6533b822fe1ef96bd127cccc

RESEARCH PRODUCT

La métallurgie du fer au Pays Basque durant l'Antiquité. Etat des connaissances dans la vallée de Baigorri (Pyrénées-Atlantiques)

subject

description

A study of the ancient metallurgy of iron was committed in the Basque Country, in the Baigorri valley, a rich sector whose resources were exploited before Antiquity and sometimes until the century XXth. The prospecting and the investigations undertaken revealed the existence of two mining and metallurgical districts. Their chronology is attested between the end of the Iron age and the century IVth p.C. The mines, the coal-scuttles and the métallurgie sites of the two centres of production were identified, while four workshops of reduction were the subject of a particular archaeological study. These results were confronted with the environmental data resulting from the palynological and geochemical analysis of a peat bog from the high valley of Baigorri.