The iron industry in the eastern half of the Pyrenees from Antiquity to the 17th century: new data and research perspectives

Abstract

International audienceThe eastern half of the Pyrenees has been involved in the iron industry since ancient times, from the Roman Antiquity to the modern era. This mountainous area contains very large deposits of high-grade iron ore and enormous timber resources. It is also a component of trade networks linking the Iberian Peninsula and Gaul on the one hand, and the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean basin on the other. Despite high-quality archaeological and historical studies led previously on the Roman Antiquity (Dubois 2000) on one hand and the late medieval (Verna 2001, Téreygeol & Gauthier 2016) and modern periods (Cantelaube 2005) on the other hand, the long-term dynamics of iron production remained imperfectly known, due to numerous chronological gaps. This concerns especially the late Antiquity and early Middle Ages periods. In addition, certain aspects of the siderurgic economy needed to be studied more thoroughly, in particular ore supply strategies and the distribution of metal products.The aim of the FERMAPYR (2019-2022 – FEDER L’industrie du FER dans le MAssif des PYRénées) and FERAPO (2021-2026- PCR Le FER en Ariège et dans Pyrénées-Orientales) programs is to draw up a synthesis of new data on iron industry based on interdisciplinary research. This is done at the scale of the eastern half of the Pyrenees over the long term: from Ariège to the Pyrénées-Orientales departments; from Antiquity to the middle of the 17th century. The work is based on the interdisciplinary collection and processing of data: fieldwork (prospecting, test pits, field surveys, etc.); examination of archive collections and extraction of unpublished documentation; laboratory work (typological and archaeometric studies of artefacts: ceramics, slag, iron bars, charcoal, ore, C14 dating, etc.); recording of data in a shared computer database with the support of the Huma-Num Paris Time Machine Consortium.After more than 5 years of research, we would like to present these interdisciplinary and diachronic projects and their archaeological and archaeometric results