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Cremation is a complex mortuary practice, involving a number of activities of the living towards the dead before, during, and after the destruction of the bodily soft tissues by fire. The limiting information concerning these behavioral patterns obtained from the pyre remains and/or cremation deposits prevents the reconstruction of the handling of the corpse during the burning process. This pioneering study tries to determine the initial positioning of the corpse in the pyre and assess whether the deceased was wearing closed leather shoes during cremation through isotopic (δ13C, δ18O) and infrared (ATR-FTIR) analyses of experimentally burnt pig remains, used as a proxy for humans. The results obtained show that both the position of feet on or within the pyre and the presence of footwears may moderately-to-highly influence the oxygen isotope ratios of bone apatite carbonates and the cyanamide content of calcined bone in certain situations. By forming a protective layer, shoes appear to temporarily delay the burning of the underlying pig tissues and to increase the heat-shielding effect of the soft tissues protecting the bone mineral fraction. In such case, bioapatite bone carbonates exchange oxygen with a relatively more 18O-depleted atmosphere (due to the influence of lignin-derived oxygen rather than cellulose-derived oxygen), resulting in more pronounced decrease in the δ18Ocarb values during burning of the shoed feet vs. unshoed feet. The shift observed here was as high as 2.5. A concomitant isotopic effect of the initial location of the feet in the pyres was also observed, resulting in a top-to-bottom decrease difference in the δ18Ocarb values of shoed feet of about 1.4 between each deposition level tested. Finally, the presence of cyanamide (CN/P 0.02) seems to be indicative of closed footwear since the latter creates favorable conditions for its incorporation into bone apatite., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

International audience; This Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Special Issue was prompted by the organisers of the Second International Conference on Archaeometallurgy (ICA II), which was held at the Lettres Sorbonne Université and École Normale Supérieure de Cachan in Paris, and the Plateforme expérimentale de Melle (CNRS, Institut de Recherche sur les Archéomatériaux) in the Poitou region, France, from the 25th of September to the 1st of October 2019. The conference was made possible thanks to the support of the Lettres Sorbonne Université (ED 1, FIR), CNRS UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée (team Mondes pharaoniques) and the MSH Paris-Saclay, and took place within the framework of the Collective Research Program: “L’expérimentation paléométallurgique: de l’analogie à la modélisation” (SRA Nouvelle-Aquitaine, French Ministry of Culture). The conference was organised by Georges Verly, Florian Téreygeol, Claire Somaglino and Frederik Rademakers, further assisted by Johannes Auenmüller, Adeline Bats, Roeland Paardekooper, Jean-Philippe Marnais and Jean-Charles Méaudre.

In this paper, a solution is proposed to answer the problematic issue of the type of fuel used in the early Middle Kingdom smelting furnaces at Ayn Soukhna based on a strict experimental protocol. The protocol was repeated 17 times, for a total of approx. 1500 h of experimental work. In correspondence with the archaeological data obtained at Ayn Soukhna, the combined use of fresh acacia and donkey dung as fuel for smelting is proposed; the use of charcoal for smelting can be excluded. A holistic evaluation of experimental and archaeological evidence has shown that a combination of fresh wood and donkey dung was most likely the standard fuel choice at Middle Kingdom Ayn Soukhna. This is evidenced by the compatibility of results from experimental smelting using wood and donkey dung in terms of furnace lining impact and colorimetry, slag typology and deposition, ash and charcoal distribution, and raw copper shape and size. The use of charcoal systematically results in incompatible smelting results, as does smelting without donkey dung. In addition to green wood, donkey dung is required to regulate the temperature distribution inside the furnaces and to increase the production of copper prills. Green wood creates a favourable atmosphere for the smelting of copper carbonate ore. It heats the lining of the column less, allowing the furnaces to be reused over several campaigns. The dual fuel use of green wood and donkey dung, however, has resulted in the best agreement between experimental smelting results and corresponding archaeological evidence. This archaeometallurgical research in the Nile Valley is carried out by a team composed of Georges Verly, in charge of archaeology and experimental archaeology, and Frederik Rademakers, in charge of archaeometry, as well as numerous master students and a Maitre d’art, Hugues Paridans. Dialogue and interdisciplinarity are the assets of this project, dictating equality between its members, representing the sum of ideas and debates, building all research protocols and publications.

This paper presents the first combined elemental composition and lead isotope (LI) ratio data for Middle Kingdom Egyptian copper alloy artefacts and significantly extends our knowledge on copper smelting remains from the Sinai Peninsula. It further provides the first precise LI ratio and trace element data for two Classic Kerma daggers. Forty-one samples have been analysed from artefacts housed at the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. An important part of this assemblage consists of ore, “slag” and raw metal from workshops associated with 12th Dynasty mining expeditions in the southern Sinai Peninsula. These offer a unique insight into Middle Kingdom copper production chains and the associated waste materials, and form an essential reference group for provenance studies. The other part of the assemblage encompasses finished artefacts from different sites in Egypt—the first ever to be characterised for LI ratios for this period—as well as two daggers from Kerma, Nubia. This study illustrates the need for a careful approach to provenance research of early Egyptian metals, tailored to the particular technologies attested there. Based on the wide range of artefact LI ratios overlapping with those of arsenic-poor Sinai ores on the one hand, and the discrepancy in arsenic content between these ores and artefacts on the other hand, a two-step process for the production of arsenical copper alloys is identified. This suggests some technological continuity with respect to earlier pharaonic periods. The sources for primary copper production, however, likely changed over time: a narrower range of Sinai mines appears to have been exploited compared to preceding periods, and the recycling of circulating metal gained importance in the overall provisioning system.