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A Succinct History of Metalcasting Knowledge

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Abstract

The beginnings of human civilization can be traced to the Jiahu settlement, China (ca. 7000–5700 BC, 500 inhabitants). However, if we are to accept the view of historians, who generally clock the first signs of urbanization as the dawn of civilization, it is not until the building of the city of Uruk by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey, and Syria) (ca. 3500 BC, approximately 50,000 inhabitants) that civilization really thrived. Until recently it was believed that the saga of metalcasting started right there with the production of the copper frog (ca. 3200 BC). Yet, this paper will show that the oldest castings are copper axe heads (ca. 4000 BC) unearthed in “Old Europe” (present Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria). While metal casting technology reaches back more than 5000 years, we will never know its precise birth date as man produced castings before he learned to make written records. If we are to include in this history the iron meteorites, the nature-cast materials formed under very low gravity conditions and the first form of iron cast materials ever used by humans (the earliest known iron artifacts are the small beads dated to ca. 3200 BC, from Gerzeh, Egypt), we can understand why, in ancient times, metals and related skills such as castings, were perceived as gifts from the gods. Metal casting has emerged from the darkness of prehistoric times, first as magic, later to evolve into an art, then into a technology, and finally into the complex, interdisciplinary science that it is today. This lecture is a short time-travel of knowledge development that made of metalcasting one of the pillars on which modern civilization was built.

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Source: https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/ancient-civilizations-of-the-old-world-3500-to-after-600-bce/. Old Europe added by the author.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was made possible by the financial support of the Organizing Committee of the 74th WFC under the chairmanship of Dr. Sang-Mok Lee and of the AnySoftware company under the leadership of Dr. Sung-Bin Kim. The author is also indebted to Mr. Eungsu Kweon (AnySofware Co.) for making possible the visit to the National Museum of Korea to obtain information on the history of metalcasting pertinent to Korea.

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  1. The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Doru M. Stefanescu

  2. The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Doru M. Stefanescu

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Correspondence to Doru M. Stefanescu.

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Disclaimer: What I cannot do in the limited number of pages of this paper is to cover more than 6000 years of metalcasting history and discuss in detail the progress in technology and science, the many individual contributors, and the art produced through metal casting technology. What I will attempt to do is to discuss the major developments in the science and technology of metal casting and some of its impact on art, and to recognize the main contributors (influencers). Finally, because over the last few years my research interests gravitated mostly around cast iron, a certain bias in the examples used will be evident to the reader.

This paper is an invited submission to IJMC selected from presentations at the 74th World Foundry Congress, held October 16–20, 2022, in Busan, Korea, and has been expanded from the original presentation.

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Stefanescu, D.M. A Succinct History of Metalcasting Knowledge. Inter Metalcast 17, 2373–2388 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40962-023-00971-5

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