments” that would not be possible without money (Figure
6.2).
All four functions of money have a long
history either separately, or in
combinations of two or three functions.
However, it was the invention of coinage
that combined all four functions together
for the first time, and radically
transformed economy and society. That
transformation is ultimately responsible
for the economic distinction between the
intrinsic and extrinsic (or monetary) value
Figure 6.2 Money (in the form of banknotes and
of gold and silver.
gold jewelry) in a formal presentation of the bride
price at a Thai engagement ceremony. [Photo by
Money Before Coinage user Tainscough (2008), shared under a CC-BY-SA
3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.]
Societies in the ancient Near East—Egypt,
Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Israel—used standards of value along with precious
metals as a means of payment. However, there were no coins in any of those societies, all
of which knew the four functions of money, but did not need them combined into a single
object. A court deposition document from the reign of Ramses II (13th century BCE)
describes how a merchant sold to an Egyptian lady named Erenofre an enslaved Syrian girl
at the price of 4 deben 1 kite (about 373 grams) of silver. In order to pay the price, Erenofre
did not actually give the merchant any silver. Instead she made up a collection of clothes
and blankets to the value of 2 deben 2 1/3 kite, and then borrowed from her neighbors a
miscellany of objects—bronze vessels, a pot of honey, 10 shirts, 10 deben of copper ingots
2
(see Curta, “Copper and Bronze”) to make up for the difference. Similarly, in ancient
Mesopotamia, people kept accounts in silver. As in Egypt, silver by weight was a standard
means of accounting for the value of different goods. Silver was also used as a means of
payment in commercial transactions. When about to make a payment, one need only
weigh out the silver. If the weight was uneven, an item was chopped up to make the scale
balance, as indicated by pieces of cut silver (hack-silver) found in hoards, such as that
buried in el-Amarna (Egypt) at some point during the 14th century BCE (Figure 6.3).

114 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage

 Silver therefore served as money, and
both kings and temples established the
weight standards and published in
inscriptions the values of certain
commodities in silver, as well as the
amounts to be paid for fines, interest, or
wages. However, silver had to be imported
Figure 6.3 Hacksilver in the el-Amarna hoard. into the region, for neither Egypt nor
The Egyptian word for silver (hedj) came to mean
something close to “money.” [British Museum. Mesopotamia had any easily accessible
Wikimedia Commons.] sources of that metal. Much of the
imported silver was consumed, and even
hoarded, by kings, aristocrats, and temples through taxes, tribute, and plunder. Because
of its hoarding and consumption, silver had a high extrinsic value and a strong symbolic
association with royalty, power, and wealth. No distinction existed between silver as
money and silver as jewelry or utensils. Circlets of gold, such as those found in Samaria
(Israel) and dated to the early 4th millennium BCE, also point to the lack of that conceptual
3
distinction. Indeed, while meant to facilitate trade, such circlets ended up in hoards (and
thus withdrawn from circulation and trade) because of the strong association between
precious metals, power, and wealth.

Money in Greece
Gold circlets were not used in Greece in the 8th century BCE. To be sure, Greeks had
been in contact with Phoenicians, who used silver as a medium of exchange. But instead of
silver, Greeks used cauldrons made of bronze as a medium of exchange: the wealthy were
those who possessed many cauldrons and tripods. In addition, iron spits, such as those
that archaeologists found in burials, may have served as money. In fact, the smallest silver
coins of the Classical age were called oboloi, which means “spits” and six of them made up
a drachma (drachme), which means “a handful of spits” (Figure 6.4).

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 115

 However, unlike silver in Mesopotamia
and Egypt, the bronze cauldrons, tripods,
and iron spits of ancient Greece never
served as general tokens for market
exchanges. They were, in fact, utterly
inappropriate for that, since they were
bulky and heavy. Cauldrons, on the other
hand, were still cauldrons, and spits were
spits—objects with practical utility. This is
in sharp contrast to utensils used in Figure 6.4 Six iron spits discovered in the Temple
of Hera in Argos (Greece), 7th–6th century BCE. A
exchanges elsewhere. For example, in handful of (six) oboloi (spits) formed one drachma.
China, spades or knives used as money (bu) [Wikimedia Commons.]
were completely useless—nothing could
be cut with any of them. In that case, it was precisely because they could not be used as
utensils that those artifacts were meant to serve as money. By contrast, the utilitarian
aspect of those artifacts of ancient Greece that served as means of exchange was never
lost. So while money existed in ancient Greece before the invention of the coins, none of
the objects chosen for that purpose incorporated all four functions of money.

The Earliest Coins

Long-distance trade and contact with the Near East must have brought to the Greeks
the idea of using precious metal as money. Gold and silver were considered valuable
possessions in themselves, as shown in the Homeric poems. In the Iliad, Troy is praised
for its “wealth of gold,” Thetis is “silver-footed,” while Athena is “golden-haired.” However,
silver and gold are conspicuously absent from the archaeological finds from Troy VII,
4
which is believed to correspond chronologically to Homeric Troy. Moreover, gold was not
readily available in Greece, as depicted in the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, who had
5
sailed very far from Greece to search for the Golden Fleece. The limited supply of silver
and gold may explain why both metals were valuable in the first place. But it may also
explain why the earliest coins appear in regions rich in silver and gold. Privileged access
to precious metals coincided with the development of political power.
Both the circumstances and the region in which coins were invented are associated with
political power. Small bits of metal turned into coins when an impression was hammered
or stamped on each one of them (when hammered, such an impression is called “incuse”).
It was not the intrinsic value of the metal that mattered, but the extrinsic value of the coin,
for which the stamp served as a warranty. The earliest coins were actually made of neither
silver nor gold. They were struck in electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver
116 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage
that appears in the area of Mount Tmolos (now Bozdağ near Izmir, in western Turkey),
which was part of ancient Lydia (Figure 6.5).
The king of Lydia, Croesus (560–547
BCE) was legendary in antiquity. After
conquering most of the Greek cities on the
coast, the king wanted to show his
generosity to his new subjects. At some
point in the 7th century BCE, a large flood
had destroyed the Temple of Artemis in
Ephesus. Croesus paid generously for its
reconstruction. The new temple attracted
a great number of merchants, kings, and
Figure 6.5 Map of Lydia, with the most important visitors, and many of them honored the
Greek cities in existence during the 6th century goddess by offering her precious goods
BCE. [Illustration by user Roke (2013), shared under
a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia and jewels. In the early 20th century,
Commons.] excavations inside the temple led to the
discovery of a hoard, which included 93
small pieces of electrum and seven silver nuggets. The electrum pieces have a rough oval
shape and seem to be aligned to a system of regular weights: the larger coins are 17.2, 16.1,
and 14.1 grams in weight, while the smallest ones are only 1/96 of a larger piece. Those
were therefore not just metal nuggets. Moreover, three of them have been marked on one
side with an incuse square. Other coins display a figurative design, such as a lion, a stag,
or a ram. The head of a lion was the symbol of the Lydian royal house (Figure 6.6).
Twenty coins in the hoard have the
letters “.WALWE.” inscribed on them,
which indicates that they were struck in
6
the name of Alyattes, Croesus’ father. The
lion head and the incuse squares were
probably royal markers guaranteeing the
quality or fineness of the metal. The small Figure 6.6 Electrum coins from Ephesus (6th
size as well as the standardized weight century BCE). One on them was stamped with the
image of a lion head, the other has two punches in
strongly suggest that the purpose of those the form of incuse squares. [Wikimedia Commons.]
coins was to make payments in small
amounts, for example to the many mercenaries the Lydian king employed. One of those
mercenaries probably made an offering in the Temple of Artemis, and the small coins he
had received from the king in exchange for military service turned into a votive donation
to the goddess. If so, then the transformation of a payment to the mercenary into a

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 117

“payment” to a goddess suggests that the coins were money, i.e., a means of exchange.
In other words, they could have been exchanged for goods on the market. Some scholars
have noted that the coins in question are made of an alloy that has less gold than the
electrum occurring naturally around Mount Tmolos. The role of the stamps or punches
was therefore to make those coins pass for real electrum, even though they had more
silver than gold. In other words, the purpose of the punches was to make the metal be
recognized and accepted at “face value” rather than by weight, as was the practice in the
Near East.
Of course, the coins had some intrinsic, material value as bullion. Nevertheless, as soon
as the metal had been minted, it gained a different, symbolic value as a coin, only loosely
(and, as it were, deceivingly) connected to its metallic content and purity. Throughout
the subsequent history of coinage, both the bullion (contents or purity) and the defined
weight would repeatedly be altered, as rulers “inflated” the coins and then from time to
time had to introduce mint reforms to restore their acceptability. However, not all stamps
on the Ephesus coins were royal, and some may have been private. Some of the earliest
coins bear inscriptions in Greek, which read “I am the sign of Phanes” or, on smaller
pieces, just “Phanes.” Some of the designs on the electrum coins may also be found on
seals and rings of the same period, which strongly suggests that the coins were struck for
private, not state, authorities. Moreover, there were no fewer than eight denominations in
the Ephesus hoard, an indication that the coins were instruments for payment, either to
the state or on the market. The extrinsic value of the coins, guaranteed by their stamps,
was therefore of a greater significance in establishing the value of those objects in relation
to any other commodities than the value of the metal of which they were made.

From Silver to Gold Coins

Electrum coins had a short life. Croesus began to strike coins in gold and silver, and by
the time his kingdom was conquered by Persians in 546 BCE, coins were already in use
in all Greek cities on the western coast of what is now Turkey. From there, they were
adopted by cities in Greece as well. By the end of the century, there were more than
100 mints operating in Greece. Most of the coins struck in those mints circulated only
locally. However, coins from Thrace and Macedonia (both regions rich in silver) appear
in hoards discovered outside Greece, a clear indication that the value of those coins was
recognized outside the area of their local circulation. The first coins struck in very large
quantities were those of Aegina, an island off the coast of Attica, which has no silver
resources. Athens, using the silver from the Laurion mines that opened in the 6th century
BCE, first struck didrachms before issuing the famous “owl coins,” which became the
first international currency in the eastern Mediterranean region (Figure 6.7). Those were
118 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage
also the first widely known, head-and-tail coins (i.e., coins with different images for the
obverse and the reverse, respectively), which remained virtually unchanged for 500 years.
Within less than a century, the new invention—coined money—spread rapidly throughout
the entire Greek-speaking region of the eastern Mediterranean.
The silver coins of Athens also moved to
Egypt, the Near East, and the region of the
Black Sea—all areas connected to the city
by means of trade. As the Greek historian
Xenophon put it, “it is sound business to
export silver; for where they [the
merchants] sell it, they are sure to make a
7
profit on the capital invested.” Xenophon’s
point is very important: silver was
exported from Athens as bullion, not as
coin. The evidence from hoards found in
Egypt shows that instead of being treated
as coins, the stamped pieces of metal that
reached that country by means of trade Figure 6.7 ”Owl coin” (silver tetradrachm) struck
were chopped and treated as hack-silver in Athens between 480 and 420 BCE. In Greek
mythology, the little owl (Athene noctua) was the
with complete disregard for their extrinsic companion of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and
value guaranteed by the stamps. the patron of the city of Athens. [Museum of Fine
Arts of Lyon; photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (2009),
Throughout the Hellenistic period shared under a CC BY 2.5 Generic License.
(323–31 BCE), coins tended to have a Wikimedia Commons.]
higher value within their area of issue than
the bullion from which they were made. This may explain why coinage in silver spread so
quickly in Classical Antiquity. City-states could increase their revenue by controlling the
production of silver and the circulation of overvalued pieces of metal struck as coins. That
is why the designs chosen for the Greek coins are in fact symbols of the city-state in which
they were struck (e.g., the owl as a symbol of Athens) and are often accompanied by
inscriptions giving the city name.

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 119

 City-states had the legal authority to
enforce the overvaluation of silver when
paid in the form of acceptable coin.
Moreover, many of them were highly
attractive markets visited by merchants
from all over the Mediterranean region. It
is those merchants trading in silver or in
some other commodities that prevented
the state from incurring the great losses
involved in accepting overvalued silver
coins. Indeed, coinage was produced
especially by those city-states that, like
Athens or Aegina, had a strong “trade
balance” in their favor. That also explains
Figure 6.8 The stater of Eucratides, the largest why the coins of those two city-states
surviving coin from antiquity. Found in Bukhara
(Uzbekistan), the coin weighs 169.2 grams, and is 58 became the first international coinages of
millimeters in diameter. [Cabinet des Médailles; the ancient world. Access to the rich gold
photo by World Imaging, shared under a CC-BY-SA mines in Thrace was the main reason for
3.0 Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.]
which the king of Macedonia, Philip II
(359–336 BCE) and his son, Alexander the Great (336–323 BCE) struck large numbers of
gold coins. In addition, through his conquest of the Persian Empire, Alexander gained
control of the enormous wealth accumulated over the years by the Persian kings.
Alexander’s successors (the so-called Diadochi) had also access to enormous resources
and wealth, and they struck coins in gold, rather than silver. The largest gold coin of the
ancient world was struck in the name of Eucratides (ca. 170–145 BCE), who ruled over a
large portion of Central Asia centered upon present-day Afghanistan.
During the Hellenistic period, the portraits of the kings came to replace the old symbols
of the city-states. Awarded divine status, the kings of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria
issued large gold coins with their portraits on the obverse and the symbols of their
kingdoms on the reverse. This established the head-and-tail model of coinage that has
persisted throughout the medieval and modern age.
For most of its history, the currency of Rome, both during the Republic and during
the Empire, consisted of gold, silver, and bronze. The main reason for this monetary
system employing three different metals (trimetallism) is the fact that “good” coins with
high intrinsic value (gold, but also silver) are typically withdrawn from circulation and
hoarded, leaving in circulation only “bad” money in the form of overvalued coins (i.e., coins
with very high extrinsic value). This principle, known as Gresham’s law (from Thomas

120 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage

Gresham, the 16th-century financier of King Edward I and of Queens Mary I and Elizabeth
I of England), applies especially in times of economic and/or political crisis, encountered
many times in Roman history.

Activity: Browse the American Numismatic Society database of Roman coinage

Julius Caesar first struck gold coins in very large numbers in order to pay his armies.
Under Augustus, a fixed weight for gold coins and a fixed rate of exchange between gold
and silver were established for the first time: the aureii were valued at 25 denarii and 41
to the pound (7.87 grams). The gold content was reduced by 4.5 percent under Emperor
Nero in 64 CE; however, the rate of exchange between silver and gold did not last very
long. When the silver coinage completely collapsed in the 3rd century CE, both silver and
bronze were worthless. Gold and goods in kind were now the only means to keep the
Roman economy afloat. In other words, in a trimetallic system, gold tends to be placed
higher than the other two metals. This is in fact what brought the 3rd-century economic
crisis to an end. Emperor Diocletian (284–305) established a new standard weight for the
gold coin (now renamed solidus). That coin remained the fundamental axis of the Late

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 121

Roman and, later Byzantine Empire for the following millennium. The monetary system
in both the Late Roman and the Byzantine empires was trimetallic, but its extraordinary
stability over a very long period of time (more than a millennium) was possible only by
ranking gold higher than silver and bronze. With a fixed rate of exchange of gold into the
other two metals, the Roman and Byzantine economies received a monetary platform of
recovery and growth.

Conclusion
Why were silver and gold chosen for
coined money? As explained in the
introduction, money fulfills four major
functions: means of exchange, standard of
value, storage of wealth, and means of
Figure 6.9 Gold coin (histamenon) of the
Byzantine emperor Constantine VIII (1025–1028). payment. However, the choice of a
The emperor is shown on the reverse, while the particular material for money depends
obverse shows an image of Christ Pantokrator (All
Mighty). The histamenon ( from the Greek word for upon certain basic criteria: durability (that
“standard”) was a wider and thinner version of thematerial cannot ruin easily), divisibility
old solidus. The coin is 25 mm in diameter, and
(that material must be easy to divide into
under Constantine VIII’s successor, Michael IV
(1034–1041), it was minted in a slightly concave, smaller denominations), portability (that
cup-like form, which became the standard for all material must be easy to move around),
gold coins of the Empire, even after Emperor
Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118) introduced the homogeneity (each unit should be the
hyperperon as a new, high-quality gold issue. same as all others), and acceptability
[Wikimedia Commons.]
(people need to recognize that material
easily for daily use). In addition, the material chosen needs to be of limited or stable
supply, for money is in fact deferred consumption.
From the point of view of a modern engineer, however, any element in the periodic
table may served as coined money, as long as it is not a gas, and is neither corrosive
and reactive, nor radioactive. To be sure, applying those criteria leave about 30 eligible
elements. However, since in order to be coined, a metal must also be rare, the number
of elements may be reduced to only eight—the so-called precious metals: rhodium,
palladium, osmium, iridium, ruthenium, platinum, gold, and silver. The first five elements
were not known before the 19th century, and platinum has a melting point of about 3,000
degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that was impossible to obtain before the first modern
furnaces. That left only gold and silver for the job. Gold is the most malleable of all metals
and does not readily react with air. A single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet of one
square meter, or an ounce into 100 square feet. Silver tarnishes when exposed to sulfur
compounds in air or water, but has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all
122 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage
metals. The conductive properties of gold and silver may not have been either apparent,
or indeed necessary to ancient moneyers, but malleability and tarnish resistance were
most definitely key properties in selecting gold and silver for coined money. In various
languages the very word for “money” derives from words for those two metals: argent in
French (derived from Latin argentum, which means silver), arian in Welsh (a word that
means both “money” and “silver”), Geld in German (a cognate of Gold), and dengi in Russian
(derived from the Turkic word tenge, which refers to a silver coin).
Why is it important to learn about the use of precious metals—gold and silver—for
coinage? The application of silver plates to achieve better wound healing is known since
8
the Hellenistic age, and silver nitrate was used medically throughout the Middle Ages.
During that same period, the production of the stained glass was based on gold.
However, in both cases, such applications had little, if any, impact on the general
perception of silver and gold as precious because of being coinage metals. In other words,
until relatively recently, there was little, if any “technological” use of gold and silver that
could compete with their primary use for the manufacture of jewelry, liturgical vessels,
and coins. It is only recently that new applications have been found for gold, for example,
that have dramatically shifted the emphasis away from jewels and coins. The pressure
those applications put on the global resources have somewhat contributed to the rising
prices of gold. Despite the fact that it is not coined anymore, and that it is used for a
number of non-monetary applications, gold is still seen as a strong hedge to inflation
and a store of value, since all other assets (bonds, currencies, and cash) can see their
values eroded in an inflationary environment. People buy gold for investment purposes.
Gold may not have any more the extrinsic value that stamping of overvalued coins gave
to the metal in antiquity. However, gold is still a currency and its price fluctuates relative
to other forms of exchange. This is also true for silver, which has even more industrial
applications accounting for half of the annual demand of that metal. No future engineer
interested in the revolutionary applications of the precious metals can therefore ignore
the tensions between the intrinsic and extrinsic values of gold and silver. Still, today gold
and silver possess the characteristics of a good form of money that have been established
by Aristotle. However, they are not coined any more, and that opens a whole range of new
possibilities for their use.

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 123

 Discussion Questions

1. What is the difference, both in intrinsic and extrinsic value, between a

regular coin and a bitcoin?
2. Paper money: the highest extrinsic value possible. How did people come to
accept banknotes in monetary exchanges? Why were banknotes
acceptable?
3. Imagine that world economies will return one day to gold and silver coins.
What would the implications of such a decision be for the current (and,
possibly, future) applications of gold in advanced technologies in medicine,
electronics, or glass production?

Key Terms
aureus
denarius
didrachm
extrinsic
intrinsic
obverse
reverse
stater
tetradrachm

Further Reading
Harris, William V. The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/495598206.
Schaps, David M. The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/849109350.
Wood, Diana. Medieval Money Matters. Oxford: Oxbow, 2004. http://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/56641436.

124 | Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage

 Author Biography
Florin Curta, Ph.D. in History (1998), Western Michigan University, is Professor of Medieval
History and Archaeology at the University of Florida. He has published five monographs,
over 40 chapters in collections of studies, and more than 100 articles. He is also editor of
six collections of studies.

Notes

1. Bernhard Laum and Heiliges Geld, Eine historische Untersuchung über den sakralen Ursprung des
Geldes (Tübingen: Mohr, 1924), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/868158554.
2. Jaroslav Cerny, “Prices and wages in Egypt in the Ramesside period,” Cahiers d’histoire mondiale 4
(1954): 907.
3. Avi Gopher and Tsevikah Tsuk, Ancient Gold. Rare Finds from the Nahal Qanah Cave (Jerusalem:
Israel Museum, 1991), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30622335.
4. The World of Troy. Homer, Schliemann, and the Treasures of Priam, Proceedings from a Seminar
Sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage and Held at the Smithsonian
Institution on February 21–22, 1997, eds. Deborah Dickmann Boedeker and Anna Lea
(Washington: Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, 1997),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/38576319.
5. Christos Doumas, “What did the Argonauts seek in Colchis?,” Hermathena 40, no. 151 (1991): 31–41,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23040952.
6. Robert W. Wallace, “Walwe. and .Kali.,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 108 (1988): 203–207,
https://doi.org/10.2307/632647; Gerald M. Browne, “Notes on two Lydian texts” Kadmos 35
(1996): 49–52, https://doi.org/10.1515/kadm.1996.35.1.49.
7. Xenophon, Ways and Means, trans. E. C. Marchant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1968),
199, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3231818.
8. J. Wesley Alexander, “History of the medical use of silver,” Surgical Infections 10, no. 3 (2009):
289–92, https://doi.org/10.1089/sur.2008.9941.

Gold and Silver: Precious Metals and Coinage | 125

Steel: Carnegie and Creative
Destruction
SEAN ADAMS

“Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.” —Andrew Carnegie

Abstract
This chapter uses the rise of Carnegie Steel as a case study to explore the social and
economic context of materials innovation. In the United States during the 19th century,
steel became a vital element of industrial growth, and Andrew Carnegie revolutionized
its production through a system of hard driving at his steel mills outside of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. This is an example of the economic theory of creative destruction, in which
innovation in technology and the organization of the shop floor replaces long-standing
institutions and practices in the production of materials. As a result, there are both
gains to society—in this case cheap steel for the construction of things like buildings and
railroads, as well as drawbacks for workers and companies that tried to compete with
Carnegie. In summary, innovation in the manufacture of materials can be a double-edged
sword.

The President and the Weaver’s Son

Franklin Pierce should have been celebrating his inauguration as President of the United
States in early 1853; instead he was mourning. The New Hampshire Democrat had just
won 86 percent of the electoral vote in the presidential election, even though he was a
long shot to even win the nomination. Franklin, his wife Jane, and their beloved son Benny
boarded a train on January 6, 1853, in Andover, Massachusetts. Less than one mile into
the journey, a coupling snapped and the passenger car rolled down an embankment. Jane
and Franklin suffered only slight injuries, but Benny was not so lucky. The Pierces watched
horrified as the wreckage from the crash decapitated their only living son. Both parents
would never be the same again; Jane brooded over the accident and even wrote a letter of
apology to her deceased Benny, while Franklin never displayed the political vigor needed
to unite a county rapidly coming undone over the issue of slavery.

126 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

 Although they felt their tragedy intensely, as
every grieving parent would, the Pierces’
experience was not a rare occurrence. In only
two years, 1850 to 1852, over 900 Americans
died in railroad accidents in New York State
alone. Deficient parts, such as the coupling that
failed the Pierce family in January of 1853, and
worn-out iron rails signaled a technological
challenge for American railroads, as well as a
1
safety concern that could impact ticket sales.
At the same
time that the
Pierces
mourned
Benny, young
Andrew
Carnegie had
Figure 7.1 President Franklin Pierce [Portrait his own
by George P.A. Healy (1858), White House
Collection. Wikimedia Commons.] problems. His
father, Will
Carnegie, had been a skilled weaver in Scotland. But when
a steam-powered loom opened in his hometown of
Dumferline, the elder Carnegie struggled to find steady
work. “Andra,” he confided to his wife in 1847, “I can get Figure 7.2 Young Andy Carnegie
and brother Thomas, ca. 1851
nae mair work.” The next year the Carnegies were on their
[Photo from Project Gutenberg
way to America, where Will still could not find a good job. edition of Autobiography of
In 1855, while a gloomy President Franklin Pierce presided Andrew Carnegie (2006).
Wikimedia Commons.]
over Washington, Will Carnegie died, leaving Andrew to
2
tend to his mother, his younger brother, and fend for himself.
On the surface, the lives of Franklin Pierce and Andrew Carnegie appear very different.
What could unite the fourteenth President of the United States and the immigrant son
of an underemployed weaver? As it turns out, we can use steel to forge a link between
these two stories; in fact, steel tells a great deal of the story of Industrial America. Think
of it this way: had Andrew Carnegie’s steel been around in 1853, the history of the Pierce
family might be quite different. But even as cheap and durable steel made railroad travel
safer during Carnegie’s time, the societal cost—particularly to workers and to Carnegie’s
competitors—took an altogether different toll on the US. How this connection between

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 127

steel and 19th-century Americans took hold is the focus of this chapter. By understanding
the context in which steel emerged as an essential material for industrialization, we can
appreciate the ways in which new materials enrich our own generation. Steel presents a
case study that provides a kind of blueprint for anticipating how the integration of new
materials into society can generate both positive and negative results. This case clearly
illustrates the impact of materials on society.

Iron and Steel

Iron is the second-most common element on Earth, and humans have worked it into
tools, weapons, and other goods for millennia. The process to convert iron ore into
metal of various levels of toughness and flexibility is simple and straightforward: cook
the impurities (mostly oxygen) away from the ore, leaving the base metal behind. Steel
requires a bit more work to make, as it needs a particular amount of carbon—usually
between one and two percent by weight—and this kind of precision requires more care
than basic iron smelting.
The relationship between humans and iron remained relatively stable over thousands
of years until the 19th century, when innovations in production techniques and changes
in consumption patterns accelerated the knowledge and practice of iron metallurgy quite
suddenly. In fact, these changes occurred so rapidly, we refer to the period as an
“industrial revolution,” and iron and steel played an absolutely central role in that
phenomenon, particularly in the US. America became connected to steel in so many ways,
that by the advent of the 20th century, they didn’t think twice about its presence in their
lives.

Why Steel?
In order to understand why steel is so important, we first have to dive into the history of
iron. After all, steel is simply an alloy of iron and carbon, but since the common definition
of steel is that it contains up to two percent carbon by weight, its history is closely related
to iron. The main property that makes iron such a desirable product is its toughness—an
iron plow tears through the soil much more effectively than a wood one—but at very
high purity levels, iron can be too weak and ductile. Adding carbon to iron adds strength,
but maintains the product flexibility; adding too much carbon makes it brittle. Steel
with a well-controlled carbon content is the most desirable form of an iron carbon alloy.
Steel can maintain a sharp edge quite well, which is why it has been a popular material
for making swords for centuries. However, making steel was a difficult, labor-intensive
process for most of human history.

128 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

 Iron, on the other hand, was relatively easy to manufacture. Iron smelting is the
manufacturing process that mixes iron ore, a carbon-based fuel like charcoal or coal,
and a stabilizing agent such as limestone. Small furnaces were found in ancient China,
Mesopotamia, and Rome, which proved that iron smelting has been used for thousands
of years. Pure iron reaches a liquid state at temperatures of 1,500 degrees Celsius, which
is beyond the capabilities of ancient furnaces. These early furnaces produced a product
called a bloom, which is a mixture of pure iron and non metallic oxides. The bloom then
had to be heated and hammered in order to remove the oxides. This labor-intensive
process meant that iron was a useful material for weapons, small tools, and decorative
items, but large-scale manufacturing was not possible.
By the 1700s, Europeans were constructing
large, tower-like blast furnaces that could run
for months on end. These large-scale furnaces
could reach temperatures sufficient to create
cast iron (iron with >2.3 percent carbon), also
known as pig iron, which has a lower melting
point than pure iron. The higher temperature of
the blast furnaces was achieved by forcing air up
through the mixture of iron ore and coke. Coke is
coal that was previously heated to reduce the
sulfur content. The iron subsequently liquefied at
the bottom of the furnace while the impurities in
the ore bonded with the limestone or other
reactants to form slag, a glassy-like mixture.
Once the iron-maker decided the batch was
ready, workers tapped the furnace (allowed the
molten cast iron to drain off the bottom) and
Figure 7.3 Cutaway of a 19th century blast skimmed the impurities or slag off of the top. The
furnace molten iron flowed into troughs dug into the
sand surrounding the furnace; workers eventually called the cooled iron “pigs” because
they looked as if they were baby pigs suckling a large sow. The “pig iron” could then be
reworked into iron tools, sash weights, cannonballs, plows, stoves, and other products by
pouring, or “casting,” the melted iron pigs into molds, thus the term cast iron. As stated,
this form of iron had lots of carbon (>2.3 percent). Once the iron was smelted, blacksmiths
could also use finery forges to remove most of the carbon using gas oxidation of the melt,
thereby creating wrought iron. Wrought iron could then be worked into steel by adding
small amounts of carbon back into the iron, a process called carburization. So, blast

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 129

furnaces made larger cast iron products more affordable, but cheap steel continued to
3
elude furnace masters.

Iron in the American Context

Early American iron makers built their
furnaces in remote locations known
commonly as “iron plantations,” because
they required close proximity to essential
resources such as a moving stream for
water power, iron ore, and wood for
charcoal fuel. At full capacity a good
American blast furnace produced 25 to 30
tons of “pig iron” a week. This raw product
made its way to specialized facilities like
rolling mills, nailworks, and wireworks that
produced more refined types of iron
products. Figure 7.4 Digging out the moulds for iron “pigs”
By the early 1700s, British iron makers at a blast furnace [Photo by Keystone View Co. (ca.
1905), Library of Congress.)
were forced to use coal in place of
charcoal, because of reduced stocks of wood. This technology crossed the Atlantic to
appear in American furnaces by the 1840s. The substitution of coal for charcoal reduced
the cost of making a ton of pig iron by half. The use of coal also meant that iron furnaces
and foundries (those smaller facilities that worked pig iron into useful tools and products)
could be built closer to urban centers. As the nation grew, iron became an essential
ingredient in American life. Farmers plowed their fields with an iron plow in the morning,
cooked their meals in cast iron skillets at midday, stirred their fires with iron tongs to
warm the chilly evening air, and then closed their windows at night using iron
counterweights.

Iron, Steel and Railroads

At the same time that coal became a
common fuel in American furnaces and
iron a common product in its households,
the nation’s expanding railroad network
increased demand for steel. In the three
Figure 7.5 Plow advertisement from 1879
decades before the Civil War, the American
[Wikimedia Commons.]

130 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

railroad network of the United States grew by a factor of ten; these railroads needed iron
products such as rails, cars, and other railroad components. American iron producers
struggled to meet this demand, and during this period of great expansion, many railroads
imported their rails from Great Britain.
Some railroads tried to save on iron by using “strap” rails, which were thin iron strips
that sat on top of wooden rails. Iron-starved companies could build a line quickly and
cheaply in this fashion, but the strips of iron sometimes came loose and would fly upwards
when a passing locomotive ran over them. These “snakehead” rails literally impaled some
railroad passengers, and were part of the gruesome reality of early railroad travel.
American railroads in the antebellum era (before 1860) also purchased iron products
that were of uneven quality. Couplings, axles, and wheels were notorious for failing
quickly—and sometimes disastrously—as the Pierce family found out so tragically.
Castings made from pig iron were cheap, but the quality was uneven. Without the means
of testing it for strength and flexibility, manufacturers made inferior products that often
broke down at the most inopportune times.

The Work of Making Steel

Could steel be the solution? Since steel
is stronger than cast or wrought iron it
became the ideal material for making
durable rails and other parts needed to run
a railroad safely and efficiently. But at the
time when the nation’s rail network
needed cheap steel, most of the steel made
in the United States at that time was
blister steel, which required the repeated
application of powdered carbon to
superheated wrought iron to add enough
carbon to create steel. A skilled blacksmith Figure 7.6 A gruesome depiction of a railroad
then repeatedly hammered the carbon accident in 1856. Although sometimes caused by
human error, accidents often resulted from faulty
into the blade and dunked it into water to materials. [Lithograph by John L. Magee, Library
quench or cool it rapidly. This ancient art Company of Philadelphia.]
of making high-quality steel was fine for
razors and swords; but it was not feasible for the mass production of large industrial
products like rails.

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 131

 Another method of making steel, which
also drew upon highly skilled labor, was
called puddling. This method of refining
involved using the heat of a coal fire to
melt pig iron in a furnace while an
experienced puddler stirred the molten
iron, which burned off impurities while the
purer iron formed a pool, or puddled, in
the furnace. Eventually the puddler added
carbon to the iron and quite literally
stirred up a batch of steel. As with blister
Figure 7.7 An iron puddler tapping steel from the steel, there was no inherent problem with
furnace [National Photo Company Collection (1919),
Library of Congress.] this method of making steel, other than
the amount of time and skilled labor it
took. The necessity of skilled labor for this intensive process imbued the workers with a
great deal of control. This necessarily raised the cost of production and limited the
production output.
In 1856, however, Henry Bessemer invented a
process of converting pig iron into steel, which
used the injection of a blast of air through molten
iron. The Bessemer Process used an egg-shaped
furnace that tilted once to accept the molten iron
and then returned to an upright position so that
impurities could blow out the top of furnace.

Who Actually Made the Steel?

In the years following the Civil War, most of the
power over the steelmaking process resided with
the workers. This was reflected in both wages
and working conditions. For example, in 1865 the
Sons of Vulcan, an organization of iron puddlers,
secured a “sliding scale” for their members in
which wage rates were tied to the price of iron.
However, as new techniques eroded the
Figure 7.8 Making Bessemer Steel in
traditional power and prestige of puddlers and Pittsburgh [Illustration in Harper’s Weekly
other skilled ironworkers, many employees (April 10, 1886), Library of Congress.]
sought to organize themselves into unions. In
132 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction
1876, the Sons of Vulcan combined with a number of other trade unions to form the
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in Pittsburgh. By 1891, the
Amalgamated reached its peak membership of over 24,000 workers organized into 290
local unions. They exerted a great deal of authority and helped organize what had been a
4
fairly diffuse trade.

Who Bought Steel?

These innovations in production were
made possible by an insatiable demand for
steel in American economy of the late 19th
century. After the Civil War, railroads grew
at a spectacular rate, until by 1890 they
linked the entire continental United States
with 167,000 miles of rail; 150,000 miles
had been laid since 1865. In 1877 American
Figure 7.9 Steelworkers at Carnegie Steel’s steelmakers made 432,169 tons of steel
Homestead Works, 1890 [Historical Society of
rails, considerably more than the 332,540
Western Pennsylvania.]
tons of iron rails produced in the same
5
year. Every American lived and worked, on average, within ten miles of a rail line. This
kind of a massive network required a constant influx of cheap steel, as new rail lines went
in, old ones were replaced, and rolling stock like locomotives, freight cars, and passenger
liners all employed steel parts for their durability and strength. This was no longer
6
Franklin Pierce’s kind of railroad.
As American cities spread out across the country, they also grew up with vertical
construction. The massive influx of immigrants to cities across the US made urban areas
in the Northeast and Midwest swell in size. During the period from 1860 to 1880, the
population of New York City grew from 813,000 to 1.2 million, and Chicago’s population
grew from about 112,000 to over 500,000. This kind of rapid growth meant that urban
infrastructure was stretched to its limits. In Chicago, a solution came with steel
construction. Between 1885 and 1895, Chicago architects developed a close relationship
with Pittsburgh steelmakers to develop a “steel-skeleton” design that allowed for
individual buildings to double, even triple in height over the traditional brick and mason
structures. When William Jenney’s Home Insurance Building was completed in 1884 with
structural steel, it was the tallest building in the world at 138 feet.

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 133

 Fifteen years later, New York’s Park Row Building’s
thirty floors stretched 391 feet and helped coin a new
phrase: skyscraper. As American cities grew
7
vertically, so did the demand for structural steel.
Railroad construction showed no signs of
decreasing, and the application of steel beams to the
construction of buildings and bridges meant that
iron and steel rails and beams commanded a large
share of domestic consumption in the United States.
As the industrial economy expanded, the demand for
steel in the US seemed insatiable.

The Politics of Steel

Politicians knew that steel was critical to their
nation’s success; so American steel enjoyed a
protective tariff for most of its rise, which meant that
any consumer of imported iron had to pay a sizable
Figure 7.10 The Park Row Building on
duty. To insure this was the case, the American Iron the cover of Scientific American in
and Steel Association, the industry’s trade 1898. [Wikimedia Commons.]
organization, teamed up with protectionists in the
US Congress like Pennsylvania’s Rep. William “Pig Iron” Kelley. Their efforts ensured that
while tariff levels fluctuated in the years prior to 1900, they remained relatively high.
Operating with strong tariff protection and utilizing new technologies such as the
Bessemer process, the American iron and steel industry blossomed in the years after the
Civil War.

Carnegie and Steel

Here is where Andrew Carnegie reenters the picture, because if you’re going to talk about
the rise of cheap steel in the American economy, you need to know the story of Andrew
Carnegie. He was not the first person to make steel, nor would he be the last. But his
method of doing so would change the course of the industrial economy forever.
By the time Andrew Carnegie immigrated with his family to the United States in 1848,
steel was still costly to make, and so his newly adopted country imported a great deal of it
from Great Britain. While working as a telegraph operator with the Pennsylvania Railroad,
young Andy saw firsthand the American railroad industry’s huge appetite for high-quality

134 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

steel. After earning a small fortune in the stock market, Andy decided that he wanted to
make something rather than just buy or sell things. That something was steel.

Hard Driving
When he finished construction on his
Edgar Thomson Steel Works outside of
Pittsburgh in 1873, Andrew Carnegie was
employing two major business strategies.
The first was a tactic called hard driving, in
which Carnegie worked his men and his
machines to the limit. He used the newly
improved Bessemer process for making
Figure 7.11 The Edgar Thompson Works outside of steel, which required a massive furnace
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1891. [Library with a specialized lining, which Carnegie’s
Company of Philadelphia.]
employees wore out constantly. But he
didn’t care, so long as he continued to reduce the cost of steelmaking.
Carnegie Steel hired Alexander Holley to implement Bessemer steel technology, the
cutting edge steel making technology at the time, at his mills. When a new and more
efficient process known as open hearth was developed, Carnegie simply scrapped the
existing equipment and made the transition to the new system. Short-term costs were no
object for improved efficiency. For example, once a manager told Carnegie he knew of a
rolling-mill design that could roll steel rails more efficiently. Andy ordered the existing rail
mill—which was only three months old—ripped out and the new one installed.
Carnegie’s managers tinkered with the process constantly—finding more and more ways
to cut the cost of labor and materials. If that meant adopting new techniques, Carnegie’s
managers did it quickly; if it meant breaking the power of skilled workers on the shop
floor, Carnegie’s managers did it brutally. In the end, hard driving was very successful: the
first ton of Carnegie steel cost about $56 a ton to make; by 1900 the cost was down to
around $11.50, a dramatic 79 percent cost reduction in about 27 years.
Hard driving is a great example of the more general concept of improving throughput:
essentially a measure of the speed and volume that the flow of materials has through
a single plant or works. A high rate of throughput—which managers usually measured
in terms of units processed per day—became the critical criterion of mass production.
It is an important measure of productivity that many businesses sought, to emulate the
success of steel.

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 135

 Key Concept: Bessemer Steel

In 1856, Henry Bessemer introduced, to London’s Royal Academy of Science, a

revolutionary process of converting iron into steel, which used the injection of a
cold blast of air through molten iron in an egg-shaped furnace—called a
“converter”—that transformed iron into steel in a matter of minutes.

Although accounts vary as to who actually “invented” the Bessemer process, we

do know that the first working converter in the United States appeared in Troy,
New York, in 1864. Soon other firms like the Cambria Iron Works and the
Bethlehem Iron Company quickly adapted Bessemer converters to their plants,
and Carnegie Steel eventually turned the process into a finely tuned machine.

Carnegie was obsessed with reducing costs via innovation and efficiency, and
with his strict adherence to hard driving, his steel factory replaced its Bessemer
Converters for the open-hearth process, which is similar to the way steel is made
today.

There are only a few Bessemer converters remaining in the US, and most of
them are museum pieces.

The Carnegie Legend

By implementing new technology and cost accounting, Carnegie saw one blast furnace
increase annual output from 13,000 tons to 100,000 tons. British steelmakers, who had
previously dominated the world market in steel rails, couldn’t understand this process
and considered it reckless. For example, Carnegie would hard drive a furnace until the
lining was completely shot, then he would simply replace his furnaces about once every
three years. British furnaces, in contrast, lasted 12 years on average. One British visitor
bragged to Carnegie that back home they had equipment they had been using for 20
years. Carnegie reportedly responded, “And that is what is the matter with the British
steel trade.” Carnegie streamlined the production process within the plant. Once the blast
furnace formed the molten steel into ingots, they were rushed to the rolling mill and

136 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

made into rails. Another British observer said that he would like to sit on an ingot for a
week and watch that mill operate. A manager told him that if he wanted an ingot cool
enough to sit on, he’d have to send to Britain for it. When steelmaking changed from
the Bessemer system to open-hearth production (a method of steelmaking that relies
more on controlling the chemistry), Carnegie removed the Bessemer converters and put
in open-hearth furnaces. The end result was that Carnegie consistently slashed prices and
8
undersold competitors.

Vertical Integration

Figure 7.12 Making coal into coke in “beehive”

ovens. [Pennsylvania State Archives.]
The second major strategy that Carnegie
employed was something business historians
called vertical integration. Rather than buy the
ore, Carnegie bought mining land in Minnesota’s
Figure 7.13 Andrew Carnegie, the Hard
rich Mesabi Iron Range, along with a small fleet Driver, ca. 1878. [Photo from Project
of vessels to transport it to Pittsburgh. Rather Gutenberg edition of Autobiography of
Andrew Carnegie (2006). Wikimedia
than buy the best fuel for steelmaking—a refined Commons.]
version of coal called coke (coal with reduced
sulfur content)—Carnegie acquired vast coalfields, as well as the beehive ovens that made
coke, when he brought Henry Clay Frick, the ruthless coal baron, into Carnegie Steel. By
1900, his company controlled every aspect of steelmaking, from the time the ore left the
ground to the time it appeared in the form of a steel rail.
Andrew Carnegie’s many innovations make him a great example of an entrepreneur in
America’s Industrial Age. He revolutionized the steel making process, in order to undercut

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 137

his competitors, increase his share of the steel rail and construction beam markets, and
drive any potential competition out of business. As a nation, America benefited from
Carnegie’s cheap steel, but there were costs as well.

Creative Destruction
As steel transformed the American landscape in both the city and the country, Andrew
Carnegie reshaped both its method and marketing. What would be the impact of these
changes? Why are they important?
In 1942, the economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase creative destruction
to describe the process of industrial change, particularly in the face of entrepreneurial
activity and the incorporation of new technology. Schumpeter was trying to explain
how the market economy drives change that benefits society, but at the same time
can destroy established ways of doing things. In his book entitled Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy, he described a process of “industrial mutation” in which a new way of
producing goods is “incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.
9
This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.”

Frick and Homestead

Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) had built a business empire in the coalfields of
Southwestern Pennsylvania. Frick produced the best “coke,” a fuel made by
baking coal in beehive-shaped ovens. After consolidating his power in the
coking fields of Pennsylvania, Frick joined Carnegie Steel as a partner in 1889.

Frick’s iron-fisted tactics in breaking labor unions in his coking operations

influenced his approach to the workers’ strike at Carnegie’s Homestead Works
in 1892. He locked them out and prepared for a lengthy struggle.

Frick was a loathed figure in the American public eye, but this changed in
July of 1892 when an anarchist, Alexander Berkman, tried to assassinate Frick.
Berkman burst into his office, shot him twice in the neck and stabbed him
four times. Frick survived this attack and returned to work after only a few
days. Berkman and his anarchist ties discredited the strike among middle-

138 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

 class Americans, even though the Amalgamated had nothing to do with the
assassination attempt.

Carnegie and Competition

Any firms who tried to cut into Carnegie’s market found themselves in a tough spot;
Carnegie would drive the price of steel low enough to put the upstarts out of business,
only to raise the price back up once the coast was clear. Some immediate benefits of
creative destruction were the increased supply of cheap steel rails and structural beams,
but in rearranging the way America did business, Andrew Carnegie’s process left wreckage
in his wake.
Carnegie Steel’s price leadership limited smaller firms to niche markets such as
structural steel, wire, wire nails, rods, and hardware. So it is unfair to say that Andrew
Carnegie enjoyed a monopoly on steel production or even an oligopoly. Instead, he drove
out competitors in large industrial markets and focused on achieving economies of
scale—that is, the reorganization and expansion of the production process so as to reduce
costs. In order to succeed with this strategy, Carnegie needed absolute control over the
process of making steel, from the raw materials to the finished product.

The Homestead Strike

Because of his working-class background, Andrew Carnegie liked to portray himself as a
friend of his workers. In 1889, his workers went on strike at his steel plant in Homestead
(outside of Pittsburgh) and Carnegie settled by giving them a contract that set their
wages higher than those at neighboring steel mills and negotiated with the union, the
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Homestead was huge—12 mills
10
employing 3,800 men with a town of 11,000 surrounding it.
The integration of new technologies like the Bessemer converter or the open-hearth
furnace threatened the Amalgamated’s power. In prior labor conflicts, steelworkers had
been able to gain some concessions from their employers like the sliding scale. But when
faced with the system of hard driving, the Amalgamated struggled to retain control over
the shop floor. This all came to a head in Homestead, Pennsylvania, during a famous strike.

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 139

 In 1892, when Homestead workers walked off the
job, Carnegie left the country to travel to Scotland
and left the dirty work of union busting to Henry
Clay Frick. Frick announced that Carnegie Steel
would only deal with men on a one-to-one basis,
and the workers walked out. Frick then set up “Fort
Frick,” a 12-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire,
and hired 300 Pinkerton Agency detectives as
guards. On July 2, he shut Homestead down to lock
out the union. When the Pinkerton guards arrived
on a barge on the Monongahela River on July 5, the
workers met the Pinkertons with gunfire, rock
projectiles, and a small cannon. After 12 hours, nine
strikers and seven detectives were killed. The
National Guard was called out, the Pinkertons were
allowed to leave, and Homestead opened with non-
union workers. The strike went on until November,
Figure 7.14 The Homestead Strike was when the Amalgamated finally gave up and called it
front-page news in America’s off; the union leaders were fired from Homestead
magazines and newspapers in 1892.
[Illustration by G.A. Davis, from a sketch and Frick sent a wire to Carnegie in Scotland: “Our
by C. Upham, in Frank Leslie’s victory is now complete and most gratifying. Do not
Illustrated Weekly (July 14, 1892). Library
think we will ever have any serious labor trouble
of Congress.]
again.” In fact, the steel industry operated without
11
organized labor for the next four decades.
In many ways, the Homestead Strike represented the culmination of years of creative
destruction at Carnegie Steel. As a result of hard driving and union busting, Andrew
Carnegie had full control over his shop floor. As a result, workers found no choice but to
take the wages Carnegie Steel offered and follow the managerial directives that Carnegie
Steel wanted. Steelworking would never be the same.

U.S. Steel
In 1900, the financier J.P. Morgan was tired of competing with Carnegie Steel, which kept
beating Morgan’s prices in steel-making ventures. So he bought out Carnegie Steel and
formed U.S. Steel, the world’s first corporation capitalized at over $1 billion—precisely
$1.4 billion. Andrew Carnegie’s personal take in the U.S. Steel deal was over $200
million—billions in today’s dollars—and he was perhaps the world’s wealthiest man. He
could not have done it without the creative destruction of the steel industry. Andrew
140 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction
Carnegie’s approach to industrial manufacturing, from hard driving and vertical
integration to creative destruction, are all factors that make his story fascinating and
important to the rise of steel.

The Legacy
What does this case study in steel tell us about materials? It tells us that innovation
can be a double-edged sword, having both positive and negative impacts on societies
and the world. On one hand, Carnegie’s cheap and durable steel made railroads more
affordable and safer. The story of Franklin Pierce’s tragic loss might have been quite
different had Carnegie Steel been available fifty years earlier. On the other hand, Andrew
Carnegie’s rearrangement of the shop floor, his ruthless competitive business practices,
and his willingness to break the power of labor organizations like the Amalgamated,
shattered lives. His own father, Will Carnegie, experienced the destructive side of creative
destruction right before moving his family to America. Steel changed the United States
by allowing the nation to literally expand both outwards (railroads across the nation) and
upwards (skyscrapers) while some Americans, like those workers at Homestead, paid a
high price for cheap steel.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think that Andrew Carnegie’s firsthand experience with the

mechanization of his father’s workplace might have affected his strategy in
steelmaking?
2. Do the benefits to society of having an Andrew Carnegie reshaping the
steel industry outweigh the costs to workers and competitors?
3. Can you think of other examples in which “creative destruction”
transformed the production of a material?
4. What materials might revolutionize contemporary life if they were suddenly
made abundant and cheap?

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 141

Key Terms
hard driving
creative destruction
bloom
slag
blast furnace
pig iron
vertical integration
economies of scale
throughput
open-hearth
puddler
Bessemer Process
blister steel

Author Biography
Sean Adams is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of History at the University of Florida
in Gainesville, where he teaches courses in the history of American capitalism, the global
history of energy and 19th-century U.S. history. His most recent book on energy
transitions and home heating is entitled Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the
19th Century (Johns Hopkins, 2014), and it explores the roots of America’s fossil fuel
dependency during the Industrial Revolution. He is also the author of Old Dominion,
Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America and a three-
volume anthology entitled The American Coal Industry, 1789–1902, along with numerous
articles, reviews, and book chapters.

Further Reading
Knowles, Anne Kelly. Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize and American Industry,
1800–1868. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
839276664.
Krass, Peter. Carnegie. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2002. http://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/50143490.
Standiford, Les. Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter
Partnership That Transformed America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1150266762.

142 | Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction

Notes

1. Michael Holt, Franklin Pierce (New York: Times Books, 2010), 50, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
435711537; Mark Aldrich, Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828–1965
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006), 19–20, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/213305539.
2. Harold Livesay, Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1975), 7–18, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/607827467.
3. Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth-Century America: An Economic Inquiry (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1964), 57–62, https://archive.org/details/ironsteelinninet00temi.; Robert
Gordon, American Iron, 1607–1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2001), 90–124,
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/72153.
4. David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Non-Union Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press,
1960), 50–57, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6707478.
5. S.H. Finch, “The Iron Industry in its Relation to Railways,” American Railroad Journal 58 (February
1885): 353–54, https://archive.org/details/5088829_58.
6. Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Press, 1995), 82–83, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/655201338
7. Thomas Misa, A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865–1925 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999), 45–89, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/540692649.
8. Harold Livesay, Andrew Carnegie, 109–23.
9. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1942), 83, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30488029.
10. Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead: 1880–1892 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1992),
245–51, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/608933009.
11. David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Penguin, 2006), 428–38, http://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/255688279.

Steel: Carnegie and Creative Destruction | 143

Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust
SEAN ADAMS

“There is no such thing as a good monopoly.” —Learned Hand

Abstract
This chapter uses Alcoa to tell the story of aluminum and antitrust. Although aluminum
is quite common now, it was a very difficult metal to refine before 1888. One American
company, Alcoa, was responsible for the rise in the application of aluminum to various
markets. In order to increase production and profits, Alcoa grew in both size and scope,
as did many American businesses during the early 20th century. Eventually, this company
controlled two-thirds of the world’s supply. But as Alcoa emerged as a big business,
federal policymakers considered it a dangerous threat to competitiveness in aluminum
production. Using the doctrine of antitrust, the United States successfully knocked Alcoa
down from its lofty place in worldwide markets in 1945. In doing so, those policy makers
believed they had struck a blow for competitiveness, but the larger question arises: is a
company that dominates the production of a single material bad in and of itself?

Introduction: Capping the Monument

Aluminum is the most common metal in the earth’s crust. It has amazing properties—it is
resistant to corrosion, its low density means that it is one of the most lightweight metals,
and it has a relatively low melting point, which means that it is easy to cast. We encounter
aluminum nearly every day: it is in our beverage cans, our automobiles, planes, and in
many of our kitchens. In fact, you might say that aluminum is the most commonplace
metal of all. But this was not always the case.
Take, for example, the story of the Washington Monument. America had been planning
to build some sort of memorial structure to commemorate the life of their first president,
George Washington, since the 1780s. But, as with many monuments, the construction
was subject to great controversy. One of the designs, for example, fell by the wayside
when it came out that the Pope had donated stone from an ancient Roman temple for its
construction. When anti-Catholic nativists found out about this, they slowed construction
on the project in the 1850s.

144 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust

 Two decades later, construction
resumed with a new design: a massive
obelisk with simple, clean lines that
formed a point at the top. Designers
thought that a metallic pyramid on top
could help with lightning and keep the
edges sharp and clean. After considering
bronze or copper, they decided instead to
use a metal known for its attractive
properties of conductivity and
durability—aluminum. But they did not
come to this decision because aluminum
was cheap. In fact, this metal was quite
expensive. In the 1880s, aluminum was
about $16 per pound, or more than some
American workers made in a week’s work,
and the eight-inch-high, cast-aluminum
Figure 8.1 Capping the Washington Monument in pyramid cost a whopping $225—over
December, 1884. [Engraving by S.H. Nealy, in
$5,500 in today’s prices. The idea of using
Harper’s Weekly (Dec. 20, 1884). Library of
Congress.] aluminum signaled the high value, not the
ubiquity, of this metal. When it was
completed, the Washington Monument was the tallest man-made structure in the world,
1
standing at 555 feet, and it was topped with aluminum.

Why is Alcoa Important?

At the dedication of the Washington Monument, aluminum was an exotic and expensive
material. Casting the pyramid took several tries, and the manufacturer was worried that
he might have use an aluminum-bronze alloy instead of pure aluminum. In fact, pure
aluminum was so rare it really was more of a luxury good than anything else. Some of the
royal families of Europe, for example, used aluminum dinnerware as a sign of their elite
status.

Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 145

 The idea that an American company might
unlock the secret of mass producing aluminum
and find hundreds of applications for its use
seems like a good one to us today; everyone likes
technological innovation and efficiency. But
what if this company grew so proficient at
manufacturing and marketing aluminum that it
controlled nearly two-thirds of the world’s
supply? Is it acceptable to have a single firm hold
that kind of market share? Should government
intervene to restore competition to that
industry? Those were the questions faced by a
company called the Aluminum Company of
America in the years following World War I. This
firm—later renamed Alcoa—was so good at
making and selling aluminum they nearly
cornered the market. But were they too
successful for their own good? That’s why the Figure 8.2 An Alcoa aluminum press in
story of aluminum is wrapped up with the idea of operation. Such facilities require massive
capital investments, which makes
antitrust, or the notion that a company that competition in aluminum production an
holds a huge market share operates as a expensive strategy. [Library of Congress.]
monopoly. So why was Alcoa in such trouble?
This chapter will use the story of Alcoa up to 1945, when the federal government
reduced the company’s market share through an antitrust case. This is an important
example of how the political and economic context of a material can be critical in
determining how it was made, what markets it serves, and how it becomes an important
part of everyday life. Aluminum was not common at all before the 20th century, but Alcoa
set out to change all of that. Along the way, they became almost too good at making
and marketing aluminum. How is that possible? And why should we be concerned if a
manufacturer is dominating markets, so long as that material is cheap and abundant? To
understand this question we need to understand the notion of antitrust, and how Alcoa
played a pivotal role in this uniquely American phenomenon.

The Origins of Big Business

Alcoa had its origins in the late 19th century, at a time when big businesses began to
dominate markets. Because of technological and organizational innovation, increasing
efficiency in production, and ruinous competition, prices fell steadily from the end of the
146 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust
Civil War to the mid-1890s. So the only way firms could control prices in the 19th century
industrial economy was to control market share. Basically, companies became bigger and
bigger in order to become price-makers and not price-takers; in other words, they didn’t
want to leave their business to the whims of the marketplace. Instead, they sought to
control their own economic strategies by growing in size and in scope, dominating the
market for their goods, and setting their own prices.
These large industrial firms tried to centralize production and cut costs. There were
two main goals. First, large firms built larger and larger factories in order to capture
what historians call economies of scale. Basically, before the Civil War, most industries
were subject to what economists referred to as “constant returns to scale.” This means
that although a bigger factory might allow the production of more goods, the costs
per unit were roughly the same; for example, if you put 100 looms in a factory, they
wouldn’t necessarily produce cheaper cloth per unit than a single loom. After the Civil
War, technological and organization changes brought “economies of scale,” which means
that a large, expensive plant could produce goods more cheaply on a per-unit basis
than small producers. Take, for example, flour mills and oil refineries: usually massive
capital outlays are required to build such plants. Second, managers focused on increasing
throughput within those factories. Throughput is basically a measure of the speed and
volume of the flow of materials through a single plant or works. A high rate of
throughput—which managers usually measured in terms of units processed per
day—became the critical criterion of mass production. If a company did well on these
measures, it likely was a large corporation with a huge physical infrastructure—a great
departure from the small-scale businesses of earlier in the 19th century.

Checking the Trusts

Economists call a system in which a few large corporations dominate the marketplace
“oligarchic.” Historians say that the Era of Big Business saw the rise of the “trusts,” which
refers to Standard Oil’s legal maneuver to control over 90 percent of the oil refining
business in the US economy via a system in which companies surrendered stock
certificates—and control of their companies—to John D. Rockefeller via his Standard Oil
Trust. Many Americans thought that the government should do something about the
unchecked power of these trusts in industries like oil, sugar, beef, steel, and even whiskey.
After all, if a company has a commanding market share, who is to say that they won’t
jack prices up to monopolistic levels? This kind of control seemed undemocratic and, to
many voters, un-American. So in 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which
made “restraints of trade” illegal and aspired to break up trusts that undermined the public
interest. But the statute was vague in defining these principles.
Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 147
 What is a “restraint of trade,” and how do
you find it? The law didn’t provide any
guidelines or examples, so enforcement of
the law, by default, fell in the hands of the
federal government to determine what a
monopoly was and what wasn’t.
So how do you enforce a law that is so
vague? Actually, the Department of Justice
first used the Sherman Act against unions.
Of the first 10 cases tried under the
legislation, five were against unions that
supposedly acted in “constraint of trade.”
In 1895, the Supreme Court seemed to get
the ideal opportunity to break up a trust.
The American Sugar Refining Company
acted in sugar in much the same way that
Standard Oil did for oil. But worse, they
Figure 8.3 This cartoon uses baseball as a
controlled about 98 percent of market
metaphor for how the “trusts” were perceived as share by the 1890s. But even though the
dominating businesses and hurting Americans. sugar trust dominated the American
[Drawing by Frederick Opper (ca. 1901). Library of
Congress.] market, the Supreme Court, in United
States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895), made a
very strict—and to be honest, very dubious—distinction between the Sherman Antitrust
Act’s applicability to commerce and its applicability to manufacturing. The Court argued
that antitrust laws really only applied to commerce, not manufacturing, and unless the
American Sugar Refining Company built a factory that literally straddled a state boundary,
the issue was for state courts, not the Supreme Court, to decide. Since the four major
sugar refineries owned by the American Sugar Refining Company were in Pennsylvania, it
2
was a matter for the Pennsylvania courts to decide.

Big Business Gets Even Bigger

The way that American courts enforced antitrust meant that firms couldn’t form any kind
of informal organization, like a cartel or trust. So horizontal integration offered the best
strategy: you simply acquire your competitors and increase your market share. That way
you create major barriers to your potential competitors because they’ll have to catch up in
the race to achieve economies of scale. To pursue this strategy, many firms used mergers
or the outright hostile acquisition of other firms. The first major merger wave in American
148 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust
history occurred during the years 1895 through 1904. Over this stretch of nine years, more
than 2,000 previously independent firms disappeared. In 1899, there were about 1,200
recorded mergers—pretty huge considering that there were fewer than 100 mergers in
1896, fewer than 400 in 1900, and then back to fewer than 100 in 1904. The firms that
emerged from this merger movement often dominated markets and continued to expand
in size through both horizontal and vertical integration.
Here’s an example: In 1898, three regional
companies—New York Biscuit, American Biscuit and
Manufacturing, and the United States Baking
Company—joined to form the National Biscuit Company. The
directors of the new firm decided to embark upon a two-
pronged strategy—centralize production through buying out
competition and integrate forward to the customer. So after
1900, National Biscuit attempted to capture economies of
scale through the consolidation of production facilities and
increases in throughput. They also tried to develop specific
brand names, like “Uneeda Biscuit,” and blitzed consumers
with increased advertising. With this strategy, National
Biscuit kept unit costs low and created major barriers to
entry for new competitors, who were limited to a few firms
structured like National Biscuit, but usually operating on a
regional scale. Many industries had their version of National
Biscuit by the early 20th century: U.S. Steel, American
Tobacco, American Bell, and the International Paper Figure 8.4 As big businesses
Company. attempted to capture market
share, they often
mass-produced products
Aluminum Becomes Cheap meant to insure consumer
loyalty. [Ad by National Biscuit
So what does this all have to do with Alcoa? Well, at about Company (1899). Wikimedia
Commons.]
the same time that the Sherman Act appeared and American
businesses started to grow so rapidly, there were changes in the aluminum business.
Charles Martin Hall, in Oberlin, Ohio, was experimenting in the woodshed of his kitchen
and developed an inexpensive way to smelt aluminum. In 1888, he filed a patent for his
discovery and organized the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which in 1907 was renamed
the Aluminum Company of America, later shortened to just Alcoa. Hall was initially excited
about his breakthrough, until he learned that Paul Héroult of France had discovered the
same thing at virtually the same point in history. Héroult got a French patent, but never
really spun his aluminum process into a commercially viable endeavor.
Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 149
 The use of an electric current is the best way
to reduce aluminum oxide back to aluminum.
However aluminum oxide is an insulator. The
Hall-Héroult Process, as it is called, smelts
aluminum metal by passing an electric current
through a solution of aluminum oxide (obtained
from a mineral called Bauxite) mixed with a
substance called cryolite, which is sodium
aluminum fluoride. The cryolite melts at a
much lower temperature than aluminum oxide,
and the melt is electrically conducting. In
addition, aluminum oxide will dissolve in the
molten cryolite, enabling electrical reduction
of the aluminum oxide to metallic aluminum.
After running the current through this
solution, pure aluminum begins to form on the
end of a graphite rod. Initially, this process
Figure 8.5 Charles Martin Hall in the 1880s. made very small amounts of aluminum, but
[Wikimedia Commons.] once larger pots and a steady source of
electricity could be applied, this once very difficult task of smelting aluminum became
3
commercially viable.

Selling Aluminum
When the Washington Monument was capped with an aluminum pyramid in 1884, it
was about $16 per pound—that’s nearly $400 per pound in today’s prices—but Hall’s
process initially reduced that cost in half, and by 1900 his company could make aluminum
for about 33 cents per pound. Aluminum very quickly evolved from an exotic metal
to a lightweight material that had many potential functions. At first Alcoa sold mostly
ingot and sheet aluminum, and soon moved “downstream” towards the consumer and
made new goods. Teakettles and utensils, for example, became part of their lineup when
they acquired utensil manufacturers. Aluminum’s non-corrosive properties allowed the
company to sell sheeting and tubing as well. And by 1908, they were fabricating wire and
moved into the utilities market. As the automobile market developed, aluminum was a
natural fit because of its lightweight alloys.
Alcoa grew very rapidly: from 1900 to 1914, the company’s capital surged from $2.3
million to more than $90 million. During that time, the firm’s leaders, Arthur Vining Davis
and Alfred Hunt, embarked upon a policy of rapid growth in order to achieve economies
150 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust
of scale. They built a massive facility to generate electricity at Niagara Falls and moved
beyond Pittsburgh to build large smelting facilities in New York State, Tennessee, and
Canada. In order to improve throughput, Alcoa acquired bauxite mines in Arkansas and
built a refining plant in East St. Louis to create alumina (aluminum oxide), the material
that the Hall-Héroult Process used in order to refine aluminum metal. World War I was
particularly good for business, as Alcoa increased production from 109 million to 152
million pounds; wartime applications took up to 90 percent of the firm’s production.
But government officials were wary, and in 1917 the War Industries Board accused the
company of unfair practices when they charged a bit more for aluminum canteens than
4
the market price. Scrutiny of Alcoa—and talk of antitrust proceedings—began to increase.

The Antitrust Problem Starts

Part of the problem was that Alcoa was
coming of age during the time that the
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the
Clayton Act appeared in 1914. The FTC was
created as an independent commission to
enforce antitrust laws. It had five members
who were elected to seven-year terms in
order to isolate them from political
Figure 8.6 Example of a World War 1 aluminum influences. The FTC supposedly had
canteen broadly granted investigatory powers and
could theoretically order businesses to
stop a particular action if members thought the firm was acting in violation of antitrust
laws. The Clayton Act shored up antitrust laws by making certain practices illegal. It did
not allow contracts between firms that restricted firms from doing business with
competitors, and it did not allow price discrimination in the effort to limit competition.
For labor unions, the Clayton Act was important because it ruled that unions were not
illegal combinations in the constraint of trade (remember that this is what the Sherman
Antitrust Act was originally used to enforce). All this shoring up of antitrust agencies
meant that Alcoa’s executives had a great deal to worry about as they grew their market
share during World War I.
The Southern Aluminum Company, centered in Badin, North Carolina, and backed
by French investment capital, attempted to compete with Alcoa in markets across the
American South. This gambit failed—Alcoa was too strong by this point—and the
company’s Board of Directors voted to sell all of their assets. In the era of American Big
Business, this should have been a classic case of merger and acquisition, but Alcoa walked
Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 151
cautiously in this case. And although it bought the assets of Southern Aluminum Company
in 1915, Alcoa asked for clearance from the FTC. This process was called “advance advice,”
and it was one potential way for U.S. policymakers to regulate the growth of industrial
5
firms.
Nevertheless, Alcoa had become an effective monopoly. Arthur Varning Davis admitted
as much when he testified before the War Industries Board in 1918. “I suppose it has always
been our aim to foster this industry,” he told government officials. Alcoa considered itself
to be the “father as well as the creator of this industry,” and in regards to competition, “it
has always been our conception that the stability of price was the basis on which to build
6
the industry.”

Finding Markets for Aluminum

In the 1920s and 1930s, Alcoa began aggressively
expanding its product line and aluminum became
a commonplace metal in American industries and
in the home. There were lightweight window
frames, decorative railings, and all sorts of goods
that took advantage of aluminum’s special
properties. In products that needed to be light, for
example, aluminum could replace iron or copper.
The virtues of aluminum’s resistance to corrosion
also became a selling point for many products. In
1928, an Alcoa ad bragged that “the transforming
power of aluminum paint” could transform dingy
7
industrial villages into modern towns.
In 1930, Alcoa built the Aluminum Research
Laboratory, in which the company enlisted full-
time research scientists at New Kensington,
Pennsylvania, to develop new alloys and products
and to improve the smelting and refining process. Figure 8.7 The decorative doors leading
The scientists there worked on plastics, stainless into the Aluminum Research Laboratory in
New Kensington, PA. They are made out of,
steel, nickel alloys, and magnesium. They not only you guessed it, aluminum. [Library of
worked on aluminum products for contemporary Congress.]
times, but also tried to anticipate alternative
technologies that might replace aluminum. Basically, Alcoa paid very smart engineers and
scientists to think of ways to reduce the cost and promote the use of aluminum. It was
about as close to “pure” research as one could find in the private sector, and Alcoa’s

152 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust

commanding market share shielded the Aluminum Research Laboratory’s staff from the
pressure to develop new products immediately.

The Federal Government Acts

But even though it fostered a corporate culture of size and stability, Alcoa’s dominance
over aluminum markets created problems for the firm. In 1938, Alcoa celebrated its
50th anniversary while preparing a defense against an antitrust lawsuit. The Justice
Department wanted to “create substantial competition in the industry by rearranging the
plants and properties of the Aluminum Company and its subsidiaries under separate and
independent corporations.” During the New Deal Era of the 1930s, American policymakers
became more and more concerned that large industrial corporations were dominating the
economic landscape. Even though Alcoa was not rapacious in dealing with its competitors,
the Department of Justice argued that its size and market share alone made it an
appropriate target for antitrust proceedings. The case lasted 176 days, Alcoa spent $2
million defending itself, and, although the case was undecided when Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor in late 1941, it continued during the war. One of Alcoa’s executives complained, “If
we are a monopoly, it is not of our choosing.” Despite the lawsuit, Alcoa became heavily
involved in the war effort, producing 3.5 billion pounds of aluminum that went toward
the manufacture of 304,000 airplanes. Many of these airplanes used alloys that Alcoa had
8
developed in their laboratories.

Nonetheless, the government still

pursued the case and in 1945, on appeal, a
Circuit Court justice with the greatest
legal name of all time, Learned Hand, gave
the verdict. He argued that there was no
such thing as a “good monopoly” and that
there was no way that any company could
achieve a monopoly share simply through
efficiency and good business practice. So,
in the postwar years, Alcoa saw many of its
Figure 8.8 During World War II, Alcoa helped
build the American bomber fleet. Not all of them facilities sold for pennies on the dollar to
were named after aluminum like this one, but all of its competitors, Reynolds Aluminum and
them utilized aluminum parts. [Florida State
Archives.]
Kaiser Aluminum. In 1950, the Court set
Alcoa’s market share at 50.85%, which, at
least in their eyes, put them in a more competitive relationship with Reynolds (30.94%)
9
and Kaiser (18.2%).
Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 153
A Post-Alcoa World
This application of the Sherman Antitrust Act really had a major impact on American
business. If Alcoa could be broken up because of its market share alone, then other firms
might be wary of achieving economies of scale and improving throughput in order to
repeat Alcoa’s success. In the postwar era, many large industrial firms chose to grow in a
completely different fashion. Whereas Alcoa sought to gain control over the production of
10
a single material, many postwar firms sought to grow in completely different ways.
For example, take the story of Textron, which began as a textile business. Its owner,
Royal Little, was good at making textiles, but after the Second World War, the textile
industry was a volatile one that suffered immensely from market swings. Little knew that
he wasn’t going to dominate the textile industry; even if he did, in the post-Alcoa antitrust
environment, the Supreme Court would probably come after him. Beginning in 1954,
Little devised a new strategy for Textron. He began acquiring small- and intermediate-
sized firms at a rate of about two per month, and he was borrowing heavily to do it.
In 1956 alone, Textron purchased firms that made cement, aluminum, bagging, plywood,
leather, and Hawaiian cruise ships. Little also began to sell off Textron’s unprofitable
divisions—many of which were in textiles—and by 1963 he had sold the last of Textron’s
textile plants. By 1968, Little was in semi-retirement and Textron had revenues of $1.7
billion and earnings of $76 million. It was number 49 on Fortune Magazine’s list of the 500
largest companies—even ahead of Alcoa, which had dropped to number 56!
The other example of the move away from Alcoa’s growth strategy is the story of
International Telephone and Telegraph, or ITT. This firm was founded as a small telephone
company in Puerto Rico and Cuba in the 1920s, and it was moderately successful when
Harold Geneen took it over in 1959. After that point, ITT began to expand rapidly. It
acquired Avis in 1965, Cleveland Motels in 1967, and Pennsylvania Glass and Sand,
Continental Baking, and Sheraton Hotels, all in 1968. You can see where this is headed.
But ITT was even more expansionist than Textron: By 1970, ITT had 331 subsidiaries and
708 subdivisions. It operated in 70 countries, had 400,000 employees, and sales of $5.5
billion—and was ranked number 21 on that same 1968 Fortune 500 list! Both ITT and
Textron proved to the business world that you could get big fast—and you didn’t even
have to be particularly innovative in what you produced. With some creative accounting,
gutsy acquisitions, and stock swaps, Textron and ITT became giants over the course of a
decade. And they did it with a completely different strategy than Alcoa. Rather than make
one thing exceptionally well, conglomerates sought to make profits across many markets
and avoid antitrust problems altogether.

154 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust

The Beer Can Barons
Don’t weep too much for Alcoa in the postwar era. From 1946 to 1958, its gross revenues
tripled up to $869 million. One writer in 1955 called it Alcoa’s “splendid retreat” from
monopoly. By 1952, moreover, aluminum had passed copper in civilian consumption and
now is second only to iron. In 1977, the NASA’s Space Shuttle Enterprise, covered by
an aluminum alloy, made its maiden voyage on top of a specially modified Boeing 747
jetliner, also covered with an aluminum alloy. But in addition to conquering sky and space,
aluminum became integrated into daily life through more humble means. In new markets,
like beer and soft drink containers, aluminum went from less than two percent of the
market in 1964 to 95 percent in 1986.

Legacy
But the question remains, is a
commanding market share indication of a
troubled industry, or can a company be too
good at its business? That’s why Alcoa’s
story is important to consider. The bottom
line is that Alcoa did popularize the use of
aluminum among American consumers,
made the company’s products cheaper,
and contributed to the growth of the
industrial economy of the 20th Figure 8.9 An example of aluminum’s value to the
modern world: the Space Shuttle Enterprise hitches
century—particularly in vital sectors like a ride on a 747. Both are covered in aluminum
the airline industry. But as the name of alloys. [NASA.]
Alcoa became synonymous with the
production of aluminum, it also became notorious among antitrust circles. In the end, the
federal government decided that such a large company was naturally incompatible with
their view of modern industrial capitalism. The breakup of Alcoa hardly destroyed the
company, but it did send a larger message out to firms like Alcoa that might have forged
ahead with the large-scale production of their materials. In the postwar American
economy, companies still grew large, but often did so with a completely different strategy
than Alcoa had employed in its first half-century of growth. So not only did the emergence
of Alcoa help structure the American economy of the early 20th century—quite literally in
the case of aluminum construction products—but its breakup helped structure the ways
in which businesses grew in the late 20th century in the United States.

Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 155

 Discussion Questions

1. Can you think of any other materials that are currently considered luxury
products, but might revolutionize everyday life if they became more widely
available?
2. Do you agree with Alcoa’s early strategy of engaging both in the mass
production of aluminum and developing new markets for aluminum
products? Were company officials seeding their own destruction by trying
to do everything with aluminum?
3. Do you think that antitrust actions against Alcoa helped or hindered the
American economy in the long run?
4. Do you think that there is a need for antitrust legislation today? Does the
federal government need to break up large companies in the interest of
competitiveness?

Key Terms
antitrust
monopoly
economies of scale
throughput
horizontal integration
Sherman Antitrust Act
Hall-Héroult Process

Further Reading
Carr, Charles. ALCOA: An American Enterprise. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1952.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/236816.
Peck, Merton J., ed. The World Aluminum Industry in a Changing Energy Era. Washington,
DC: Resources for the Future, 1988. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/756989950.

156 | Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust

 Stuckey, John. Vertical Integration and Joint Ventures in the Aluminum Industry.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/924980139.

Author Biography
Sean Adams is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of History at the University of Florida
in Gainesville, where he teaches courses in the history of American capitalism, the global
history of energy and 19th century U.S. history. His most recent book on energy
transitions and home heating is entitled Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the
19th Century (Johns Hopkins, 2014) and it explores the roots of America’s fossil fuel
dependency during the Industrial Revolution. He is also the author of Old Dominion,
Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America and a three-
volume anthology entitled The American Coal Industry, 1789–1902, along with numerous
articles, reviews, and book chapters.

Notes

1. George J. Binczewski, "The Point of a Monument: A History of the Aluminum Cap of the
Washington Monument," JOM 7 (1995): 20–25, http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/
binczewski-9511.html.
2. Naomi Lameroux, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904 (New York:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), 164–66, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1157046408.
3. "Hall Process: Production and Commercialization of Aluminum," National Historic Chemical
Landmarks, American Chemical Society, http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/
whatischemistry/landmarks/aluminumprocess.html.
4. Alfred Chandler, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 2009), 122–24, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1041153323.
5. Mira Wilkins, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914–1945 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Univ. Press, 2009), 32–33, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1041152151.
6. George David Smith, From Monopoly to Competition: The Transformations of Alcoa, 1888–1986
(New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), 112–13, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/908388984.
7. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985), 262, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35117815.
8. Smith, From Monopoly to Competition, 191–202.
9. Smith, 242.
10. A. Tony Freyer, Antitrust and Global Capitalism, 1930–2004 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press,
2006), 32–40, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/286424757.

Aluminum: Alcoa and Anti-Trust | 157

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar
America
MARSHA BRYANT

“Plastic is, all told, a spectacle to be deciphered: the very spectacle of its end-
products. At the sight of each terminal form (suitcase, brush, car-body, toy, fabric,
tube, basin or paper), the mind does not cease from considering the original
1
matter as an enigma.” —Roland Barthes

Abstract
This chapter explores how social and cultural systems such as language, gender,
aesthetics, home design, and advertising shape the ways we perceive the intrinsic physical
properties of materials. Because of their ubiquity in consumer culture, plastics prove
especially interesting in these contexts. Even the word plastic bears multiple meanings
that shape our complicated relationship with this versatile material. The story of
Tupperware’s invention, distribution, and marketing offers a case study of how materials
acquire meanings that shape the ways we publicize and use them. A new polyethylene
product in postwar America, the Tupperware bowl became an enduring museum object as
well as a household icon.

Introduction
What’s in a name? Shakespeare asked in Romeo and Juliet. With plastics, a synthetic
material made from polymers, the answer is complicated. Wherever you’re reading this,
you’re likely within reaching distance of at least one plastic product: a cellphone or laptop
case, a water bottle, a credit card, a pen, a trash receptacle. Plastics are all around us,
every day. Our relationships with plastics can be as richly diverse as the shapes and colors
these malleable materials can assume. Plastics also shape our material relations through
brand names such as Fiberfil, Mylar, Plexiglas, Teflon, and Tupperware. Even the word
plastic comes preloaded with contradictory meanings.

Plastics and the Power of Naming

Untangling these scientific and cultural meanings reveals our vexed relationship with

158 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

plastics. The word’s Greek origins link plastic to plassein (to mold), a dynamic process
that makes plastics attractive to manufacturers. Easily shaped through heat and other
applications of force, plastics are pliable, ductile, flexible. This technical meaning
highlights the material’s incredible capacity to transform. In the biological sciences,
plastic means adaptable to environmental changes. Plastic also has aesthetic meanings:
three-dimensional modeling, or giving the effect of three dimensions. A more plastic
model or actor offers more creative possibilities for the canvas or camera. The word can
mean an expanded scope for creativity; a medium such as paint or stone can become
plastic in an artist’s hands. All of these positive meanings make plastic products attractive
to manufacturers and advertisers.
Yet there’s a flip side to plastics embedded
the same word: plassein also means to feign. In
social relations, plastic can mean superficial or
false. A plastic performer is someone you’d like
to see on stage. But a plastic person is someone
you’d likely consider phony and avoid. These
negative social meanings also affect the
material’s marketability, even as plastic
products continue to fill stores and household
shelves. A manufacturer may like plastics
because they are cheap to produce. But a
consumer may reject a product that looks
cheap or gaudy. No wonder we have a love-
Figure 9.1 Young Poly Styrene in London. hate relationship with this material! British
[Photo by Gus Stewart, reprinted in Rolling
Stone, June 2012.]
punk artist Poly Styrene distilled the tension of
plastic’s cultural meanings in her stage name.
In the late 1970s the punk aesthetic prompted disaffected youth to thumb their studded
noses at a British establishment that offered them “no future,” as the Sex Pistols
proclaimed in their punk anthem “God Save the Queen.” Poly Styrene created a rebellious
identity for young women through her unconventional attire and anti-commercial lyrics,
sporting vinyl accessories and shout-singing edgy songs like “Plastic Bag” with her band,
X-Ray Spex. In riotous fashion, Poly Styrene embodied and rejected the artificial culture
she saw all around her. She took the name of a common plastic and made it a punk icon.

Seeing Plastics through New Eyes

Responding to postwar mass culture in the late 1950s, French literary and cultural critic
Roland Barthes included an essay on plastics in his influential book Mythologies (1958).
Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 159
Originally published in a literary journal, the book’s analyses ventured boldly beyond
Barthes’s traditional academic field. He assessed how household products and new
technologies transformed everyday life in ways he considered mythic: they gave
contemporary society its primary means of cultural coherence, functioning as a secular
religion. Barthes saw in modern plastics the fulfillment of an ancient dream: alchemy,
the transmutation of matter. Enchanted by the names of consumer plastics, he imagined
polystyrene, polyvinyl, and polyethylene as Greek shepherds in a world of gods and
monsters. Instead of viewing plastics through the lenses of science, engineering, and
technology, Barthes viewed them through language, literature, and philosophy. The
material was magical for Barthes because it was alive with possibility: “More than a
2
substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation.” Sounding as much like
an ad man as a philosopher, Barthes pitched plastics as nothing short of miraculous.
How can we see this material through new eyes? How has plastic been a fantastic
material for inventors, design critics, and advertisers? If we stretch our thinking across
academic fields, we can draw from key historical encounters with modern plastics and
imagine new possibilities. Earl Tupper, inventor of Tupperware products, saw such
promise in postwar polyethylene that he called it Poly-T: Material of the Future. At the
corporation’s Florida headquarters, legendary businesswoman Brownie Wise put raw
polyethylene pellets in “Poly Pond”—sprinkling its water on successful saleswomen to give
3
them “Tupper Magic.” Perceiving polyethylene with as much imagination as practicality,
Tupper and Wise translated their visions into patent applications and successful sales
strategies, respectively.
For plastics to fulfill their potential, Robert
Friedel wrote in Pioneer Plastic (1983), there
should ultimately be a “function for every
4
plastic and a plastic for every function.” Given
plastic’s many types and possibilities, this
material will be with us for a long time;
polyethylene alone reached a global supply of
5
100 metric tons in 2014. Like other
thermoplastics, it can assume new shapes and
consistencies when heated, melted, and Figure 9.2 Vent ‘N Serve containers. [Photo
courtesy Tupperware Brands Corporation.]
injected into a mold. The polyethylene that
Tupper encountered as a plastics sample maker was an industrial waste product—opaque,
greasy, clumpy black slag. With these unappealing properties, polyethylene seemed
unsuitable for the household market. Tupper would refine polyethylene into a translucent
plastic that could take on a range of colors, yielding what journalist Bob Kealing calls “a

160 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

 6
polished, waxy, upscale plastic.” You might say Tupper transformed polyethylene from
slag to swag.
How could something as simple as polyethylene become so compelling at the dawn
of the space age? How did this material meet people’s needs, and how did it change
society? Why did design experts love plastics? Cultural historian Alison Clarke explains
that Tupperware products mattered because they were “at once mundane and
7
extraordinary.” As we shall see, Tupper’s ingenious refinement of polyethylene and Wise’s
sales acumen made productive use of plastic’s versatility.

How the Tupperware Brand Came to Be

Three key moments in American history shaped the fortunes of Tupperware products’
inventor, material (polyethylene), and master promoter: the Great Depression (1929–1940),
World War II (1939–1945), and the postwar boom (1946–1960). The first gave Earl Tupper
his deeply ingrained values of thrift, resourcefulness, and positive thinking. The second
gave polyethylene (and other plastics) new applications in the war industry. And the third
gave Brownie Wise an opportune moment to revolutionize direct sales in American homes.

The Homemade Inventor, Earl Tupper

Earl Silas Tupper came of age during the Great Depression, sustained and seasoned by
kinship, manual labor, and relentless self-improvement. Born in New Hampshire in 1907
to a farming family, Tupper grew up in a Massachusetts household that often struggled
to make ends meet. Ambitious and enterprising since boyhood, Tupper tinkered with
ways to improve farm chores. At age 10 he took his parents’ produce door-to-door to
boost sales. Tupper finished his formal education with high school in 1925, working at the
small plant nursery his parents had started after they abandoned farming. He also started
his first business as a tree surgeon and landscaper. A self-taught inventor and domestic
entrepreneur, Tupper fashioned a wide-ranging personal curriculum that included taking
correspondence classes, visiting libraries and trade fairs, reading widely, and writing
regularly. His sketchbook and invention journal had plans ranging from egg peeling clamps
8
to a giant theme park he named Cosmopolita World.
While he kept his eye on the future, Tupper drew inspiration from legendary thinkers
such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Edison. In his notebook, he
wrote: “An inventive, intuitive, enthusiastic and trained mind continues to experiment,
9
study, search and develop along an entire line of human endeavor.” Tupper drew from
humanities, science, technology, and business to make history as a plastics inventor. We
can see his continuing influence on American innovation at the Smithsonian Institution.

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 161

The National Museum of American History houses his papers, and the Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute in Panama houses the Earl S. Tupper Research and Conference
Center to foster research and development across the sciences.

Earl Tupper’s Homemade Curriculum for Innovation

• Technology
• Literature
• Popular magazines (including American Home, Popular Mechanics,
Literary Guild)
• Writing (personal journals and notebooks)
• Advertising (correspondence school)
• Industry experience (Doyle Factory, DuPont)
• Following business trends (trade shows, the New York World’s Fair)
• Consulting with women about product designs (family, neighbors,
coworkers)

The Great Depression and Tupper’s farming background played formative roles in how he
conceived his breakthrough invention. In an economy of scarcity, thrift and wastefulness
loom large; survival depends on making the best uses of what you have. Observing the
women working all around him, the young Tupper resolved to make domestic life
easier—from cleaning chickens to washing dishes. As Clarke explains, he believed that
thrifty provisioning and modern technology could sustain home and society; by contrast,
extravagant consumption wasted time and materials. This ideology shaped his early
10
promotions about Tupperware products paying for themselves. Though not cheaply
priced, the product’s durability and superior seal preserved pantry staples and saved
leftovers, stretching household budgets and reducing waste. (The Tupperware Ladies
pitched this feature with a new word: plan-overs.)

162 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

Material Transformations
The plastic material that Tupper would
transform for the household
market—polyethylene slag—was an industrial
waste product he encountered after his tree
surgery business failed. In 1937 he moved with
his wife and sons to try his fortunes at the
Doyle Works, a plastics factory affiliated with
DuPont. Through such small operations,
DuPont employed amateur sample makers to
further plastics research and development. Figure 9.3 Earl Tupper. [Tupperware.com.]
This mutually advantageous arrangement gave Tupper access to scrap material, allowing
him to take it home and invent prototypes. When polyethylene production took off in the
United States in 1943, the material proved primarily important for wartime uses such as
insulation, container linings, cable coatings, gaskets, and tubing. Tupper would
domesticate polyethylene, viewing the material as a World War II veteran now ready for
11
civilian tasks.
Working to overcome the material’s limitations, Tupper
wanted to produce a plastic more durable than molded
transparent styrene. He wanted something that could flex
without breaking, something that could stand up to lemon
juice and vinegar, something physically appealing to
12
homemakers. In fact, women were integral to Tupper’s
design breakthrough. He often interviewed female relatives,
neighbors, and coworkers to foster ideas for his inventions: a
dish rack with drains, better knitting needles, eyebrow dye
shields. He had a capable and dedicated partner in his wife,
Marie. She would give him tools to improve his sample
13
making, and he would give her his new inventions.
After Tupper’s initial failures with the injection molding
Figure 9.4 Tupper’s patent machines, he took samples home and asked his son Myles to
drawings for non-snap lid.
put them in boiling water and remove each at a specified time.
[Google Patents.]
Eventually Tupper found the right balance of pressure and
temperature, so the polyethylene flowed into various shapes of the desired thickness. He
also fashioned a system for dying his translucent containers in pastel colors. But he
needed something else: the right lid. As Kealing points out, many American women had

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 163

relied on tin foil or shower caps to cover their leftovers. Tupper turned to an everyday
object for inspiration: paint cans. He fashioned a flexible polyethylene lid that allowed
an airtight seal, protected and preserved food, prevented spills. With a simple hand
movement, you could manipulate the seal to expel air. He founded the Earl S. Tupper
Company in 1939, which became the Tupper Corporation in 1947. That same year, an
article in Time magazine hailed the inventor for “a process which overcomes the material’s
tendency to split, makes it tough enough to withstand almost anything except knife
14
cuts and near-boiling water.” The toughness of Tupperware products makes a comic
appearance in the film Napoleon Dynamite (2004) when salesman Uncle Rico urges a client
to tear the product with his bare hands—an impossible task.

Activity: Explore the Museum of Modern Art Website

Navigate to the MoMA Learning

website and search for “tupperware.”
How does the product’s display as a
museum object change your
perception of its material?

Click Browse by Theme and enter

plastic. Click the Theme box Plastic at
the top left, and check out the MoMA Learning
resources. If you click Tools & Tips,
you’ll find worksheets on design and environmental issues.

On the same page under Multimedia, you’ll find a brief video on plastics
produced in 1944 for the Young America series. How would you promote plastics
to your own generation?

Polyethylene as Everyday Art Object

In 1948, the Tupper Corporation’s tea set made the Modern Plastics Encyclopedia as an
ideal incarnation of domestic polyethylene. If you think about it, plastic seems an unlikely
material for this purpose. We don’t usually count plastics with traditional wedding gifts

164 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

and family treasures: silver, china, and crystal. Yet we find the Tupperware pitcher and
creamer in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), along with Tupper’s tumblers, bowls, and
“Ice-Tups” (his ingenious popsicle molds). MoMA curators included Tupperware products
in “Good Design” exhibitions in the 1950s, as well as the 2011 exhibition “What was Good
Design? MoMA’s Message, 1944–1956.”

Key Concept: Modernist Aesthetics 101

“No ideas but in things.” —William Carlos Williams,

physician and poet

• Form over function

• Autonomy of objects
• Objects can transcend the ordinary
• Clean lines, geometric designs
• Classical restraint over Romantic excess
• Authenticity
• Directness
• Experimental form

“Not Ideas about the Thing, but the Thing Itself.”

—Wallace Stevens, business executive and poet
“Cadeau” (The Gift).
[Sculpture by Man Ray (1921),
Tate Modern. Wikipedia
Commons.]
Just as Tupper made plastic respectable for middle-class
Americans, he turned polyethylene into an artistic medium. In 1947, an editor for House
Beautiful enthused that Tupperware bowls “have a profile as good as a piece of sculpture,”
declaring that the product satisfies “our aesthetic craving to handle, feel and study
beautiful things.” Tupper’s timing was good because his product fit the aesthetics of
modernism, an established style in museums, publishing, and universities. Tupperware
products redeemed common plastic through a superior form that fused beauty with
utility. As Clarke explains, they fulfilled modernism’s “ideal of a tasteful, restrained, and
15
mass-produced artifact, free of inauthentic decoration and gratuitous ornament.” The
product brought class to “mass.” And above all, it was true to its material. You can see the

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 165

modernist heritage of Tupperware products in this contemporary video ad for the
Tupperware Breakfast Maker. Note how the camera highlights the sleek, colorful design,
bringing plastic to life.

How Tupperware Became an American Icon

Tupper’s timing was also fortuitous because of postwar changes in American home and
family life—the third historical context that shaped his product’s fortunes. New social
spaces—suburbs—refashioned family relations for many Americans, prompting them to
move away from the city (and their extended families). As historian Elaine Tyler May
points out, “the legendary white middle-class family of the 1950s, located in the suburbs,
complete with appliances, station wagons, backyard barbecues, and tricycles scattered
16
on the sidewalks, represented something new.” These postwar couples in their ranch
houses were suburban pioneers. Like their mythic counterparts Ward and June Cleaver
on television, the Breadwinner and Housewife roles created a gendered division of labor
outside and inside the home. Breadwinner donned his gray flannel suit for his morning
commute to the office, conforming to a role that social analyst William Whyte termed
the Organization Man. Housewife provisioned her home and performed the three C’s:
cleaning, cooking, and childrearing. She conformed to the new standard of
professionalized homemaking, and she was an ideal customer for Tupper’s ingenious
products. May points out that housewives wielded considerable buying power in postwar
America: “In the five years after World War II, consumer spending increased 60%, but
17
the amount spent on household furnishings and appliances rose 240%.” But even so,
Tupperware products weren’t flying off the shelves.

The Savvy Saleswoman, Brownie Wise

Brownie Wise changed Tupper’s fortunes when he noticed her unusually large orders
coming out of Detroit in 1949. A door-to-door seller for Stanley Home Products, Wise had
formed her own side business to promote Tupperware products with “Poly-T Parties.” She
found the Wonder Bowl distinctive enough to sell, but she fumbled with the seal—until she
18
realized that “you had to burp it just like a baby.” And with that personal analogy Brownie
Wise made Earl Tupper’s product come alive in American homes. A television commercial
from the 1950s shows a Tupperware party; note the female voiceover and the hands-on
demonstrations.
Wise did not see Tupperware products as museum objects to be looked at; they were
beautiful things to touch and handle. Her early sales plan insisted that a good “visual
19
demonstration” is the “means of creating a desire for the product.” Wise knew how

166 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

to handle her material, too. In her hands, Tupperware products burped up sales. In
her hands, Liquid-filled Wonder Bowls flew across American living rooms, astonishing
housewives with that airtight seal. In her hands, the Tupperware Home Parties Division
made Tupperware a household word. Tupper made her general sales manager in 1951, and
she became a vice president.
The first woman to appear on the cover of Business
Week (April 1954), Wise transformed materials marketing
as dramatically as Tupper had transformed polyethylene.
With even less formal education than Tupper, Wise
overcame financial hardship with resourcefulness and
determination. A divorced single mother in Detroit, she
turned to sales to supplement her low-wage secretarial
job and pay her son’s medical bills. Her sales experience
helped Wise hone her techniques for selling Tupperware
products and recruiting dealers. As Kealing explains, she
turned away from the “hard sell” for a softer approach
that stressed “the social and emotional aspects” of the
20
transaction. Wise praised her Detroit dealers for stand-
Figure 9.5 Brownie Wise. out parties and sales figures in her upbeat newsletter, the
[Business Week (April 17, 1954).]
Go-Getter; it eventually became the Tupperware Sparks
publication for a national sales force. Wise wrote guidelines for successful
demonstrations—and for sizing up potential Tupperware Ladies. She also published her
autobiography, Best Wishes, Brownie Wise (1957), reprinted 40 years later to motivate a
global sales force.
Wise convinced Tupper to fundamentally change his marketing strategy. Taking his
product off the shelves and out of the stores, her business plan put more Tupperware
products into more women’s hands. Her Tupperware Home Parties Division moved to
Florida in 1950. And the woman once told that women couldn’t advance at Stanley became
a business celebrity and inspirational figure. At her Jubilee conventions in Orlando, Wise
offered Tupperware Ladies fur coats, jewelry and other fine things as sales incentives.
You can see Wise work her sales magic in Laurie Kahn-Levitt’s film Tupperware! (2004),
aired on PBS. Though the product bore Tupper’s name, Brownie Wise became the face of
the company—a factor in Tupper’s decision to fire her in 1958. But Wise proved pivotal
to making Tupperware Brands Corporation the successful enterprise it remains today.
She also gave postwar American housewives paid work within the home that was socially
acceptable. Part housewife, part hostess, part businesswoman, the Tupperware Lady
straddled the era’s social categories, crossing geographic, racial, and class boundaries.

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 167

There were also husband-and-wife teams who worked as Tupperware dealers inside and
outside the home.

American Advertising and Materials Marketing

The postwar boom and dream kitchen ushered in new ways of marketing household
products as advertisers courted American housewives. Like Mad Men’s Don Draper, they
competed relentlessly for women’s attention. How could they make their client’s product
stand out from the other brands? Tupper had taken an advertising correspondence
course, and he kept in touch with his ad executives. He wrote to one that “a product is
not exactly what you make it in the factory, but it is also and more so what you make it
21
when you sell it.” A successful advertisement brings together the manufacturer, product,
and consumer in a dynamic relationship. Revisiting milestones in American advertising
can help us understand the many ways consumers connect with products and their
materials. Juliann Sivulka explains that postwar advertisers began to move away from
hard-selling product features, drawing from psychology “to build a product image or
22
brand personality.” The three classic campaigns I discuss here take different proximities
to the product, emphasizing in turn the consumer, the product itself, and the desired
image.

Listerine and Selling the Need

The first shows Gerard Lambert’s strategy of selling the need. His Listerine campaign made
the medical term for bad breath—halitosis—a household word. It all started in the late 19th
century with a surgical antiseptic that physician Joseph Lister formulated in England. In
1879, Joseph Lawrence made a milder version in the United States, naming it after Lister
and promoting it as an all-purpose antiseptic. First successful with dentists, Listerine
entered the mass market in the 1920s. By then the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company had
acquired the product, and Gerard Lambert was seeking greater profits. Learning about
halitosis from a company chemist, Lambert seized upon the word as a way to get Listerine
23
into more mouths. Halitosis sounded as unseemly as it was. Making people aware of it
would make them want to get rid of it.

168 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

 We can see how the pitch worked in this
top half of a 1928 Listerine ad. If you take a
close look, you’ll see how efficiently the
ad’s words and image distill its claims and
implications:

• The textbox at the top left makes no

one immune. Halitosis strikes at any
moment!
• In the image, décor and attire show
that even respectable people suffer
from halitosis.
• The afflicted woman in the corner
Figure 9.6 Excerpt from 1928 Listerine ad.
stands out by sitting out this dance. [Reprinted in Smithsonian Magazine, 2015.]
She looks exposed and
uncomfortable, unlike the smiling woman dancing with her partner.
• By implication, halitosis kills any chance at romance.
• The copy beneath the image makes us the culprit for halitosis. With Listerine so
readily available, bad breath becomes an unforgivable faux pas.

In his bestselling book Advertising the American Dream (1985), historian Roland Marchand
explains that such ads play on “the Parable of the First Impression”—a powerful theme
24
in ads from the early 20th century. (210). Selling the need to avoid embarrassment
through the invisible menace of halitosis, Lambert’s Listerine campaign made antiseptic
mouthwash the antidote to unpopularity.

Anacin and the U.S.P.

The second advertising milestone powered Rosser Reeves’s Hard Sell technique—the
Unique Selling Proposition (U.S.P.). A contemporary of Tupper’s, Reeves did his most
influential work with the Ted Bates ad agency in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. (He
had first worked as a journalist.) In his bestselling book Reality in Advertising (1961), Reeves
distinguished the U.S.P. from other strategies as an appeal to the consumer’s reason.
He believed that a successful ad is efficient; it zeroes in on a precise claim about the
product and avoids any distractions. Moreover, a successful ad avoids puffery and fantasy,
grounding appeals in the product and reality.
We can see these strategies at work in Reeves’s famous Anacin commercial that featured
an animation of a headache; look for it 35 seconds into this video from 1958.

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 169

 Invoking the medical profession to enhance credibility, this Anacin ad zooms in on the
headache and brings it to life. Like the pounding hammer in the middle panel, Reeves’s ad
hits the reader in the head with his U.S.P.—fast. The repetition links the U.S.P. with other
things that come in threes: e.g., “three out of four doctors recommend”; Anacin has three
pain relievers; it relieves all three headache symptoms. The ad distinguishes its product
from competitors’ and offers a specific benefit: Anacin will stop your headache fast, Fast,
FAST. Sivulka points to contemporaneous U.S.P. ads that also proved effective: Certs breath
25
mints with a magic drop of Retsyn; Colgate cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth.

Hathaway and Branding

The third advertising milestone, David Ogilvy’s
concept of branding, emphasizes the consumer’s
desires as much as the product itself. Reeves saw
branding this way: “To put it bluntly, the U.S.P. is
the philosophy of a claim, and the brand is the
26
philosophy of a feeling.” But there was nothing
blunt about Ogilvy’s creative approach to
advertising:

Products, like people, have personalities, and

they can make or break them in the
marketplace. The personality of a product is an
amalgam of many things—its name, its
packaging, its price, the style of its advertising,
and, above all, the nature of the product
27
itself.

Ogilvy took the idea of products and personality

Figure 9.7 The Man in the Hathaway Shirt.
beyond personified objects (the “Tupperware
burp”) and corporate personas (Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben). Ogilvy had sold cooking stoves
door-to-door in England before moving to the United States in 1938. A decade later, he
started a New York ad agency. Ogilvy became legendary in American advertising through
his successful campaigns and his bestselling book Confessions of an Advertising Man
(1963). He is the historical inspiration for the character Don Draper on Mad Men.
Ogilvy’s campaign for Hathaway also became legend. Drawing on the principle that
consumers are less interested in the product per se than the image they buy with it,
this ad creates a compelling character: “the man in the Hathaway shirt.” No conformist

170 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

Organization Man in a gray flannel suit, this man was singular and sophisticated. He
wore an eye patch. He could sail, paint, fence, ride horses, and play the oboe. A model of
cultural refinement, he traveled the world. The man in the Hathaway shirt embodied the
brand’s new personality. Launched in 1951, this campaign initially ran exclusively in The
28
New Yorker.
The Hathaway man’s descendants appear in contemporary ads for Dos Equis beer (The
Most Interesting Man in the World) and Old Spice deodorant (The Old Spice Guy who
smells like a man). But advertising was never strictly a man’s world. Ogilvy’s campaign
succeeded in part because its international man of mystery appealed to women as well as
men; after all, women were the primary shoppers in postwar America. Sivulka and other
cultural historians have now turned their attention to women who work in advertising.
Where would Don Draper be without Peggy Olson?

Conclusions: Tupperware and the Future of Plastics

Revisiting vintage promotional materials
for Tupperware products reveals social
and cultural meanings this iconic plastic
conveyed to middle-class housewives in
the 1950s–1970s. It also prompts us to
think about how plastic’s properties might
appeal to specific demographics in
contemporary society. In this catalog
cover from 1958, for example, Joe
Steinmetz’s photograph places the woman
in two key contexts: the family circle and
the museum gallery. In the first, her
provisioning enables the genial gathering
we see in the background. Framed
between glass shelves, just right of center,
her husband smiles as he holds his
Tupperware mug (Tupperware products Figure. 9.8 Catalog cover. [Photo by Joe Steinmetz
also appear on the table). Mother is the (1958). Florida Memory.]
central figure, arranging her Tupperware collection in a beautiful display that resembles a
museum’s—the second context. She smiles at her Tupperware “family” as she would at the
family seated behind her. Sleek, colorful, and modern, her Tupperware products have
brought harmony to her kitchen and home. Everything is orderly; nothing is out of place.
The American postwar dream kitchen gleamed with shiny metal appliances, polished

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 171

wood cabinets, and colorful linoleum floors. But plastics also transformed this vital space.
A fantastic polymer, plastics can take on pretty much any shape and color we can imagine.
Brownie Wise marveled at “the tremendous imagination it took” for Earl Tupper to change
29
black polyethylene slag into his signature products. More recently, Tupperware Brands
Corporation has designed UltraPro Ovenware products that “can be used in temperatures
30
up to 482° F/250° C and as low as -13° F/-25° C.” The new copolymer ethylene-
tetra-fluoro-ethylene (ETFE) has transformed the roof of the Minnesota Vikings’ football
stadium, letting in light with lightweight transparency—and costing less than glass. This
material also formed the dramatic bubble façade of the Water Cube venue for the 2008
Beijing Olympics. Where will plastics go next? Your generation will create imaginative
designs for improved and future products, inventing new brand names for this
fantastically versatile material.

Tupperware Milestones in Popular Culture

• 1974. All in the Family television series. Edith Bunker hosts her first
Tupperware Party. (Season 5, episode 8)
• 1986. Tupper Ware Remix Party, a futuristic synthwave dance band,
forms in Toronto, Canada.
• 1995. Seinfeld television series. Kramer tries to retrieve his Tupperware
container from a homeless man. (Season 6, episode 15).
• 2004. Napoleon Dynamite film. Uncle Rico tests Tupperware’s toughness
with a client, and Kip tests it with a van.
• 2015. American Horror Story television series airs “The Tupperware
Massacre” episode. (Season 4, episode 9).
• 2015: Hollywood film about Brownie Wise goes into production

172 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

 Discussion Questions

1. Get your hands on a piece of Tupperware. What properties do you notice?

2. Before Tupperware hit the market, most Americans stored their food in
glass. Why is polyethylene a better material for this purpose?
3. Which household appliance do you think most shaped the fortunes of
Tupperware? Why?
4. In postwar America, common thinking held that married women should
spend most of their time in the home—especially if they were mothers. How
did Brownie Wise make it socially acceptable for such women to sell
Tupperware?
5. Watch this video “Tupperware Celebrates World Water Day 2013.” What are
the environmental impacts of plastic products? How might they contribute
to sustainability?
6. If you were to put your name on a plastic product, what would it be? Which
kind of plastic do you think would be ideal for your purpose?

Key Terms
modernism
plastics
polyethylene
polymers
polystyrene
polyvinyl
thermoplastics

Author Biography
Marsha Bryant researches and writes about modernist studies, visual culture, women’s
writing, popular culture, and pedagogy. She is Professor of English & Distinguished
Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida, where her most popular courses include
Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 173
 modern poetry surveys, Desperate Domesticity: the American 1950s, and PostPunk Cultures:
The British 1980s. Her recent essays have appeared in The Massachusetts Review (about
Walt Whitman and beer culture), Feminist Modernist Studies (about Sylvia Plath and Edith
Sitwell), and The Conversation (about Tupperware). Professor Bryant’s book Women’s
Poetry and Popular Culture received funding from the National Endowment for the
Humanities. She is a member of UF’s Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars and a
UF Doctoral Mentor awardee. Professor Bryant is also Associate Editor of Contemporary
Women’s Writing.

Notes

1. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987), 87,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18888151.
2. Barthes, Mythologies, 97.
3. Alison J. Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1999), 137, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/634385344.
4. Robert Friedel, Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin
Press, 1983), 108–109, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/9081371.
5. Vincent Valk, "Outlook 2014: Looking Forward," IHS Chemical Week, April 14, 2014,
http://www.chemweek.com/lab/Outlook-2014-Looking-forward_57898.html.
6. Bob Kealing, Tupperware Unsealed: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers
(Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2008), 22, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/185123372.
7. Clarke, Tupperware, 4.
8. Clarke, Tupperware, 8–12, 15–17, 19–20; "Earl Silas Tupper," American Experience, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/tupperware-tupper/.
9. Qtd. in Kealing, Tupperware Unsealed, 10.
10. Clarke, Tupperware, 10, 64, 114.
11. Clarke, 26–29, 37–38.
12. Kealing, Tupperware Unsealed, 21.
13. Clarke, 30–34.
14. Kealing, 21–22.
15. Clarke, 42, 49.
16. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, 20th Anniversary Ed.
(New York: Basic Books, 2008), 13, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/690487945.
17. May, 207.
18. Qtd. in Kealing, Tupperware Unsealed, 26.
19. Qtd. in Kealing, 38.
20. Kealing, 44.

174 | Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America

21. Qtd. in Kealing, 23.
22. Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising, 2nd ed.
(Boston: Wadsworth, 2012), 231, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/714878884.
23. Jesse Hicks, "Thanks to Chemistry, A Fresh Breath," Chemical Heritage Foundation,
https://web.archive.org/web/20160407023152/http://www.chemheritage.org:80/discover/
online-resources/thanks-to-chemistry/listerine.aspx
24. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1930–1940
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 210, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35117815.
25. Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes, 232.
26. Rosser Reeves, Reality in Advertising (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 79,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7540914.
27. David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1983 (New York: Vintage, 1985), 14, http://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/613287090.
28. Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes, 236.
29. Qtd. in Kealing, Tupperware Unsealed, 56.
30. UltraPro Ovenware product insert, Tupperware.

Polymers: Fantastic Plastics in Postwar America | 175

Writing Materials: The Politics and
Preservation of Knowledge
BONNIE EFFROS

“The library of the future must also be a place that will preserve the knowledge
and understanding of written culture in the forms that were and still are today,
very much its own.” —Roger Chartier

Introduction
Just as it is very challenging to communicate to those around us without gestures or
spoken language, it is difficult to convey thoughts and desires in a more lasting manner
1
(or to those at a distance) without either the written word or pictorial representation.
In Europe as early as the Renaissance, scholars pondered the origins of language as
intimately tied to writing symbols. They believed themselves a part of a grand cultural
tradition that traced back to classical antiquity, and linked their own achievements with
2
those of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), a humanist philosopher in Italy, elevated the
achievements of the ancient Greeks over those of all earlier civilizations because he
believed they were the first to master alphabetic writing. In his view, mastery of writing in
words as opposed to the hieroglyphic symbols of the Egyptians, freed Greek citizens from
having to rely on priests or aristocrats. Rather than a “secret language” like cuneiform
or hieroglyphs, what Vico described as “vulgar writing” was a key ingredient in the
origin of democracy in classical Greece. From his perspective, alphabetic writing stripped
figures and signs of their mysteries and gave people equal access to knowledge of truth.
Letters made it possible for a greater number of people to learn to read, which, in turn,
was intimately connected to their ability to participate in both religious worship and
3
government in a direct and personal manner.

176 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of

Knowledge
 Although the transition to an alphabetic
system was an important step in the
development of written language, we now
recognize the problematic implications of
Vico’s Eurocentric perspective: it was based
on his implicit assumption that all parts of the
world were inferior to those that followed the
European tradition. We can alter his
observation in several ways to make it more
accurate and helpful to our purposes here.
First, we can point to other languages that
made the transition to alphabetic systems in
antiquity, including among them the Ge’ez or
Ethiopic syllabic alphabet used from the 4th
century BCE, the Brahmi writing system of
South Asia seen as early as the 3rd century
BCE (a forerunner to Sanskrit), and the
Tifinagh or Libyc syllabic alphabet used in the
Maghreb (North Africa) from some time in the
Figure 10.1 In 1799, a French soldier during the 2nd millennium BCE. Second, we can suggest
Napoleonic invasion rediscovered the Rosetta that alphabets were never a guarantee that
Stone (196 BCE) in the town of Rashid (Rosetta)
in the Nile Delta. When the British navy
large numbers of people could read them;
defeated the French in 1801, they took it to the literacy rates depend far more on access to
British Museum in London where it remains education than the expressive format of any
today. In 1822, the French scholar,
Jean-François Champollion, succeeded in particular language. We can also look to
translating the decree issued by Ptolemy V China, for instance, where millions have
transcribed in three languages on the Rosetta
Stone. He was able to decipher the hieroglyphs mastered the ability to read using the
and demotic Egyptian in the top two registers of character system despite its evident
the inscription with the help of the Greek in the challenges (yet recognize that this influential
lowest register. [Wikimedia Commons.]
system was modified in Japan and later Korea
so as to be more accessible). Finally, we can underline the fact that Greek democracy no
longer seems as enviable as it was to Vico, since it only allowed elite men (and not women,
the non-free, and non-Greeks) to vote (and read) rather than a broader sector of the
population. That being said, the development of alphabets indeed made the process of
learning to read and write more efficient by decreasing the number of symbols that it was
necessary to memorize.
Back in Europe in the decades prior to the French Revolution, Enlightenment thinkers

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 177

continued to wrestle with the significance of language in social and political development.
However, they now placed greater worth on reason and individual thinking than on
ancient tradition, as had been the case during the Renaissance. The philosopher Nicolas
de Condorcet (1743–1794) pointed to the positive social good brought by recent inventions
such as the printing press. Condorcet believed that the limitless reproduction of texts
afforded by moveable print was key to the success of democracy, which he experienced
firsthand as a delegate to the National Assembly at the start of the French Revolution. In
fact, he credited this technological achievement with greater access to justice in human
society. In his view, the proliferation of the written word broke the Church’s monopoly
over knowledge by allowing more individuals access to texts which they could read and
4
judge for themselves.
Those among you who love numbers will be
pleased to learn that Condorcet identified
mathematics as the most universal and most
perfect form of language. He viewed numbers
and formulas as a highly developed alphabet and
form of communication. Since most women and
the poorer classes of his day had insufficient
education to participate in this dialogue,
Condorcet believed that improved schooling was
essential to a just society.
These century-old debates about the origins
of language—and the direct connection between
the written word and participatory democracy—
may seem part of the distant past to many of us.
Yet, they are relevant because they offer unique
perspectives on the challenges and
opportunities of the digital revolution and recent
innovations in magnetic storage. These early Figure 10.2 This opening page of the
modern examples offer a historical comparison Gutenberg Bible at the University of Texas
(Hubay 39) contains Saint Jerome’s
that gives us a basis for measuring the impact of introduction. One of the earliest printed
writing materials on society. They allow us to ask books in Europe, the style imitates a
medieval manuscript with historiated
if technological innovations like the internet and
initials, illustrations and double columns of
the ability to store ever-increasing amounts of Latin text on a single leaf. Unlike a
data are actually making us more knowledgeable hand-copied manuscript, it could be
reproduced multiple times once the type had
and improving the quality of our lives. They also been set. [Johannes Gutenberg (1454-56),
give us the chance to consider whether the cost University of Texas Harry Ransom Center.]

178 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

of entry (access to a computer or lack of education) excludes people who might benefit
from this information.
Understanding these discussions by Enlightenment thinkers also helps us to formulate
vital questions about who controls knowledge in the digital age and what obstacles exist
to full participation. Thankfully no longer restricted just to the educated elites, humanistic
thought encourages us to apply greater objectivity to the exploration of the politics of
collecting, storing, and transmitting information both in the past and today. Whatever our
conclusions, we cannot deny the deep and meaningful connections that exist between
writing forms and media (i.e., the materials we use and manipulate), and between the
preservation of knowledge and the organization of human society.

Humans and the Search for Functional Writing Materials

From the earliest times, humans used various media
for writing surfaces: the walls of caves, stones, bones,
bamboo strips, and ceramic sherds. Once inscribed with
markings, these materials transmitted messages of
religious, ritual, magical, and practical significance like
trade inventories, curse tablets, and to-do lists.
However, not all of these materials were equally
accessible and efficient. They varied regionally in
response to the availability and affordability of particular
resources. In addition, written language was often out of
reach for the vast majority of pre-modern populations,
which were for the most part functionally illiterate.
In ancient Babylonia, priests used a metal stylus to
mark soft clay tablets with cuneiform texts when they
wanted to preserve their writing for the elite audience
who could read them. Cylinder seals, rolled over a
similar medium, were particularly handy when priests
Figure 10.3 This Chinese text was wanted to reproduce texts multiple times. Once baked,
copied on bamboo strips using a
such inscribed clay tablets were sufficiently durable to
brush and dates to the Warring 5
States Period (475–221 BCE). These last millennia under the right conditions.
strips, read downwards and from
right to left, are now held in the
Shanghai Museum, and contain a
discussion of the ‘Shi Jing’, or Book
of Odes. [Wikimedia Commons.]

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 179

 By contrast, the ancient Greeks and
Romans chose stone carving for important
messages that they intended to display in
posterity such as grave markers. However,
in daily life, for the sake of convenience
and affordability, they often relied upon
handy potsherds or ostraca, broken bits of
pottery that provided a smooth surface
and inexpensive material for writing. Wax-
coated tablets in the ancient world, by
contrast, offered the benefit of reuse after
heating. This medium which was especially
suited to classroom use, where children Figure 10.4 This terracotta clay cone inscribed in
cuneiform with a stylus commemorates the
were learning to write. In 8th-century
construction of the walls of Sippar by King
Korea and China, engraved wood allowed Hammurabi. Now at the Louvre Museum, it dates
repeated reproduction of the written word to the first half of the 18th century BCE and comes
from Iraq. [Wikimedia Commons.]
by rubbing, a technique known as
6
xylography that was transmitted to the West only half a millennium later.
In China, the use of silk as a writing
material showed the advantages of shifting
to a more flexible writing medium.
However, it was very costly and limited to
the elites. In the West, the ancient
Egyptians were among the first to employ
more flexible writing media, namely
papyrus. Egyptian artisans manufactured
this material from the papyrus reed, which
grew mainly in the region known as the
Egyptian Delta. To prepare the reeds,
Figure 10.5 This late 3rd-century ostracon in
Greek preserves a private letter concerning the use Egyptians cut the pithy centers of stalks of
of oxen for sowing a field. It suggests that the plant into thin strips which they then
immediate tasks could be written on a variety of
accessible surfaces and were not intended by their placed side-by-side with superposed
authors to be kept in perpetuity. [“O.Mich.inv. 4194; layers at right angles to form sheets.
Recto,” University of Michigan Library, Advanced
Pressed and beaten together while still
Papyrological Information System.]
moist, the fibers adhered even when dry.
The horizontal lines left by the papyrus strips became the guide for scribes to keep their
writing (done with a reed brush) straight and level. Papyrus, however, was unforgiving in a

180 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

number of ways if a scribe made an error. While erasure was possible with a sponge or an
abrasive substance, it was not easy to write over the same spot. Another downside to the
material was that the sheets became brittle when dry and thus could not be folded. For
this reason, papyrus sheets were rolled as a scroll. Likewise, scribes could only write on
7
one side because ink bled through the semi-porous material.

Activity: Browse a slideshow

This exhibit
(https://apps.lib.umich.edu/
papyrus_making/#) from the
University of Michigan Papyrus
Collection demonstrates how papyrus
is manufactured, from harvest to
finished paper.
University of Michigan

Papyrus reeds grew in few places other than Egypt and Ravenna on the Adriatic coast of
Italy. Egypt thus exercised a near monopoly on the production and trade of this elegant,
light-colored writing substance throughout classical antiquity. It became popular not just
among the Egyptians but also among the Greeks and Romans, who were attracted to the
relative affordability of papyrus rolls. With the advent and spread of Islam through the
Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century, papyrus remained an important writing
material for adherents of the new religion. Muslim administrators used the medium for
official correspondence, legal documents, ledgers, and tax receipts. In northern Europe,
however, climatic conditions supported neither the cultivation of papyrus nor its effective
use since humidity hindered its preservation. Few surviving examples of papyrus in
8
Europe date after the 7th century.

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 181

Does Form Determine
Function?
In antiquity, like today, specific qualities of
writing materials dictated the purposes for
which they were employed. As we have
seen, stone, for instance, was most
suitable for epitaphs or public
proclamations, whereas contemporaries
did not see papyrus as having sufficient
permanence and durability for long term
preservation. For these reasons, papyrus Figure 10.6 Dating to the Second Intermediate
Period in Egypt, the Edwin Smith papyrus may
was not commonly used for longer literary have come from the capital of Thebes. Purchased in
or sacred texts. The accessible and cost Luxor, this hieratic manuscript (Egyptian cursive)
was donated to the New York Academy of Medicine.
effective medium nonetheless remained It is thought to be the oldest surviving Western text
popular for day-to-day transactions like of surgery, and includes material on surgery,
trade in the dry, hot conditions of North gynecology, and magic. [New York Academy of
Medicine. Wikimedia Commons.]
Africa and the Middle East. These
examples should make us think about more recent technological developments and to
what degree digital media like electronic books and newspapers are better suited to some
objectives (like quick reading) than others (note-taking and deep engagement with a text).
Something to keep in mind is that the format of papyrus, namely scrolls, influenced
the way in which authors composed texts and people read them. The manufacture of
papyrus rolls in standard lengths necessitated the division of literary works into books.
Anyone familiar with the ancient Greek epic poems of the Iliad and Odyssey, for instance,
should consider that scholars of Alexandria apportioned this work of the 8th century
BCE into books relatively arbitrarily based on how much material fit on a scroll. By the
time of the Latin author Virgil in the 1st century BCE, however, authors began to think of
book divisions—today’s chapters—as discrete parts of a work. In other words, writers took
advantage of divisions introduced by their writing medium to structure their texts. In the
9
Aeneid, Virgil applied this technique to represent changes in the narrative.

182 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

 Increased familiarity with the medium of the
codex—what we know today as a book (see
below)—gave birth to an intellectual shift and a
revolution in literature which became
dominant by the 4th century CE. We see
similar steps being taken today, as engineers
continue to modify the format of electronic
books to meet the needs and expectations of
readers. Whereas engineers designed the
earliest Kindles to look like books with a plain
white background, black print, and limited
possibility to alter texts, today’s touch screens
allow readers freedom to manipulate the
content and appearance of their reading.

Putting Quills to Parchment

Contemporary to papyrus, parchment was a
writing material made from animal skins. In the
ancient Middle East, parchment was
commonly made from skins of calves, sheep or
goats. White animals were preferred since they
Figure 10.7 This scribe seated with a papyrus
scroll on his lap suggests some of the tend to produce the lightest colored
difficulties in using a scroll for study. It is hard parchment. Vellum, the most desirable form of
to mark one’s place! Dated to the 19th–20th
parchment because of its refined surface,
dynasty, 1295–1069 BCE in Egypt, this diorite
statue gives us some clues as to why a codex referred exclusively to calfskin. Parchment,
was preferable if one wanted to navigate which was far more costly than papyrus, was
quickly through a text. [Louvre Museum. Photo
by user Janmad, shared under a CC BY 3.0 developed first in ancient Egypt, Assyria, and
Unported License. Wikimedia Commons.] Babylonia, but then spread to many regions
that raised flocks. It provided material support
for writing, painting, and other purposes. Despite its durability and versatility as a writing
surface, parchment’s cost was prohibitive. This technology thus never fully replaced the
10
use of papyrus, ostraca, stone, and wax tablets for recording information.

To prepare animal hides for writing, workers soaked the skins in a lime solution and
removed the remaining hair and flesh (a characteristic that survives in parchment
manuscripts, in which the hair and flesh sides are discernable). Workers washed and
stretched the cleaned hides tightly on a wooden frame and scraped them with moon-

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 183

shaped knives as they dried. When the hides were nearly dry, workers buffed the surfaces
with pumice stone. From the 4th century CE, scribes began to fashion split quills from
feathers as a firmer tool for writing than reed brushes. Quills quickly supplanted reed
brushes for writing in the West due to their availability in virtually any market. They
offered exciting possibilities for artists who learned to incorporate shading and decorative
work in written characters that had not been possible with reed brushes. The spread of
parchment and quills contributed to the development of new letter forms and book design
features.
Parchment offered the advantage of
lightness and flexibility, which meant ease of
handling and transmission. The surfaces were
suitable for inks and colors and one could write
on both sides. Scribes could make erasures and
corrections. Parchment also accommodated
folding and stitching and could be sewn
together in scrolls or organized concertina
fashion since sheets of parchment did not tear
easily as papyrus. With a long life, parchment
could be stored for more than a millennium in
the right conditions and wear was minimal
compared to papyrus. Due to cost, however,
access to parchment was limited to those of
financial means such as religious institutions
and individuals of high status such as pharaohs,
kings, and aristocrats.

Figure 10.8 The high cost of parchment

encouraged the erasure and reuse of entire
manuscripts. The Archimedes Palimpsest is a
13th-century Byzantine Greek prayer book
made of parchment taken from several earlier
manuscripts (which were then partially
erased), including most importantly a
10th-century copy of at least seven treatises by
the ancient Greek scientist and philosopher
Archimedes. [Wikimedia Commons.]

184 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

 The earliest texts on parchment took the
form of rolls or scrolls. For instance, the
ancient pharaohs of Egypt (as early as c. 1500
BCE) recorded their law codes on leather rolls.
The stitching between multiple pieces of
parchment proved much stronger than the
pasted joints of papyrus rolls. These scrolls
resembled the modern Torah (Hebrew Bible)
still featured in Jewish worship, as well as the
magical and medical texts recorded in Ge’ez on
scrolls in Ethiopia between the 18th and 20th
centuries.
Although papyrus manufacture continued
for centuries, parchment began to supplant it
as the most widely used writing surface in the
West by the 4th century, which, as we will see
below, was the same period in which the codex
definitively replaced the use of scrolls. In fact,
during the period in which both parchment
and papyrus were employed, scribes copied
many works of ancient literature from papyrus
to parchment. Had this not occurred, many
ancient Greek and Roman classics would not
Figure 10.9 This magico-medical scroll of
parchment from Ethiopia is now held in
have survived for us today. In the Arab world,
London in the Wellcome Collection, Oriental the transition from papyrus to parchment
Ms. IX. Its form as a scroll likely dictated occurred somewhat later due to the continued
storage needs and the way in which the text
could be used. [Photo shared under a CC BY accessibility of the former from Egypt.
4.0 International License. Wellcome Parchment was used widely in the Muslim
Collection.]
world by the 9th century, but since
papermaking technology had arrived from the East in the mid-8th century, demand for
parchment in the Muslim world was never as great as in Europe, where paper arrived
much later.

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 185

 Activity: Watch a video

In this BBC video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-SpLPFaRd0), Wim

Visscher gives Dr. Stephen Baxter a modern demonstration of how to make
parchment from animal skins.

Organizing Knowledge: The Rise of the Codex

As early as the 1st century CE in the Roman Mediterranean, some papyrus but especially
parchment texts began to take a different shape. Rather than retaining the shape of
a roll, scribes gathered parchment leaves in a manner similar to wax tablets, which
were often bound together as a collection for transcribing longer texts. Thus, the word
11
codex originally referred to two or more tablets fastened together.
In the first centuries of the Common
Era, scribes began for the first time to
employ sheets of parchment in this
fashion. They were sewn together at their
central crease to form something akin to
what we know as a book. Like scrolls,
codices had a cover or binding, but in this
case they were typically made of wooden
boards (which today have been replaced by
cardboard). Decorated with cloth,
parchment, leather, metal, or precious
Figure 10.10 A Roman fresco from the Praedia of
stones, wooden boards helped identify the Julia Felix in Pompeii, and now in the Museo
content of books. Books might include Archeologico Nazionale (Naples), displays a bound
set of wax tablets and a stylus in the middle section
affixed tags or labels with the name of the of the lower shelf. It sits next to a contemporary
author and title of the work on their scroll, suggesting that the two writing media were
used at a contemporary period. [Praedia of Julia
spines. As we will see below, although not Felix in Pompeii, Naples National Archaeological
all genres of texts were copied into Museum. Photo by Carole Raddato, shared under a
codices, Christian texts like the Bible, CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic License. Wikimedia
Commons.]
saints’ lives, and liturgical works were

186 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

frequent candidates for such transitions because of the ways in which scholars studied
them.
In China, by contrast, the scroll had a much longer life in Chinese culture but was
supplanted in the 10th century by what were known as “whirling books,” which opened
like an accordion. This design made various parts of the text more accessible than scrolls,
which were difficult to manipulate. However, a significant flaw of the “whirling books” was
that the paper from which they were fashioned was not very durable along the folded
sections. During the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE), “butterfly” bindings became increasingly
popular. This format involved printing only on one side of the paper and then folding it so
12
that the blank sides were not visible.
Similar to this technology, but with no direct connection to it, was an accordion-like
instrument developed by Amerindians like the Mexica and Maya in Mesoamerica before
the time of the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. Used for recording religious rituals
and other significant information, these artifacts were made of a paper-like material
composed of pounded tree bark or roots. Like paper, this substance could be polished
in preparation for painting symbols and images. Unfortunately, few original examples of
this technology survive today since Spanish missionaries condemned indigenous works as
13
idolatrous and confiscated and burned them when they had the opportunity.
By contrast, in the European West,
scribes fashioned codices from several
sheets of parchment cut to the same
rectangular size and shape. They typically
laid four of these together and folded them
once to form the writing unit known as a
gathering, which was then sewn at the
seam. This gathering produced eight folios
(two-sided) or 16 leaves (single-sided), and
was called a quaternio or quire. So that
quires could be bound in the correct
sequence, they were marked with
signatures (consecutive letters or
numbers) on the last page at the top or
Figure 10.11 The Codex Fejérváry-Mayer is a rare
surviving manuscript dating from before European bottom. From the late 11th century, the
contact (dated to some time between 1200 and 1521 first words of the next quire became
CE). It is made from deerskin parchment and
contains the sacred Aztec calendar. [World Museum
signature marks. The regular employment
Liverpool. Wikimedia Commons.] of page numbers in a codex did not

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 187

become common in Europe until the 13th century, and the practice was firmly established
14
by the 16th century.
So what were the advantages of the codex over the
scroll? To start, the codex offered convenience to
scholars and worshippers, especially with large
devotional texts like the Bible in Judaism and
Christianity and the Qur’an in Islam. The format of the
codex allowed people much greater ease of movement
through long and complex texts used in prayer or
study. A reader could mark the leaves in a permanent
or impermanent way at relevant passages or read
pages out of sequence if it was desirable to review a
passage or skip ahead. Moreover, as opposed to a
scroll, a book could be held in one hand, allowing a
scribe to read and write at the same time, something
we largely take for granted today. Historians of
technology think that the spread of Christianity and
Islam helped popularize the effectiveness of the codex
over the scroll, not just for sacred texts but also as a
medium for organizing and conveying knowledge
more effectively.

Medieval Manuscript Production and

Consumption
In medieval Europe, the main centers for the
production, preservation, and copying of texts onto
parchment were Christian monasteries. These were
filled with monks or nuns, individuals who had
pledged to lead a life of chastity, poverty, and
obedience. Monastic houses typically had scriptoria, Figure 10.12 This 15th-century
rooms where monks and nuns spent much of their folding almanac, Ms. 8932, at the
Wellcome Trust was composed in
time copying manuscripts by hand. Monastic leaders Latin and contains astrological tables
like Saint Benedict of Nursia in southern Italy in the and diagrams. Judging from its
6th century emphasized in his Rule the importance of binding, a physician might have
traveled with this luxury manuscript
the written word in the lives of monks and nuns, and hung from his belt for both practical
placed an emphasis on public readings of the Bible and reasons and as a sign of his status as
a learned man. [Wellcome Collection.]

188 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

other holy texts during mealtimes. Court chanceries were another location where clerics
prepared documents during the Middle Ages. From the 11th century, notaries who drafted
legal contracts could also be found in the commercial centers of Europe.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, however, book production in Europe shifted in part to
cathedral schools and universities and became the source of learning about topics like law,
medicine, mathematics, and the humanities. From the 13th century, universities in Italy,
France, Spain, Germany, and England (staffed largely by Dominican and Franciscan friars)
became the most important locations of textbook production, especially the composition
and copying of commentaries and glosses on canonical authorities.

Have you ever wondered how medieval university students procured the
books they needed for their studies? Medieval students (all male
institutions—women were not allowed to participate) typically rented texts
through local booksellers through what was known as the pecia system.
Namely, rather than buying books, students rented exemplars by the quire
(known as a pecia), and used them to make their own copies. Once returned,
booksellers rented the same quires to other students. This system had the
advantage of decreasing the replication of errors since each copy depended
upon the same uncorrupted text. Students often sold their own copies when
their courses were finished in order to pay off debts, including their beer tabs
15
at the local bars so common in university towns.

Just because manuscripts were the bread and butter of medieval university learning does
not mean that they were accessible to anyone but a small number of men, many of
them clerics, who received a higher education. Scholastic manuscripts were written in
Latin, which was no longer commonly spoken in Europe. They thus required significant
learning to copy accurately and to comprehend. Even worse, they included extensive use
of abbreviations and there were often no distinct separations between words. Although
these conventions allowed students to copy quickly, readers had to read the texts aloud,
a practice that only changed in the 16th century when efforts were made to make texts
more legible. These traditions and the use of Latin excluded many potential readers from
access to these texts.
What kinds of texts were popular among the medieval elites who could afford them
(or were members of institutions like monasteries that owned them)? The most common

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 189

manuscripts were Latin bibles and books of hours, the latter being prayer books for
private devotions, many of which were used by women. In the later Middle Ages, the
most commonly copied manuscripts included annals, chronicles, and romances. Many of
these were composed in the vernacular rather than Latin, which by this point was mainly
limited to clerics. By the 13th century, wealthy patrons, both male and female, who wanted
to expand their private libraries commissioned manuscripts from booksellers in cities
like Paris. These shops or scriptoria employed scribes and illuminators to create custom
16
copies.

Plant Fiber Technology: The

Advent of Paper
Paper was invented in China in the second
century BCE. Composed of vegetal fibers
like hemp, paper’s cost was modest and it
quickly replaced silk fabric as a writing
material for all but luxury manuscripts. By
the 2nd century CE, paper goods probably
entered into trade through the intricate
Figure 10.13 Medieval books of hours such as this network of roads and tracks that crossed
one associated with the 15th-century female Eurasia: the routes between China and the
aristocrat Catherine of Cleves encouraged pious
contemplation. The mouth of hell depicted on the West known as the Silk Road. Travel across
left was meant to instill fear of sin in its female the Eurasian landmass was rudimentary
reader. This work illustrates how books served both
devotional purposes as well as exhibiting the
and expensive with the aid of mules,
wealth of their owners. [“Office of the Dead,” MS camels, and oxen; the overland itinerary
M.917/945, ff. 168v–169r, Morgan Library and also depended upon the political stability
Museum.]
of the regions through which tradesmen
17
passed.
Knowledge of paper and the process by which it was made from cloth rags (usually
hemp or linen) reached Persia by the 7th century and the city of Samarqand by the
8th century. From there, the use of paper spread throughout the Islamic world in the
9th century, promoted by the Abbasid caliphs who employed it for official records. In
Spain, which was controlled by Muslim rulers from the early 8th century, the know-how
for paper-making passed to the Christian West. Eleventh-century Valencia, for instance,
18
was an important urban center for paper manufacturing. Italian papermakers refined
these methods in Fabriano, including inventing the watermark, adopting gelatin sizing,

190 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

and improving pulping methods. By the 14th century, Italian paper made in paper mills
dominated European markets.
As opposed to parchment, paper provided a comparatively cheap writing surface. In the
era before mechanical printing, we know that paper profoundly influenced scribal culture
in medieval Islamic lands, since it was more abundant and accessible than parchment.
However, paper was also more easily adapted to woodblock printing popular in China and
Korea from at least the 8th century. In Western Europe, paper’s future looked very bright
following the development of moveable type in the mid-15th century. For this reason,
paper largely supplanted parchment by the 16th century due to cost, accessibility, and fit
with new printing technologies. Paper thus had the important effect of opening up literate
Christian culture to a much wider (though certainly not universal) array of readers than
could afford such works when parchment was the prevalent writing material.
Our knowledge of this history has important lessons that we can bring to bear on
our understanding of the social impact and accessibility of digital media. Namely, how
is the transition to digital technology affecting how we compose literature, organize
and present information, and store data? While our ever-increasing dependence on
computers, tablets, and smartphones may allow us to marshal large amounts of data from
a seemingly endless number of sources, we also need to ask how individuals and groups
benefit from this information and whether all benefit equally from the digital revolution.

The Invention of Printing

Efforts to make exactly reproducible multiple impressions go back thousands of years. In
China, stone steles or upright stone slabs with engraved calligraphic texts were used to
make rubbings or copies. As we have seen, in ancient Mesopotamia, stone cylinder seals
were engraved around their perimeter so that when they were rolled across a receptive
surface, they revealed their messages. The oldest printed material known (dated to 751 CE)
is from Korea, and is now called the Dharani Sutra. The earliest extant dated printed work,
the Chinese Diamond Sutra scroll, was printed from a woodblock in 868. The carving of
over 80,000 woodblocks between 1236 and 1251, many of which still survive, supported
an effort to print the Korean Buddhist scriptures in their entirety. In China, Pi Cheng
innovated with movable type made from fire-hardened clay or liquid glue under the Sung
Dynasty (960–1279). In Korea, cast metal type was first developed in 1234, two centuries
19
before it made its debut in Western Europe.

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 191

 In the mid-15th century, the German
goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, among
others, invented cast-metal movable type
in individual characters designed to be
printed with a press. Once a page of type
was prepared, printers inked and printed
them onto dampened paper with a wooden
press adapted from those traditionally
used to make wine or oil. The pages were
hung out to dry and then proofread and
gathered in the correct order. Printers also
carved historiated or decorated initials
and other illustrations onto wooden blocks
Figure 10.14 This detail comes from the woodblock made at the same thickness as the type so
print on the frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra,
that they could be set in the form. They
found in Cave 17 at Dunhuang in China. It is the
oldest extant printed book with a firmly known included this labor-intensive step to
date of 868 CE. [British Library.] preserve a style that was common to
hand-copied manuscripts on parchment and paper. Efforts to imitate the style of hand-
copied manuscripts suggest that consumers of printed books considered the latter
desirable. In fact, for a century after the advent of printing, luxury copies of the Bible were
still copied by hand and printed copies in many cases were made to look like those written
20
by hand.

Activity: Watch Gutenberg-style printing

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLctAw4JZXE) demonstrates

the procedure of printing a single leaf on a Gutenberg-style press.

Gutenberg first published the Bible in 1456 using metal type, a wooden press, and Italian
paper. Although he did make some luxury copies for elite clients on parchment, most
printing was done on paper. From Germany, this important invention spread rapidly

192 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

to workshops in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, and England. It created considerable
challenges for those who wished to print texts in non-Roman alphabets such as Arabic, in
which letter shapes varied depending upon their position at the start, middle, or end of a
word, or Chinese, in which there are thousands of characters. Such considerations remain
important today for hardware engineers designing computer keyboards and touchpads
for global markets.
We should keep in mind that many kinds of documents like wills and private letters were
not affected by the advent of printing press for centuries. Moreover, printing aggravated
instead of eliminated some of the shortcomings of hand-copied manuscripts since rather
than creating one defective copy, one might produce hundreds of corrupted copies. For
this reason, for centuries after Gutenberg’s invention, distinct communities remained
loyal to the tried and true method of copying texts by hand: this was especially true of
monks and nuns since it was a required component of the monastic day. Moreover, the
creation of luxury manuscripts was a business controlled by well-organized and powerful
guilds, especially in university towns where students were a source of profit. In the early
decades of the print trade, guilds protected their interests by running competing printing
workshops out of town.

The Printed Word: Access, Literacy, and the Publishing Industry

What were the ramifications of the invention of printing with moveable type in the West?
21
This is an enormous subject, but here is some food for thought.
To start, the set-up cost involved in printing was quite prohibitive. For instance, in Italy
in 1483, the Ripoli Press charged three florins to set up and print a quinterno (quire) of the
Italian priest and scholar Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues. This price might
seem quite expensive if we know that a contemporary scribe might have charged a single
florin per quinterno to duplicate the same work. However, the Ripoli Press produced 1,025
copies of this work whereas the scribe could make just one at a time. Printing thus had
the advantage of producing multiple copies at a reduced rate per copy. In other words,
there were significant economies of scale for works like the Bible for which there was
always demand or for pamphlets that required broad circulation. This situation meant that
sizeable libraries were no longer the exclusive preserve of monasteries or the elite.
It is certainly true that printing made many texts much more available, since bookshops
could now print books on their lists in large quantities and libraries could acquire more
works at a higher rate of speed. The end result was that scholars and literate members of
the public had access to a much broader range of texts than had previously been possible.
These workshops thus opened up the possibility of owning a book and stimulated interest
in literature (and literacy) among a larger public readership than was the case previously.
Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 193
 An additional outcome of mechanical printing was the commercialization of the
reproduction of books, which some scholars have convincingly argued contributed to
the commodification of the book. In other works, if books were increasingly seen as
a desirable possession that was in reach of a greater number of consumers, printers
competed for this market by making their books more attractive in a variety of ways.
These options affected which works booksellers chose for printing, how they embellished
their covers, and the choices they made about decorative fonts or large numbers of
illustrations.

Printing and Revolutionary Thinking

The first print shops were centers of intellectual and commercial collaboration in which
editors, proofreaders, writers, merchants, and patrons of learning came together to
produce books collaboratively. A useful corollary of that development was the
serendipitous juxtaposition of texts and maps in early printing workshops. In other words,
when everything from Bibles to atlases to works of science were brought together under
a single roof, they supported non-traditional thinking and afforded opportunities for
innovation that might not have otherwise been conceivable. An analogous example in the
modern world is our daily dependence on digital search engines like Google that allow us
to input a keyword regardless of topic. This kind of search often produces very different
results than if we followed the more old-fashioned method of searching by name of author
or in a single subject area. While such finds are useful for scholarly research only if they
are put in their proper context, they nonetheless widen the spectrum of possibilities as
was the case for those who frequented early modern printing workshops.

194 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

 In a time when we are all familiar with
the mantra of the internet bringing about
a more democratic world, a promise that
has proved somewhat hollow and elusive
at best, thinking about the invention of
printing has particular resonance. The
advent of mechanical printing had a
number of unintended consequences by
legitimizing and popularizing works that
would not have previously circulated
widely because they were seen as suspect
by the Catholic Church. To be certain, Figure 10.15 In 1517, the then-Catholic monk
Martin Luther is thought to have posted his 95
religious leaders were concerned about Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg,
the distribution of unauthorized works on Germany, to protest what he saw as corrupt
practices including the sale of indulgences for
theology, astrology, alchemy, and magic. salvation. Although the document was originally
Religious authorities were not the only handwritten in Latin, by the following year he
public figures made uncomfortable by the translated it to German and printed it. This
technology allowed him to circulate numerous
freedom of expression offered by printing. copies of the document in a short period of time.
Powerful lay rulers like monarchs and Church authorities were not able to stop the spread
of what they saw as dangerous ideas. [University of
aristocrats were especially concerned Basel Library.]
about individuals and groups that sought
to reach a public audience with pamphlets and books criticizing secular leaders and
advocating alternative political models. The relative ease with which an individual could
reproduce hundreds of copies of any particular work meant that it was difficult for
monarchs to enforce effective bans on texts they deemed unacceptable.

Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible from Latin to German in the early
16th century challenged the longstanding monopoly of the Catholic Church.
Unlike his predecessors, whose manuscripts were burned when they were
condemned and executed as heretics, Luther circulated thousands of copies
far and wide in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther’s successful resistance to the
Church’s demands and his evasion of Church censors led to the birth of the
breakaway religious movement of Lutheranism. Scholars suspect that Luther

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 195

 would not have succeeded in his reform agenda had it not been for the
technological advantage of printing.

Has Digitization Changed Our Relationship with the Written

Word?
Why is it important to learn about the birth of the codex? The French historian Roger
Chartier has suggested that we consider the digital revolution in terms of the “longue
durée” or the long term. In other words, we need to think about the possibilities digital
texts and their transmission create not just in our lives today but also over the coming
22
decades and centuries.
First, how does the digital revolution change how we engage with a text? Theoretically,
at least, readers can interact with texts more fluidly. Previously, we underlined, took
notes, or wrote in the margins of books. Today, readers can index, annotate, copy,
recompose, hyperlink, and move digital texts. In essence, each person becomes an active
participant in the text. In this way, digital works blur the distinction between reading and
writing and between author and reader, since any reader with a digital device has the
ability to create new texts from fragments that have been spliced and reassembled. Of
course, there is a thin line between this practice and plagiarism if one claims this work
as his or her own without acknowledging the original sources of such blended works. If
we look around the classroom today, however, not all students have abandoned paper
and many continue to take notes the old-fashioned way. Indeed, recent studies suggest
that the act of writing (as opposed to keying words into a computer or tablet) helps us to
23
process and retain information more effectively.
Second, there is no doubt that the digital revolution has changed how we order and
store information. With magnetic storage devices, readers can construct unique
collections of original texts whose existence and organization depend upon their
individual whims (and the texts to which they can gain access). One can not only store but
also modify or rewrite these works at any moment. These technologies challenge not only
traditional ideas of literary property and copyright, but also reshape our conceptions of
what a library is, what one should do there, and how it should look. We can each create our
own libraries in a way that was not long ago confined exclusively to institutions and elites.
However, we must also be conscious that these libraries are easily erased or destroyed. All

196 | Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge

of us are familiar with the panic that sets in if our computer crashes or our hard drive fails.
With rapidly changing technology, storage technology like floppy disks have quickly gone
out of use as they were replaced by CDs, DVDs, and USB drives. Not only are older formats
difficult or impossible to read with a new computer, but these storage devices were never
intended for the long term. Most forms of magnetic storage must be backed up since they
become unreadable in less than a decade.
These many factors suggest that the
digital revolution will not cause the
printed word to disappear overnight as
industry pundits often predict. A historical
perspective suggests that just as the scroll
imposed its organization on the early
codex, so handwritten codices imposed
their form upon the earliest printed texts.
These shaped the early form, structure,
and layout of the successive media in
which knowledge was conveyed.
Essentially, one could argue that printed
Figure 10.16 A photo of the fourth-floor stacks of
the Free Library of Philadelphia, a city that
books have done the same to ebooks,
received one of the largest grants offered by Andrew especially in light of users’ attachment to
Carnegie. With these funds, Philadelphia the tactile experience they love about
constructed 25 branch libraries between 1905 and
1930. Although the Central Library, which houses reading an authentic paper book or
the Free Library chartered in 1891, was not part of newspaper. Over the course of several
the endowment, it became one of the most
important libraries in the world with over one generations, however, it is likely that the
million volumes. [Photo by Joseph Elliott, Historical memory of this experience will fade and
American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress.] new readers will prioritize some aspects of
book culture while eliminating others depending upon their needs. With that, some
features of the codex will remain embedded while others will be discarded.

Information Storage Technologies as Appropriate Technologies

Looking at the history of writing technologies teaches us that humans use different
materials for storing information in different social contexts. Our choice of a material
for writing, for example, depends upon the availability and accessibility of materials,
the needs of users in various places and times, and established local cultural practices.
Papyrus worked well where it could be locally cultivated and was used for texts that
were not expected to be preserved for long periods of time. Parchment, by contrast,
worked well for large texts that needed to be consulted for specific information rather
Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 197
than necessarily reading it from front to back. And parchment was effective for storing
important information that was meant to be studied and guarded for generations,
especially in regions of the world that were damp and cold. Neither of these writing
technologies, however, supplanted the use of stone inscriptions which continued to be
used for gravestones, ceremonial markers, and engraved sculpture. Similarly, today, stone,
paper, and hard drives coexist as materials for information storage because they each
work in a particular constellation of practice.

Think about why you might find it easier to jot a library reference number on
a piece of scrap paper if you did not want to bring along a mobile phone,
tablet, or computer into the library stacks to search for a book. Or why you
might write someone’s phone number on your hand when making new friends
at the pool because you did not bring your own cell phone (no pockets). By
contrast, consider why the ubiquitous phone books and “yellow pages” that
used to be in every household and business have now disappeared, since
internet searches and online advertising have proved to be more effective
ways to convey this information and have thus made these bulky storage
devices obsolete.

The idea that a material technology is relevant to its local context of use is termed
appropriate technology. Put simply, a material has to work easily and well in people’s
everyday lives. It must be appropriate to their needs and compatible with local social
organization, but it also must be affordable, locally sourced or available, locally repairable
(if intended to last some time), and work symbiotically with the local material
24
environment. A digital storage center deployed in an area without a stable electricity
grid will be just as ineffective as requiring royal and church officials to write on papyrus
in 16th-century Northern Europe. For a recent example, we might think about how the
COVID-19 pandemic pushed shoppers as never before to abandon printed money in favor
of contactless transactions. However, this change does not mean that printed money will
disappear any time soon since it is still considered to have value beyond the immediate
crisis, and the costs associated with this technology (and the oversight embedded in it)
may not be feasible or desirable in all cases. The entanglements of writing materials, and
the various implications of their use, mean that different writing materials necessarily
coexist. And, our use of one material may influence how we deploy another.

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 For materials scientists and engineers, the concept of appropriate technology can focus
development teams on creating technologies with new materials that are sustainable in
the context of their use, versus developing technologies that work in one culture (where,
for instance, electricity is dependable) but are inefficient, unaffordable, or simply alien
to another culture of use (where power might be available one hour per day or users
are concerned about government oversight). However, just as a culture shapes our use of
materials, the introduction of new materials for information storage shapes our writing
and preservation practices. Thinking of materials as appropriate reminds us to use new
digital storage materials purposefully, bearing in mind what they help us to do best, and
what other writing materials are still needed to make and share information in a given
society.
We may close with Chartier’s warning that: “The library of the future must also be a
place that will preserve the knowledge and understanding of written culture in the forms
that were and still are today, very much its own. The electronic representation of all
texts whose existence did not begin with computerization should not in any way imply
the relegation, forgetting, or, worse yet, destruction of the objects in which they were
originally embodied. More than ever, perhaps, one of the critical tasks of the great libraries
25
is to collect, to protect, to inventory. . .”
The message that we should take from this warning are the potential challenges of
digitization. We must evaluate what digital formats and electronic storage mean for the
quality of our lives, engagement with knowledge, and preservation of information for the
near and long-term future. While change may be inevitable, and a current generation of
children will never know life in the absence of these technologies, we must observe how
they affect our day-to-day existence, the ways in which we learn, and the methods by
which we preserve knowledge of the past. These choices will indelibly shape how humans
live together in the future.

Discussion Questions

1. Condorcet believed that the limitless reproduction of texts afforded by

moveable print was key to the success of democracy, and he credited this
technology with greater access to justice in human society. Do you think

Writing Materials: The Politics and Preservation of Knowledge | 199

 our current on-line digital technology increases access to justice?
2. In what ways has digital storage changed what we study and how we learn?
3. How has today’s technology affected communication, positively and
negatively?
4. What is the property of great importance to remember when deciding
whether to use magnetic information storage or some other form of data
storage?
5. What materials have been used throughout history to preserve the printed
word? Discuss the properties for which they were chosen as a vehicle for
the written picture or word.

Key Terms
appropriate technology
codex
Dharani Sutra
ostraca
quaternio or quire
“vulgar writing”

Author Biography
Bonnie Effros (Ph.D., European Medieval History, UCLA, 1994), holds the Chaddock Chair
in Economic and Social History in the School of Histories, Languages, and Cultures at
the University of Liverpool. Prof. Effros was previously the inaugural Rothman Chair and
director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere in addition to being a
Professor in the Department of History at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is
the editor of the Brill Series on the Early Middle Ages and serves on the Editorial Board of
Studies in Late Antiquity.

Further Reading
Baker, Keith Michael. Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics. Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975. https://archive.org/condorcetfromnat0000bake.

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 Crick, Julia, and Alexandra Walsham, eds. The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/433605414.
Danesi, Marcel. Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
Univ. Press, 1993. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/802512895.
Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright, eds. The World’s Writing Systems. Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1996. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/909698730.
Diringer, David. The Book before Printing: Ancient, Medieval and Oriental. New York: Dover
Publications, 1982. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/611226929.

Acknowledgments
I would like to dedicate this essay to my doctoral advisor Professor Richard H. Rouse, who
instilled in me, among other things, an abiding appreciation for the mechanics of books
and book culture.

Notes

1. Elizabeth Hill Boone, “Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words,” in Writing Without
Words, eds. Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter D. Mignolo (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1994), 50–76,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/837771541.
2. Chartier focuses on Vico and Condorcet as symptomatic of these larger questions.; Roger
Chartier, “The Representation of the Written Word,” in Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances,
and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 6–24,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44961557.
3. Giambattista Vico, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians. Drawn out for the Origins of the
Latin Language [1711], trans. Jason Taylor (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2010),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/601348202.
4. Condorcet, “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind: Tenth Epoch,”
trans. Keith Michael Baker, Daedalus 133, no. 3 (Summer, 2004), 65-82, https://www.jstor.org/
stable/20027931.
5. Jean-Jacques Glassne, The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Univ. Press, 2003), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51041422.
6. Roderick Whitfield and Anne Farrer, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk
Route (New York: George Braziller, 1990), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20931666.
7. Bridget Leach and William John Tait, “Papyrus," in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology,
eds. Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 227–53,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1087529499.
8. Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD
300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001), 696–728, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
469934775.

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 9. Kelly Sloane, “Epic Illustrations: Vergil’s Aeneid in the Vergilius Vaticanus,” 2005-2006 Penn
Humanities Forum on Word & Image, Undergraduate Mellon Research Fellows,
https://web.archive.org/web/20150312073624/http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/05-06/
mellon_uhf.shtml.
10. Ronald Reed, The Nature and Making of Parchment (Leeds: Elmete, 1975),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2038984.
11. J. A. Szirmai, "Wooden Writing Tablets and the Birth of the Codex," Gazette du Livre Médèvale 17
(1990): 31–32, https://www.persee.fr/doc/galim_0753-5015_1990_num_17_1_1144.
12. Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, "Paper and Printing," in Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 5, sect. 1, ed.
Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 227–33, http://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/79441618.
13. Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, Traditional Papermaking and Paper Cult
Figures of Mexico (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1986), 3–31, http://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/12950001; Walter D. Mignolo, “Signs and Their Transmission: The Question of the Book in
the New World,” in Writing Without Words, 220–25.
14. Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and
David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), 20–48, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
924973935.
15. Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, “The Book Trade at the University of Paris, ca. 1250–ca.
1350,” in Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame: Univ.
of Notre Dame, 1993), 259–338, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/925020363.
16. Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (London: Phaidon Press,
1997), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/611946900.
17. Tsuen-Hsuin, "Paper and Printing," 52–83.
18. Helen Loveday, Islamic paper: a study of the ancient craft (London: Archetype Publications, 2001),
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/249681685.
19. Jixing Pan, "On the Origin of Printing in the Light of New Archaeological Discoveries," in Chinese
Science Bulletin 42.12 (1997): 976–81, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02882611.
20. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 2nd, rev. ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8157450657.
21. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800
(London: Verso, 1997), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/931383419.
22. Chartier, “The Representation of the Written Word,” 6–24.
23. Pam A. Muelle and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages
of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking,” in Psychological Science 25, no. 6 (2014): 1159–68,
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0956797614524581.
24. Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol, “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid
Technology,” in Social Studies of Science 30, no. 2 (2000): 225–63, https://doi.org/
10.1177%2F030631200030002002.
25. Chartier, “The Representation of the Written Word,” 24.

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