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The Furnace versus the Goat: The Pyrotechnologic Industries and Mediterranean Deforestation
in Antiquity
Author(s): Theodore A. Wertime
Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 445-452
Published by: Maney Publishing
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Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 445 Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 445
MIKESELL, Marvin W. "The Deforestation of Mount Leba-
non," The Geographical Review 59 (1969) 1-28.
NIBBI, Alessandra. Ancient Egypt and Some Eastern Neigh-
bors (Noyes Press: Park Ridge, New Jersey 1981) see pp.
1-31.
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PHILIPPSON, Alfred. Das Mittelmeergebiet: Seine Geogra-
phische und Kulturelle Eigenart. 2nd. edn. (B.C. Teubner:
Leipzig 1907).
PHILPOT, J. H. The Sacred Tree, or the Tree in Religion and
Myth (Macmillan: New York 1897).
PUTNAM, Michael C. J. The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four
Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Harvard University
Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966).
RECKFORD, Kenneth J. "Some Trees in Virgil and Tol-
kien," in G. Karl Galinsky, ed., Perspectives of Roman
Poetry: A Classics Symposium (University of Texas Press:
Austin, Texas 1974) 57-91.
ROSTOVTZEFF, Michael. The Social and Economic History
of the Hellenistic World. 3 vols. (Clarendon Press: Oxford
1941).
. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Em-
pire. 2 vols. 2nd edn. (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1957).
ROWTON, M. B. "The Woodlands of Ancient Western Asia,"
JNES 26 (1967) 261-277.
SEGAL, Charles Paul. "Landscape in Ovid's Metamor-
phoses," Hermes 23 (1969) 1-109.
SEIDENSTICKER, August. Waldgeschichte des Alterthums.
2 vols. (Trowitzsch and Sohn: Frankfurt 1886).
SEMPLE, Ellen Churchill. The Geography of the Mediterra-
nean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (Henry Holt:
New York 1931) see pp . 261 -296.
..
SKLAWUNOS, K. G. "Uber die Holzversorgung Griechen-
lands in Altertum," Forstwissenschaftliches Zentralblatt 52
(1930) 868-891.
SMITH, Catherine Delano. Western Mediterranean Europe
(Academic Press: London 1979) see pp. 209-217.
SOUTAR, George. Nature in Greek Poetry (Oxford University
Press: London 1939).
THIRGOOD, J. V. Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Ac-
ademic Press: London 1981) .
TOUTAIN, Jules. The Economic Life of the Ancient World
(Kegan Paul: London 1930).
TOYNBEE, Arnold J. Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic
War's Effects on Roman Life. 2 vols. (Oxford University
Press: London 1965) see Vol. 2, pp. 585-599.
TROTTA-TREYDEN, Hans von. "Die Entwaldung in den
Mittelmeerlandern: Mit einem Anhang uber den heutigen
Waldstand," Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen aus
Justus Perthes Geographischer Anstalt (Petermann: Gotha
1916) 248-253.
TURRILL, W. B. The Plant-Life of the Balkan Peninsula
(Clarendon Press: London 1929).
VITA-FINZI, Claudio. The Mediterranean Valleys: Geologi-
cal Changes in Historical Times (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge 1969).
WHITE, K. D. Roman Farming (Cornell University Press:
Ithaca, New York 1970) see pp. 224-271.
MIKESELL, Marvin W. "The Deforestation of Mount Leba-
non," The Geographical Review 59 (1969) 1-28.
NIBBI, Alessandra. Ancient Egypt and Some Eastern Neigh-
bors (Noyes Press: Park Ridge, New Jersey 1981) see pp.
1-31.
PASSMORE, John Arthur. Man' s Responsibility for Nature
(Scribner' s: New York 1974) .
PHILIPPSON, Alfred. Das Mittelmeergebiet: Seine Geogra-
phische und Kulturelle Eigenart. 2nd. edn. (B.C. Teubner:
Leipzig 1907).
PHILPOT, J. H. The Sacred Tree, or the Tree in Religion and
Myth (Macmillan: New York 1897).
PUTNAM, Michael C. J. The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four
Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Harvard University
Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966).
RECKFORD, Kenneth J. "Some Trees in Virgil and Tol-
kien," in G. Karl Galinsky, ed., Perspectives of Roman
Poetry: A Classics Symposium (University of Texas Press:
Austin, Texas 1974) 57-91.
ROSTOVTZEFF, Michael. The Social and Economic History
of the Hellenistic World. 3 vols. (Clarendon Press: Oxford
1941).
. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Em-
pire. 2 vols. 2nd edn. (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1957).
ROWTON, M. B. "The Woodlands of Ancient Western Asia,"
JNES 26 (1967) 261-277.
SEGAL, Charles Paul. "Landscape in Ovid's Metamor-
phoses," Hermes 23 (1969) 1-109.
SEIDENSTICKER, August. Waldgeschichte des Alterthums.
2 vols. (Trowitzsch and Sohn: Frankfurt 1886).
SEMPLE, Ellen Churchill. The Geography of the Mediterra-
nean Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (Henry Holt:
New York 1931) see pp . 261 -296.
..
SKLAWUNOS, K. G. "Uber die Holzversorgung Griechen-
lands in Altertum," Forstwissenschaftliches Zentralblatt 52
(1930) 868-891.
SMITH, Catherine Delano. Western Mediterranean Europe
(Academic Press: London 1979) see pp. 209-217.
SOUTAR, George. Nature in Greek Poetry (Oxford University
Press: London 1939).
THIRGOOD, J. V. Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Ac-
ademic Press: London 1981) .
TOUTAIN, Jules. The Economic Life of the Ancient World
(Kegan Paul: London 1930).
TOYNBEE, Arnold J. Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic
War's Effects on Roman Life. 2 vols. (Oxford University
Press: London 1965) see Vol. 2, pp. 585-599.
TROTTA-TREYDEN, Hans von. "Die Entwaldung in den
Mittelmeerlandern: Mit einem Anhang uber den heutigen
Waldstand," Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen aus
Justus Perthes Geographischer Anstalt (Petermann: Gotha
1916) 248-253.
TURRILL, W. B. The Plant-Life of the Balkan Peninsula
(Clarendon Press: London 1929).
VITA-FINZI, Claudio. The Mediterranean Valleys: Geologi-
cal Changes in Historical Times (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge 1969).
WHITE, K. D. Roman Farming (Cornell University Press:
Ithaca, New York 1970) see pp. 224-271.
WILHELM, Adolf. "Die Pachturkunden der Klytiden," Jah-
..
rescheft des Osterreichischen Archaologischen Institutes in
Wien 28 (1933) 197-221.
WINTERS, Robert K. The Forest and Man (Vantage Press:
New York 1974).
ZIMMERN, Alfred. The Greek Commonwealth. 5th edn. (Ox-
ford University Press: Oxford 1931 ) .
The Furnace versus the Goat: the
Pyrotechnologic Industries and
Mediterranean Deforestation in Antiquity
THEODORE A. WERTIMEt
This paper presents arguments and data to support the
hypothesis that pyrotechnologic industries were the
prime factor in the deforestation of Mediterranean
lands during antiquity.
The Forces of Change
Rene Dubos has reminded us that man has recast his
ecological settings a dozen times in the short 5,000 years
that he has been tampering seriously with the landscape
of the earth.l Homo, of course, is not the only force
altering the face of the earth during the longer panorama
of geologic history, as studies of climate and tectonic
change remind us. But we can be sure from J. V. Thir-
good's overview of the sad history of the Mediterranean
forest from antiquity to modern times that within the
frame of emergent civilization man is the responsible
party.2 He is man in many incarnations or disguises, of
course: settler, farmer, warrior, animal keeper, ship-
builder, firemaker, religious fanatic, and city engineer.
In each case the responsibility lodges with man.
There is more than dramatic purpose in having an-
thropos the goatkeeper confront anthropos the exploiter
of hearths, furnaces, and kilns. The goat's worst depre-
dations in the Mediterranean have been secondary, con-
fined heavily to the past two millennia, and given wide
publicity. The depredations of the industrial hearth, fur-
nace, and kiln have been primary, been committed in-
tensively over the past four millennia, been gradualistic
and inexorable, and been largely concealed. Even Thir-
good, in his painstaking review of Mediterranean forests,
1. R. Dubos, Beast or Angel? (Scribners: New York 1974) 161.
2. J. V. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Academic
Press: New York 1981).
WILHELM, Adolf. "Die Pachturkunden der Klytiden," Jah-
..
rescheft des Osterreichischen Archaologischen Institutes in
Wien 28 (1933) 197-221.
WINTERS, Robert K. The Forest and Man (Vantage Press:
New York 1974).
ZIMMERN, Alfred. The Greek Commonwealth. 5th edn. (Ox-
ford University Press: Oxford 1931 ) .
The Furnace versus the Goat: the
Pyrotechnologic Industries and
Mediterranean Deforestation in Antiquity
THEODORE A. WERTIMEt
This paper presents arguments and data to support the
hypothesis that pyrotechnologic industries were the
prime factor in the deforestation of Mediterranean
lands during antiquity.
The Forces of Change
Rene Dubos has reminded us that man has recast his
ecological settings a dozen times in the short 5,000 years
that he has been tampering seriously with the landscape
of the earth.l Homo, of course, is not the only force
altering the face of the earth during the longer panorama
of geologic history, as studies of climate and tectonic
change remind us. But we can be sure from J. V. Thir-
good's overview of the sad history of the Mediterranean
forest from antiquity to modern times that within the
frame of emergent civilization man is the responsible
party.2 He is man in many incarnations or disguises, of
course: settler, farmer, warrior, animal keeper, ship-
builder, firemaker, religious fanatic, and city engineer.
In each case the responsibility lodges with man.
There is more than dramatic purpose in having an-
thropos the goatkeeper confront anthropos the exploiter
of hearths, furnaces, and kilns. The goat's worst depre-
dations in the Mediterranean have been secondary, con-
fined heavily to the past two millennia, and given wide
publicity. The depredations of the industrial hearth, fur-
nace, and kiln have been primary, been committed in-
tensively over the past four millennia, been gradualistic
and inexorable, and been largely concealed. Even Thir-
good, in his painstaking review of Mediterranean forests,
1. R. Dubos, Beast or Angel? (Scribners: New York 1974) 161.
2. J. V. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest (Academic
Press: New York 1981).
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446 Symposium: Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology. Contributions 1-2
fails to capture their true extent.3 From the late Neolithic
till the coming of fossil fuels in the 20th century, man
the pyrotechnologist has been possibly even more dev-
astating than man the settler and terracer in erasing Med-
iterranean trees. First, however, for the goat.
Essays on terracing have shown that human settlement
of the hillsides of Israel, Greece, and Italy between 1200
B.C. and 900 B.C. was perhaps the first truly massive and
enduring encroachment by man upon Mediterranean for-
ests.4 Settlement in turn coopted the support of such py-
rotechnologic industries as the making of iron tools and
the kilning of lime for cisterns. Each new household
brought into play the demand for one to two tons of
firewood per year.5
With expanded terracing and farming came increased
grazing by sheep and goats, early recognized by numer-
ous ancient writers to be the number one scourge of
young trees and bushes.6 But Thirgood hastens to note
that the goat was kept on strict leash through Roman
times, in favor of pigs, cattle, and horses.7 Vergil de-
scribes the flock as gaining "its food in leafy wood-
lands".8 Only with the disintegration of the ancient world
did grazing by sheep and goat achieve dominance.9 The
Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries A.C. installed
the nomad herder over North Africa and into Spain,
bringing nearly total desuetude to the Roman systems of
agriculture and irrigation that had prevailed theretofore.
In once wheat-producing Spain under the medieval Mesta,
the organized herder took virtual political control of the
countryside and kept unrestricted access to it for their
goats till the l9th century.l
We shall, however, have to judge the goat the party
of the second or third part in the destruction of the Med-
3. Ibid. 19-84.
4. H. A. Koster, H. A. Forbes, and L. Foxhall, "Terrace Agriculture
and Erosion: Environmental Effects of Population Instability in the
Mediterranean," unpublished paper presented at this symposium
( 1978) .
5. J. M. Shay and C. T. Shay, "Modern Vegetation and Fossil Plant
Remains," in G. Rapp and S. Aschenbrenner, eds., Excavations at
Nichoria in Southwest Greece (University of Minnesota: Minneapolis
1978) 48; H. A. Koster and H. A. Forbes, "The Commons and the
Market: Ecological Effects on Communal Land Tenure and Market
Integration of Local Resources in the Mediterranean," unpublished
paper presented at this symposium (1978).
6. Thirgood, op. cit. (in note 2) 67.
7. Ibid. 69.
8. Vergil Georgics ii.520.
9. Thirgood, op. cit. (in note 2) 69.
10. Ibid. 74.
iterranean forest. He was always the instrument of unre-
strained social forces, whether individual, religious, or
political. He was the accessory, directing his teeth not
at mature forests (except where abetted by shepherds who
cut them for fodder) but at regrowth from someone else's
cutting. In parts of Anatolia today he browses the high
forest as undestructively as in the Arcadian mountains
of Vergil's day.1l In the maquis of Greece he even per-
forms the useful function of pruning the wild olive, in-
deed of redomesticating it from year to year.12
At the same time, possibly no animal domesticate could
so quickly have upset the natural order of biota. Through
Brian Hesse's eyes we can see his original transforma-
tion to a pet in the Zagros nearly 10,000 years ago ac-
company a period of heavy snows and afforestation,
where he buffered human supplies from hunting.13 But
the buffer quickly supplanted the supply of wild meat
before preoccupying himself with the new maquis human
charcoal-needs were creating.
Having noted personally the beneficial effects of the
partial banishment of the goat from Cyprus (down by
half in numbers in 70 years),14 I shall not be drawn into
the merits of the goat as efficient producer of meat and
hair and miLk, or as pruner and scavenger. Like the camel
(which became another Arab instrument for overturning
the Roman order of the wheel, the cow, and the planned
city), he has served to maintain Abel's superiority over
Cain well into the 20th century mainly by destroying the
agricultural and forest domains of Cain. So much for the
goat.
With the new studies of the rise and fall of terracing
undertaken by such as Koster, Forbes, and Foxhall15 we
are on the eve of an understanding of the long-term ero-
sive forces at work in the Mediterranean. But such stud-
ies will not be complete till we put together the picture
of the often forgotten but massive effects of man's re-
shaping of earthy materials by fire that which Birin-
11. J. Kolars, "Locational Aspects of Cultural Ecology: The Case of
the Goat in Non-Western Agriculture," Geographical Review 56 (1966)
577-584.
12. N. Gavriledes, "The Impact of Olive Growing on the Landscape
of Fourni Valley," in Muriel Dimen and Ernestine Friedl, eds., An-
nals of the New York Academy of Sciences 268: Regional Variation
in Modern Greece and Cyprus: Toward a Perception of the Ethnog-
raphy of Greece (New York Academy of Sciences: New York 1976)
143- 157.
13. Brian Hesse, "Afforestation and Domestication in the Zagros,"
unpublished paper presented at this symposium (1978); see now idem,
"Animal Domestication and Oscillating Climates," Journal of Eth-
nobiology 2: 1 ( 1982) 8.
14. Thirgood, op. cit. (in note 2) 142.
15. Koster, Forbes, and Foxhall, op. cit. (in note 4).
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Journ(ll of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 447
transactions of value as well as providing the hardware
of daily life, including even agriculture, in the 3rd mil-
lennium s.c.19 These records were inscribed on tablets
of baked clay. Ancient Nineveh was a picture of bricks
and mortars.
Lead and silver form a metallurgical dyad in the earth,
which, at such sites as Lavrion in Greece, went their
separate ways of becoming respectively measures of
weight and value.20 If the Greco-Roman world embraced
the silver coin as the ultimate expression of silver's worth
as money, credit, and an instrument of trade, it also
exploited surplus lead no less to convert the jointed ce-
ramic pipe into the pressurized lead pipe. All these came
to a focus in the concrete city of Rome with its rivers of
running water, emergent windows of glass, terra cotta
roofs, and lavish use of bricks. Rome, indeed, was a
quarry of pyrotechnologic materials.2l
The Biblical Job well captures the quiet assault of the
fire-using industries upon the mores and landscapes of
the ancient Mediterranean world, ranging from the min-
ing and smelting of metals to the quarrying of mountains
and the damming of streams.22
Iron is taken out of the earth,
and copper is smelted from the ore.
Men put an end to darkness,
and search out to the farthest bound
the ore in gloom and deep darkness.
They open shafts in a valley
away from where men live.
* * *
Man puts his hand to the flinty rock
and overturns mountains by the roots.
He cuts out channels in the rocks
and his eye sees every precious thing.
He binds up the streams so that
they do not trickle
and the thing that is hid he brings forth to light.
Plaster at Proto-Elamite Anshan (Iran)," in T. Wertime and S. Wer-
time, eds., Early Pyrotechnology: The Evolution of the Fire Using
Industries (Smithsonian: Washington, D.C. 1982) 104.
19. Henri Limet, Le travail du me'tal au pays de Sumer au temps de
la lIIe Dynastie d'Ur (Bibliotheque de la Facultd de Philosophie et
Lettres de l'Universite de Liege-Fascicule CLV: Paris 1960) 14-15.
20. N. H. Gale and Z. A. Stos-Gale, "Cycladic lead and silver metal-
lurgy," BSA 76 (1981) 164-224; see now also iidem, "The Sources
of Mycenaean Silver and Lead," JFA 9 (1982) 467-485.
21. Tenney Frank, History of Rome (Holt: New York 1923) 370-372,
380-404.
22. Job 28.2- 10.
guccio called Pirotechnia.l6 These materials were formed
mainly in the lime or ceramic kiln and the glass or metal-
lurgical furnace. The major products accordingly were
plasterstcements; varieties of baked clays from bricks
and pots to terra cotta pipes; glazes and glass; and met-
als.
It was a matter of constant astonishment to the ancients
that such totally different forms of matter could be
achieved by the application of heat to often not dissimilar
earthy matrices. Pliny's famous disquisition on fire as
an agent for altering nature is a surprisingly careful ob-
servation of the countervailing phenomena evident as
between the smelting of a metal and its forging, or be-
tween the kilning of a piece of limestone and that of a
clay brick (often together in the same kiln).17 We shall
note here merely that in the transformations furnaces
rendered materials liquid or viscous, whereas kilns hard-
ened or softened them. Lime, ceramics, and glass were
yielded by the application of heat for the chemical-me-
chanical alteration of clays and stones. Metals emerged
from the chemistry of smelting through the direct appli-
cation of charcoal fire to ores.
In the case of metallurgy the metal was the major
product and silica was cast off in the slag. In baked clays
and glass, silica was the major component and metals
formed the coloring element. In cement, silica was sec-
ondary to calcium as lime. Metallic ores in turn played
varying secondary roles in ceramics, glass, and cements.
To correct the confusion the Greek term "metal" came
to connote elements of luster and malleability; "vitrics",
a rapidly cooled, viscous lime-soda-silicate mix, fragile,
translucent, and sharp edged; "ceramic", a baked clay
hardened to brittle stoniness; and "hydrated" material,
a powder that could be reconstituted to stone by adding
water. But whatever the defined differences, the ancient
worker knew that these varying materials came out of a
matrix of abundant and commonly associated materials
in the earth's crust and would fructify each other in thou-
sands of ways (as, e.g., cement and brick).
Confusing or not, pyrotechnology became the major
accessory of the rise of settled community life and ulti-
mately civilization in the Middle East and Mediterra-
nean. One cannot think of the mud-brick village of the
Late Neolithic Middle East without its panoply of baked
clay or lime containers, plastered walls, terrazo floors,
and limed water-storage sites.18 The written records of
Sumer give us a picture of at least five metals entering
16. V. Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, trans. C. S. Smith (Dover: New
York 1942).
17. Ibid. 399; Pliny Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 10. 159- 160.
18. M. J. Blackman, "The Manufacture and Use of Burned Lime
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448 Symposium: Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology: Contributions 1-2
I suspect that the process of overturning mountains was
so gradual, inexorable, pervasive, and octopal that it
largely escaped the dramatic eye of the ancient writer.
Aeschylus in The Persians could boast of silver "en-
treasured in the Greek soil" whose exploitation led to
the defeat of the Persians.23 Plato in the Critias could
speak sorrowfully of the total denudation of Attica, as
we shall see, including the great timbers that had once
graced ships and held up roofs of monumental struc-
tures.24 But no Greek writer ever connected the two,
mainly because the Lavrion mines, a great scar upon the
Attic landscape, lay secreted at the very southern tip of
the peninsula, well beyond the ken of most knowledge-
able Athenians other than the Sounion farmers. They
exemplified the gloom and deep darkness that was the
fate of metallurgy, whereas lime, brick, and pot making
were so public and commonplace as to be overlooked.
One can only conclude that the human penchant for em-
bracing petty tyranny in incremental doses adapting by
amnesia obscured the picture of littered brickyards and
treeless mountains that overhung major cities of the
Mediterranean.
Yet, the occasional flashbacks of discerning writers,
as documented by J. Donald Hughes,25 lighted the dark
corners even of metallurgy. Eratosthenes gives us such
a flashback of the totality of events on the island of
Cyprus, presumably in Mycenaean times, ignoring mainly
the lime kiln and pottery yard.26
Eratosthenes says that in ancient times the plains were thickly
overgrown with forests, and therefore were covered with
woods and not cultivated; that the mines helped a little against
this, since the people would cut down the trees to burn the
copper and the silver, and that the building of the fleets
further helped, since the sea was now being navigated safely,
that is with naval forces, but that, because they could not
thus prevail over the growth of the timber, they permitted
anyone who wished, or was able, to cut out the timber and
to keep the land thus cleared as his own property and exempt
from taxes.
Plato's picture of the ultimate cost in erosion and loss
of water resources in Greece affords a final coda to Er-
atosthenes, if again he totally ignored the pyrotechnolog-
ic villains largely responsible for this felony against the
Greek heritage of nature.27
Contemporary Attica may accurately be described as a mere
23. Aeschylus Persians 238.
24. Plato Critias 1 1 1 a-d.
25. J. Donald Hughes, "How the Ancients Viewed Deforestation,''
in this issue of the JFA.
26. Strabo xiv.6.4-6 (383).
27. Plato, loc. cit. (in note 24).
relic of the original country. There has been a constant
movement of soil away from the high ground and what
remains is like the skeleton of a body emaciated by disease.
All the rich soil has melted away, leaving a country of skin
and bone. Originally the mountains of Attica were heavily
forested. Fine trees produced timber suitable for roofing the
largest buildings; the roofs hewn from the timber are still in
existence. The country produced boundless feed for cattle;
there are some mountains which had trees not so very long
ago, that now have nothing but bee pastures. The annual
rainfall was not lost as it now is through the ground and
stored . . . the drainage from the high ground was collected
in this way and discharged into the hollows as springs and
rivers with abundant flow and a wide temtorial distribution.
Shrines remain at the sources of dried up water sources as
witness to this.
The lesson from Eratosthenes and Job and Plato is
clear. Not one but two ultimately cataclysmic metamor-
phoses in human technologies and lifestyles swept Med-
iterranean man into the condition of city dweller and
economic and political animal. If land clearing and the
energies of the agricultural transformation restructured
society into classes and crafts, the new materials of pyro-
technology stored those energies for densening popula-
tion; damming streams; cutting limestone hillsides;
plastering walls and cisterns; providing the tablets for
writing for scribes; affording ornamentation; extending
credit and trade; storing value; providing transportation;
making possible bureaucracy and war; by way of the
winch and the metal-working lathe and screw, setting in
motion ultimate mechanization; helping to provide the
technologic foundations of science and organized learn-
ing; and propelling mankind into the first crisis in energy
and ecology of human history, which itself became the
major engine of further change in both the Greco-Roman
Mediterranean and Han China. Indeed if human society
till 20,000 B.P. had been largely negentropic, in the words
of Leslie White,28 now it turned to entropy in large and
consistent ways, with portentous consequences for the
face of the earth.
The Material Ingredients of the Pyrotechnologic
Industries in the Mediterranean
Job clearly perceived that the plutonic subsoil yielded
the chief materials of pyrotechnology.29 This subsoil un-
derlay the surface that gave man his bread. Food-pro-
ducing man and pyrotechnologic man were engaged in
a common revolution in these two layers of the earth.
Certainly, evidences were all about in the volcanic Med-
28. Leslie White, The Evolution of Culture (McGraw-Hill: New York
1959) 39.
29. Loc. cit. (in note 22).
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Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 449
iterranean of a frequently fiery interior of the earth, the
proper home of the god Pluto. But from Pluto to the
complex arts of Hephaistos or Vulcan was a very long
process. It was not simply to be inferred from trying to
imitate or reverse by fire the formation of the common
rocks and minerals of the earth. There was to it an or-
derly succession of sequential discoveries and feedbacks
that could occur only over a large geographic area of
interaction, with the right materials and energy technol-
ogies in intercommunication, and pushed by proper hier-
archies of social need and awareness.
Scholars today tend to discredit environmentalism and
"technical logic" as major elements in the invention of
new technologies or technologic clusters. But careful
study of the gradual unfolding of pyrotechnology in East
Asia, the Mediterranean, and the New World persuades
me that the "tarbaby" attraction of available earthy ma-
terials was given an explosive quality by a historical
concatenation of forces unique to the Mediterranean. No-
where else in the world, not even in China, did iron-
steel, glass, terra cottas, and cement take on the syner-
gistic power achieved in the building of Greco-Roman
civilization. Several of these products simply never
"made it" elsewhere. We come to perceive that Medi-
terranean science-technology mirrors the underlying earth
no less than it does the overlying stars.
Everywhere, of course, the earth itself offers a mod-
erate tarbaby challenge in the form of the abundant me-
tallic or semimetallic elements and their gathering together
in a mix of oxides, carbonates, and sulfides, especially
along a contact zone or in a pillow lava. Thanks to the
fusion activities of the earliest stars and the "luck of the
galactic draw", the abundant elements in the earth's crust
came to be as follows, in order of percentage by weight.
erals. The brick and its cementing mortar, which so baf-
fled Pliny and Biringuccio for the contradictory effects
that could be achieved in the same kiln, do not stand all
that far apart in the realm of kilned materials; no more
do glass and pumice and metallurgical slags. The term
"fluxing" has profound implications for the alteration
of physical states. The possibility in real furnace-kilning
operations of experimenting with mixes of clays, or ores,
or fluxes led even to such discoveries as the cementing
qualities of the pozzolanic ashes, including those under-
lying Rome. And the urge to play pyrotechnologic games
over the Mediterranean rnilieu became a way of life when
one encountered the varieties of materials lying abreast
each other in the copper-iron gossans of Cyprus, the
cerrusite-galena-iron-marble schists prevailing in Lav-
rion, Greece, the rich iron ores of Elba, or the high-
calcium ceramic clays located within echoing distance
from each other.
Simple abundance does not, of course, automatically
explain all the subtleties of man's immersion in the first
place into shaping materials with fire. Abundant alu-
mina, which resists reduction in a charcoal fire, is a case
in point. So is scarce copper. Copper in the earth's crust
is present in less than 0.5 part in 10,000 or 0.0045%.
Why then the exploitation of copper as a metal in ad-
vance of lead or iron? The answer is not difficult: simply
because for 300,000 years men had already been seeking
out stones and ores for their color, texture, and weight.31
Bright-orange native copper presented itself in numerous
outcrops in the Middle East even more forcefully as a
true metallic stone than did the iron ochers that had
preoccupied cave painters. It did so in basalts, contact
zones, and gossans in the latter often very close to the
ochrish cup of the gossan. Its ores were also multicol-
ored orange, gray, blue, green.
The transition to the chemistry of smelting such ore
forms as green malachite (CuC03 * Cu(OH)2) and blue
azurite (2CuC03 * Cu(OH)2), as well as the variegated
sulfide forms, occurred under experimental conditions in
which artisans moved from the annealing of the native
metal to its accidental casting in a molten bath, often
with smelting of admixed ores as a byproduct. Lead
smelting began at the same time. The further steps to
employing copper arsenates (Cu3As208 * nCu(OH)2 x
H20) and stannite, the copper-tin-iron sulE1de (Cu2S
FeS * SnS2), could well have been taken on the basis of
the green color of the former and the bronze color of the
latter, yielding in time the intricate discovery of tin
bronze.
31. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "Ocher in Prehistory: 300,000 Years
of the Use of Iron Ores as Pigments," in Theodore A. Wertime and
James D. Muhly, eds., The Coming of the Age of Iron (Yale University
Press: New Haven 1980) 127-150.
O Si A1
45.2 27.2 8
Fe Ca Mg Na K
5.8 5 2.7 2.3 1.6
Translated into oxides (since oxygen is the most abun-
dant element of all), silica (SiO2) occupies 60% of the
earth's crust; iron oxides (calculated as Fe203), 6%; lime
(CaO), 4.8%; and oxides of magnesium, sodium, and
potassium, slightly smaller percentages.30 Aluminum is
also quite abundant but cannot be recovered from its ores
in a charcoal fire. In antiquity silicon, iron, and calcium
became the big three of the kingdom of human engi-
neering.
One can play a game with the ternary phase diagrams
of kilned ceramics, kilned lime-cements, smelted metals
and slags, and even non-crystalline glass, showing the
common boundaries of their various combining min-
30. Edward S. Dana, Textbook on Mineralogy: with an extended trea-
tise on crystallography and physical mineralogy, 4th edn., rev. and
enlarged by William E. Ford (Wiley: London 1932) 379.
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450 Symposium: Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology: Contributions 1-2
These are just a few of the mazes encountered in the
Dante-like descent into Job's domains of "gloom and
deep darkness". First were the interlocked matrices of
the abundant pyrotechnologic minerals, and second the
spiralling metallurgic ladder of often jointly copper-bear-
ing, iron-bearing, lead-bearing, arsenic-bearing, and tin-
bearing ores that carried mankind to bronze and iron.
The threading of these mazes could scarcely have oc-
curred simply on the grounds of esthetic playfulness or
chance. Only a combination of inducements and pres-
sures call them also serendipities and imperatives-
could have yielded it.
In the future "incrementalism" is likely to become an
ever more sought-out term for the forces inducing tech-
nologic change. One form of incrementalism was that
emanating from the expansion of human experimentation
with industrial fire itself going back to about 20,000 B.P.
Four separate tracks can be discerned in the human cook-
ing of stones or clays. One was the automatic baking of
clays in the cooking hearth (giving rise to the figurines
of Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov). A second was the fire-
drying of iron ocher in such caves as Arcy-sur-Cure to
enhance its color. A third was the fire quarrying of sil-
iceous stone for useful cores for flaking (later native
copper to break it out of its matrix). A fourth and possibly
most widely used track was the thermal alteration of the
quartzes flints, jaspers, chalcedonies, and cherts af-
fording them a cleaner break across the crystal bounda-
ries .32
One track, that of fire quarrying, led men directly but
serendipitously toward eventual pyrotechnology, first by
the accidental kilning of limestone to lime, second by
the serendipitous annealing of native copper to casting-
smelting temperatures. A second, the cooking hearth,
undoubtedly metamorphosed with but few mutations to
the ceramic oven. The heating of ochers certainly en-
larged man's appreciation of color in ores and contrib-
uted somewhat directly to ultimate metallurgy. But the
thermal alteration of stones was largely a dead end, ex-
cept for aiding the cross-referencing of changes in tex-
ture and color in raw materials on heating.
This external experimentation with fire burning of ma-
terials thus meshed if unequally with the inner pyro-
technology of the plutonian earth, yielding first the lime
kilns at work, say, at C, ayonu Tepesi, and not much later
the ceramics and the metallurgy, whether hammered
copper or smelted lead, at C,atal Huyuk. One may call
this meshing a technologic incrementalism, carried for-
ward not simply by human demand but by the momen-
tum of discovery led on both by the attractions of fire-
32. Ibid.; and the essays published in Wertime and Wertime, eds.,
op. cit. (in note 18).
making and the varying responsiveness of earths to it.
Lime became the first major fire-based industry to come
onstream simply because it so readily was kilned and
was adapted to human use through such accidental dis-
coveries as having it turn to plaster when daubed on a
wet wall.33
The second form of incrementalism was that brought
on by Mediterranean population growth in an increas-
ingly settled and urbanizing milieu. A look at the general
conditions of life at gayonu helps one to understand why
experimentation with pyrotechnology also occurred
there.34
The third incremental factor was that of progressive
energy shortage induced by ever widening areas of char-
coal provisionment for the new industrial hearths, kilns,
and furnaces. We cannot ever let ourselves forget that
to provision one traditional limekiln for one burn in the
highlands of Greece required 1,000 donkey loads of jun-
iper wood.35 It is this third form of incrementalism that
will occupy the remainder of this paper. Such incremen-
talism was sufficiently powerful to have been both a
response to the materials revolution of antiquity and a
further stimulus to it.
The Energy Factor
When one looks around the Mediterranean littoral for
evidences of ancient industrial fire-making, he discovers
that the best and possibly only index is metallurgical
slags. The eastern desert of Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus,
Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, Elba, Sardinia, France, and
Spain and parts of North Africa all manifest slag heaps
of varying size and metallurgical implication. In a paper
as short as this one cannot even catalogue or describe
the large sites, many of which I have visited. Nothing
will be said, for example, about the huge Bor mining
area of Yugoslavia, where smelting of copper and iron
has been carried on steadily since the Vinca era. The
same is true of Sardinia.
We instead offer four reasonably well documented ex-
amples of metallurgical activities that illustrate both the
magnitude of drains upon the resources of the Mediter-
ranean and the interconnectedness of their pyrotechno-
logic evolution. They are Cyprus, Lavrion (Greece),
Populonia (Italy), and Rio Tinto (Spain). Cyprus pro-
duced copper but also helped to launch the Age of Iron;
Lavrion, lead, silver, and some iron; Populonia, bronze
33. W. H. Gourdin and W. D. Kingery, "The Beginnings of Pyro-
technology: Neolithic and Egyptian Lime Plasters," JFA 2 (1975)
133-150.
34. R. J. Braidwood, H. Xambel, W. Schirmer, et al., "Beginnings
of Village-Farming Communities in South-Eastern Turkey: Xayonu
Tepesi, 1978 and 1979, " JFA 8 ( 1981 ) 249-258 .
35. Koster and Forbes, op. cit. (in note 5).
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Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 451
ulonia, on various sources including Pleiner;38 and for
Rio Tinto on Salkield,39 modified upwards by myself.
No guess for all of pyrotechnology could be made for
any but the largely self-contained regions of Cyprus and
Lavrion. Here again estimates are skewed by the fact
that both Lavrion and Populonia produced most of their
slags in the Sth-lst centuries B.C. (though Lavrion began
yielding about 2900 B.C.) whereas Cyprus and Rio Tinto
functioned more intensively over much longer periods,
though most heavily exploited in Roman times.
The other skewing factor is the grossly differing yields
of metal from ores for the same amounts of charcoal
expended. Cyprus ores averaging little better than 4.5%
copper obviously fared much worse energy-wise than
rich Lavrion ores (17-20% Pb), enriched up to nearly
50%; Populonian iron ores of 89.3% hematite; or the
rich lead sulfate ores of Rio Tinto. I say this mindful of
the fact that as much as 53.5% iron oxide appeared in
Populonian slags (because of the barely liquid condition
of the iron). As much as 20% lead appeared in Lavrion
slags. Another skewing factor at Rio Tinto arises from
our uncertainty as to the proportions of copper produced
compared to lead-silver, as well as the extent to which
hydrometallurgy might have been employed as against
roasting.
Even more telling than sheer statistics is the evidence
of evasive energy strategies probably or possibly fol-
lowed in the four regions. They suggest to us that energy
may have become a central calculus in the further course
of the materials revolution of the Mediterranean. The
strategies may be summarized as follows.
1. Avoidance of roasting of sulfide ores to conserve
energy and preserve existing stands of trees from the
destructive effect of sulfur dioxide (SO2), by varying
ore mixes or applying hydrometallurgy (Lavrion,
probably Cyprus, Rio Tinto).
2. Barge traffic of fuel and/or ores (Lavrion, Popu-
lonia, and putatively Cyprus).
3. New smelting strategies.
a. Moving furnaces from the highlands to the
coast and losing lead in the slag in order to
save wood (Lavrion).
b. Recourse to fluxing techniques that guaran-
teed ever more energy-efficient slagging op-
erations (Cyprus and probably Rio Tinto).
38. R. Pleiner, ''Early Iron Metallurgy in Europe," in Wertime and
Muhly, eds., op. cit. (in note 31) 386-387.
39. Leonard U. Salkield, ''The Roman and Pre-Roman Slags at Rio
Tinto Spain," in Wertime and Wertime, eds., op. cit. (in note 18)
138.
and iron; and Rio Tinto, silver and copper, and, the
ancients said, even iron.
The following table (TABLE 1) sums up my best esti-
mates of the energy costs of metallurgy and pyrotech-
nology in the four regions.
The Cyprus estimates in Table 1 are based on my new
study for the Cyprus metallurgical symposium;36 Lavrion
estimates are based on Conophagos;37 estimates for Pop-
36. Theodore A. Wertime, ''Cypriot Metallurgy Against the Back-
drop of Mediterranean Pyrotechnology: Energy Reconsidered," in
James D. Muhly, Robert Maddin, and Vassos Karageorghis, eds.,
Acta of the International Archaeological Symposium ''Early Metal-
lurgy in Cyprus 4000-500 B.C.'' (Department of Antiquities of Cy-
prus: Nicosia 1982 [to appear in fall, 1983]) 351-362.
37. C. Conophagos, Le Laurium Antique (Ekdotike Ellados: Athens
1980) 151.
4
5-6
5-6
0.2-0.4
CYPRUS
Slag (tons)
Charcoal (est. tons)
Coppice (est. acres)
Production of copper
(est. tons)
Coppice for all pyrotechnology
(est. acres)
LAVRlON
Slag (tons)
Charcoal (est. tons)
Coppice (est. acres)
(including cuppellation)
Production of lead
(est. tons)
Production of silver
(est. tons)
Coppice for all pyrotechnology
(est. acres)
POPULONlA
Slag (est. tons)
Charcoal (est. tons)
Coppice (est. acres)
Production of iron
(est. tons)
Coppice for all pyrotechnology
(no estimate)
RlO TlNTO
Slag (est. tons)
Charcoal (est. tons)
Coppice (est. acres)
Production of copper
Production of silver
Coppice for all pyrotechnology
(no estimate)
10
I .5
2
1.5
0.0035
3.5
2-4
1 .5-3
1 .5-3
4
15
7-10
7-10
?
?
Table 1. Energy costs of pyrotechnology for the whole of
ancient history at Cyprus and Rio Tinto, and for the 5th-lst
centuries B.C. at Lavrion and Populonia. Numerical units are
in millions.
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452 Symposium: Deforestation, Erosion, and Ecology: Contributions 1-2
c. The shift from copper to iron to gain a more
energy-efficient metal (Cyprus, Populonia, and
ultimately the whole Mediterranean. Lavrion
and Rio Tinto may have smelted iron but never
at the cost of silver).
The suggestion that artisans turned from the extremely
energy-inefficient copper to the energy-efficient iron has
been made in another paper,40 in which I note that such
a choice could probably have occurred only in a primi-
tive phase of smelting when men were breaking copper
prills out of a matrix of sponge iron. More need not be
said here about the further launching of the Age of Iron
than that it was probably as much influenced by a desire
to get more metal for the same amount of fuel as it was
by shortages of tin or the perceived advantages of steel
over bronze.
These then are the metallurgical facts. Over the whole
of the Mediterranean littoral one might find minimally
70-90 million tons of slag from antiquity representing
the divestiture of at least 50-70 million acres of trees.
Thirty million tons of slag are lodged in Iberia alone.
The acreages of fuelwood are not cumulative, of course,
since regrowth occurred. Moreover, a large distinction
must be made between high forest and coppice. Little
wonder, even so, that Rome turned increasingly to the
forested flanks of Europe for its metals and glass: Nor-
icum, the Vosges, the Forest of Dean, and even the
Slupia Nova mountains of Poland (which was not under
Roman control), to name a few examples.
What then about the other pyrotechnologic indus-
tries such as bricks and lime-cement? In the case of
Lavrion we have factored in the huge cisterns with the
metallurgical activities. But what about the endless fuel
costs for bricks and lime in the constant rebuilding of
the city of Rome? We are told that Marcus Aurelius'
mother made a fortune in fabricating bricks for the great
villa of Hadrian at Tivoli. One can read back into Med-
iterranean history only from the few statistics one has,
as, e.g., on lime making. At ancient Anshan in Iran one
level of one plastered building required 8,000 kg. of
quicklime.41 In traditional Greece a single lime kiln re-
quired 1,000 muleloads of juniper wood for one burn,
50 kilns requiring 6,000 metric tons of wood yearly.42
It is a pity that there is no comparable evidence for
the roof tiles that became common with Greek temples
from the 8th century B.C. onward. They must have con-
stituted an additional burden on forests equivalent to lime
kilning, as the passion spread to Greco-Roman hous-
40. Wertime, op. cit. (in note 36).
41. Blackman, op. cit. (in note 18) 104.
42. Koster and Forbes, op. cit. (in note 5).
ing.43 How do we know? Simply by taking the measure
of one 4th century B.C. kiln at Nemea. This had the hor-
rendous dimensions of 4.2-4.6 m. and yet may have
confected at best 140 of the huge tiles necessary. One
can only guess at its consumption of raw pine.44
One can quickly perceive the magnitude of the dev-
astation when one contemplates the passion for lime
plaster throughout the Mediterranean from Neolithic days
on, as well as the wave of cistern building and cement-
brick construction (with tiles and pipes) that occurred
after the 3rd century B.C. Each installation represented a
widening ripple of cut forests, making energy crisis a
matter of immediate distance of provisionment as well
as ultimate national shortages. I have treated this phe-
nomenon extensively for 1 8th-century Europe in The
Coming of The Age of Steel.45 Barge traffic helped to
save the day at coastal Lavrion and Populonia and pos-
sibly Cyprus. But on the mainland the ripples merged
and merged again, as metallurgy gathered force and roof
tiles became common on temples and houses, and bricks
and cement in all types of construction, large and small.
Had the Mediterranean not been a readily traversible body
of water, the crisis would probably not have widened as
rapidly as it did, for the possibility could then be ex-
ploited of making products at a distance and shipping
them to Athens or Rome.
In such a setting, the goat was merely an accessory
waiting for his moment to consolidate the damage, dur-
ing Islamic rule of the Middle Ages and modern era. In
the modern orgy of earthly deforestation, in which Af-
rican and Asian peasants forage over 100-mile perime-
ters for firewood, we see man at the ultimate end of the
process he began in the Mediterranean and China.
43. W. B. Dinsmoor, Architecture of Ancient Greece, rev. ed. (Nor-
ton: New York 1975) 42-43.
44. W. Rostocker and E. Gebhard, "The Reproduction of Roof Tiles
for the Archaic Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia, Greece, " JFA 8 ( 1981 )
21 l-217.
45. T. A. Wertime, The Coming of the Age of Steel (University of
Chicago Press: Chicago 1962) 1 15.
Theodore A. Wertime, Research Associate in
Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, was an
internationally recognized expert in the history of
pyrotechnology. His numerous published works include
two recent volumes, The Coming of the Age of Iron
(Yale University Press: New Haven 1980), which he
co-edited with James D. Muhly, and Eaxly
Pyrotechnology (Smithsonian: Washington, D.C.
1982), which was co-edited by S. Wertime.
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