Metallurgy

Metallurgy. The winning of metal from ore and the working of it — smelting, alloying, casting, forging — and the knowledge and labour each requires. Two thresholds are routinely conflated and they are three thousand years apart. Native copper, which occurs already in metallic form and can be hammered cold, was worked in Anatolia from about 7000 BCE. Smelting, which requires recognizing that an unpromising rock contains metal and reaching some 1,100°C to extract it, is securely attested far later: five pieces of slag from Belovode in Serbia, around 5000 BCE, each from a separate smelting event. That is the greater intellectual step. This row is dated on the earlier one.

Boundaries. Metallurgy is the winning and working of metal. Getting the ore out of the ground is Extraction; the finished metal as a traded good is carried on the Commodity axis; and the machine or structure built from it is Engineering.