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Invention and Innovation in African Iron-smelting Technologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2015

David Killick
David Killick*
Affiliation:
School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1009 E. South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721-0030, USA Email: killick@email.arizona.edu
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Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa is often characterized by Europeans as a region that saw no significant technological change from the adoptions of agriculture and ironworking until the European colonization of the entire continent after 1880. This article criticizes this view by exploring the distinction between invention and innovation, using African iron smelting as a case study. It argues that there is in fact much evidence for the invention of new technologies in recent African prehistory, but that very low population densities precluded innovations in mass production and transportation.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 307 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2015 

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