ARCHEOMETALLURGIA: DALLA CONOSCENZA ALLA FRUIZIONE - © 2011 · Edipuglia s.r.l. - www.edipuglia.it 43 1. Introduction It is a commonplace in the 20 th century Spanish lit- erature on Prehistory that the early metallurgical knowledge reached the Iberian Peninsula coming from the Eastern Mediterranean regions. The Chal- colithic and even the Argaric metallurgy was firstly explained as a consequence of the arrival of prospec- tors who should settle the Southeast territory where copper resources were abundant, giving rise to sup- posedly metallurgical societies such as those of Los Millares and El Argar cultures, through the third and second millennia cal BC. Louis Siret was the first who wrote on this topic in his very important book on early Spanish metallurgy (SIRET, SIRET 1890: 321). Over time, “the colonialist hypothesis” lost strength under the weight of new archaeological evidence but the no- tion ex oriente lux has strongly taken root in many scholars. In this sense, it is thought that Sicily and Sar- dinia, as islands in the route of the eastern prehistoric sailors, could have played an important role in the dif- fusion processes. 2. Archaeometallurgy in Spain It is a fact that Spain enters very early in the ar- chaeometallurgical world by the hand of Louis Siret, a Belgian mining engineer who worked at the large mining district of Almería province. He performed the excavation of dozens of archaeological sites in the re- gion and the materials he published are today an es- sential source of information about the Millarian and Argaric cultures (SIRET , SIRET 1890). He also included many chemical analyses of metal objects, some ores and a few slags, as he was fully convinced of the im- portance of chemical analysis for understanding the archaeometallurgical problems. After Siret, a long silence occurred until the well- known analytical program carried out in the sixty’s by S. Junghans, E. Sangmeister and M. Schröder, the Stu- dien zu den Anfängen der Metallurgie, which included more than one hundred analyses of prehistoric metals from the Iberian Peninsula. The definition of the metal group E 01 (arsenical copper), which also is present in Anatolia, Crete and Cyprus, was thought to be a strong argument in favour of the colonialist hypothesis. A little latter, in the seventy’s B. Rothenberg and A. Blanco Freijeiro developed the Huelva Ar- chaeometallurgical Survey (ROTHENBERG, BLANCO 1981). Despite not too much light on early metallurgy was obtained by this survey, it was, no doubt, inter- esting and fruitful for latter periods of copper and sil- ver mining and metallurgy (Iron Age and Roman time). At this point, a group of at that time young Span- ish researchers (G. Delibes, M. Ruiz-Gálvez, C. Martín, M.D. Fernández-Posse, S. Rovira) leaded by M. Fernández-Miranda started in 1982 the Ar- queometalurgia de la Península Ibérica project. Other Contribution of the analytical work to the knowledge of the early metallurgy in the Iberian Peninsula di Salvador Rovira * * Museo Arqueológico Nacional - Madrid Abstract In this chapter, the state of the art on prehistoric metallurgy of the Iberian Peninsula is revised in the light of the results ob- tained by the Spanish Archaeometallurgy Project, with special reference to the method of copper obtaining using smelting crucibles and its related slags. Alternatives to the contentious issue of arsenical copper and solutions to the hitherto obscure problem of copper-tin bronze obtaining are also proposed. Early iron technology poses many problems still unresolved.