Petrology of iron and copper slags from historical smelting activity in southern Tuscany

Abstract

 In this paper we present a petrographic and chemical characterisation of slag samples from seventeen metallurgical smelting sites for iron and base metals in southern Tuscany and Elba Island, active during ancient, medieval and modern times. These new results, integrated with data available for some of the investigated sites, expand the information available for the investigated metallurgical sites and offer a new petrological viewpoint on the historical evolution of the smelting activity. The chemical composition of samples from different smelting sites can be used to derive information on the composition of charges (and fluxes) used in the furnaces, as well as to determine the physical conditions of slag formation. This study ultimately contributes to enlarge the dataset available on slag mineralogy thereby offering a solid base for the petrological analysis of the slag formation process in historical smelting sites.