Release date is 2025-04-17

Peter Becker, Iris Schröder-Gehring and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"Die Metalle bei den Naturvölkern: Mit Berücksichtigung prähistorischer Verhältnisse" by Richard Andree is a scientific publication written in the late 19th century. This work examines the use and development of metals among so-called "primitive peoples," with a strong focus on the ethnographic and cultural-historical aspects, and pays particular attention to prehistorical questions surrounding metallurgy. The book appears to offer a comparative study across different regions outside the European and Semitic cultural spheres, investigating how various societies independently discovered, processed, and valued metals such as iron, copper, tin, and bronze. The opening of the book presents a detailed preface and introduction in which the author outlines the motivation behind the work: the need to collect and preserve rapidly vanishing traditional knowledge on indigenous metallurgy in the face of growing European influence and industrialization. Andree acknowledges the complexity of the topic—requiring input from geology, geography, ethnography, chemistry, prehistory, and linguistics—and explains his comparative approach, covering Africa, Asia, and the Americas while excluding well-studied European and Semitic contexts. He previews major themes, such as the independent or borrowed nature of metalworking knowledge, the variability in the sequence of the Stone, Copper, Bronze, and Iron Ages across cultures, and the methodological issues in tracing the spread and development of metallurgy. The initial chapter then begins with a close look at ironworking among the peoples of Africa, particularly its presence in Ancient Egypt and its spread throughout the continent, supported by archaeological finds and early ethnographic reports. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Leipzig: Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1884