• Flament, Julien
• Sarah, Guillaume
• Téreygeol, Florian

Abstract

Excavation carried out over a decade on the mining and metallurgical site of Castel-Minier (Ariège, France) confirmed its polymetallic activities, which took place between the late 13th century and the mid. 15th century. The discovery of a large corpus of copper ores, slags and metallic fragments offers the opportunity to shed new light on the functional organisation of the workshop and the plurality of the chaînes opératoires. While textual sources refer to argentiferous lead processing and siderurgy, they do not discuss copper metallurgy. This questions the place of copper production among other metallurgical activities and could be interpreted as marginality. However, this hypothesis is weakened by archaeological and archaeometric data. Several pieces of chalcopyrite were found as well as sheets fragments and casting debris made of unalloyed copper which demonstrate the existence of a dedicated chaîne opératoire. Bournonite, a lead antimony copper ore, was also processed at Castel- Minier in order to manufacture a specific antimony bronze used for vessel casting: caldarium. Moreover, copper metallurgies are spatialized in the workshop in order to rationalize working spaces and make the productions durable. In Castel-Miner, copper ores processing results from both mineral opportunities provided by mining activities and technical skills of medieval metallurgists who were able to develop new processes in order to manufacture copper alloys in line with the ever-increasing copper market expectations.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• mineral
• copper
• casting
• bronze
• Antimony
• secondary electron spectroscopy