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Professor Thilo
REHREN
Research Interests:
Materials made or processed through pyrotechnology are an integral part of the last ten thousand years or so of human culture, and often form the majority of the material remains recovered from archaeological excavations. My interest lies in reconstructing and understanding of the processes used in the production of metals, glass and glazes, specifically in the Near East and Egypt. Metal and glass artefacts are typically a combination of inexorable physico-chemical requirements and organisational or behavioural aspects which are culture-specific. I approach interpretation of these materials and technological processes through data obtained by microscopic (optical and electron microscopy) and chemical analyses (by electron microprobe, X-ray fluorescence and other methods) of 'technical' finds, such as raw materials, intermediate and semi-finished artefacts, and waste products, in conjunction with archaeological and historical textual sources. By identifying and defining the physico-chemical constraints I hope to isolate the culturally determined variables which can then be interpreted within a historically and theoretically informed research agenda. Current projects include work in the Egyptian Late Bronze Age, the Iron Age to Classical Antiquity in SE Europe and the Mediterranean, and the Medieval Period in Europe and Central Asia.
The rest of this page
has infomation about:
I am developing separate webpages where I go into more detail about my research interests and my publications.
The following gives a brief listing
of some of the research topics of MPhil / PhD students which are currently
being supervised by me:
- Ethnicity and Social Identity in the Negev: An Archaeological Ceramagrophic Evaluation of Petrie’s Palestinian Pottery (Alice Hunt, from 2007)
- Iron Artefacts of the Ancient State of Chu (Qiyan HONG, from 2007)
- The Glass-making Industries of the Iron Age/Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean and Early Islamic Central Asia: Compositional Analysis as a means of understanding the structure of ancient Industries (Philip Connolly, p/t, from 2006)
- Investigation of Late Bronze Age glass production in Egypt using Amarna and Lisht as case studies (Melina Smirniou, p/t, from 2006)
- 12th Century Copper Production in the Harz Mountains, Northern Germany (Bastian Asmus, from 2005)
- Ceramics in Transition: Late Byzantine-Early Islamic Pottery in Southern Jordan (Virpi Holmqvist, from 2005, joint supervision with Marcos Martinon-Torres)
- Assaying and Smelting Noble Metals in Sixteenth-Century Austria: A Comparative Analytical Study (Aude Mongiatti, from 2004, joint supervision with Marcos Martinon-Torres)
- Silver production in Porco-Potosi, Bolivia (Claire Cohen, from 2004)
- Roman silver production at Rio Tinto: The case study of Corta Lago (Lorna Anguilano, from 2004)
- Glass, Glass Cakes and Tesserae from the Petra Church in Petra, Jordan (Fatma Marii, from 2004)
- Early Islamic Ceramics and Glazes of Akhsiket, Uzbekistan (Christy Henshaw, p/t, from 2002)
Completed PhD dissertations principally supervised by me include:
- Experimental study of Late Bronze Age glass making practice (Satoko Tanimoto, PhD 2007).
- The evolution of a craft: The use of metal threads in the decoration of late and post Byzantine ecclesiastical textiles (Anna Karatzani, PhD 2007).
- Ironworking in Northwest Wales: An Evolutionary Analysis (Michael Charlton, PhD 2006, joint supervision with Stephen Shennan).
- Technology and Organisation of Early Cycladic Metallurgy: Copper on Seriphos and Keros, Greece (Myrto Georgakopoulou, PhD 2005, joint supervision with Cyprian Broodbank).
- Chymistry and Crucibles in the Renaissance Laboratory: An Archaeometric and Historical Study (Marcos Martinon-Torres, PhD 2005).
- Early Iron Production in the Levant: Smelting and Smithing at Early 1 st Millennium B.C. Tell Hammeh, Jordan and Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel (Xander Veldhuijzen, PhD 2005).
- Iron Production in Iron Age Zimbabwe: Stagnation or Innovation? (Shadreck Chirikure, PhD 2005, joint supervision with Andrew Reid).
- The organisation, transportation and logistics of hard-stone quarrying in the Egyptian Old Kingdom: A Comparative Study (Elizabeth Bloxam, PhD 2003).
- The First Farming Communities of the Adriatic: Pottery Production and Circulation in the Early and Middle Neolithic (Michela Spataro, PhD 2002, joint supervision with Ruth Whitehouse).
- Crucible steel in Central Asia: Production, Use, and Origins (Ann Feuerbach, PhD 2002, joint supervision with Peter Ucko).
The materials I am studying are drawn from a range of sources, including museum collections, surveys, rescue and research excavations. Currently, my primary involvement in archaeological fieldwork is the excavation of a Late Bronze Age (Ramesside) industrial and military complex in Qantir/Pi-Ramesse in the eastern Nile delta, directed by Dr. Edgar Pusch of the Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim. Since 1997, this has led to major new discoveries concerning the production of glass in New Kingdom Egypt, as reported in numerous papers and conference presentations, and a two-volume monograph following an AHRC-funded sabbatical in early 2007. The glass and faience-related research is still ongoing, and further work in the near future will centre on the remains of the largest known pre-modern bronze casting installations, and the identification of lime kilns.
More recently, I co-directed several excavation seasons in Eastern Uzbekistan, focussing on the investigation of the early Islamic steel-making industry, and glass and glazed pottery production in Akhsiket, Ferghana Valley. This project was undertaken in cooperation with Dr. Abdulhamid Anarbaev from the Institute of Archaeology, Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Tashkent, and funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Collections-based current research includes the study of urban metallurgy in SE Europe, in co-operation with the Institute of Archaeology with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, in Sofia, the 13th Ephorate for Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities in Volos, Greece, and the Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade.
My involvement in Chinese archaeology began with a collaboration some years ago with Professor MEI Jianjun from the Institute for Historical Metals and Materials at the University of Science and Technology Beijing; at present, I am Visiting Professor there, co-supervising the doctoral research of CHEN Kunlong on early bronzes and LIN Xiyian on early glass in China. A formal co-operation agreement of the UCL Institute of Archaeology with the Museum of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Emperor Qin Shihuang has led to an ongoing doctoral study of the composition of the metal implements of the army by one of their staff, Janice LI (supervised by Marcos Martinón-Torres). More recently, I have been asked to be the UK Director of the ICCHA.
- 1984 Diplom-Mineraloge,
TU Clausthal (Mineralogy, Economic Geology, Non-ferrous Metallurgy)
- 1988 Dr. rer.nat., University
Freiburg (Petrology and Volcanology of Nisyros, an island in the Eastern Aegean)
- 1989 Six month postdoc
at the Department of Materials, Oxford University (Dr. JP Northover, Chris
Salter)
- 1990 to 1999 Research Scientist
at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, Institut fuer Archaeometallurgie,
Curator of the museum's Geological Collections
- 1998 Dr.-Ing. habil., TU
Bergakademie Freiberg (Crucible metallurgy in Antiquity)
- 1999 Professor for Archaeological
Materials and Technologies at the Institute of Archaeology UCL.
Henning
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