The Signature of a Blacksmith on a Dromedary Bone from Islamic Seville (Spain)

Abstract

A review of the archaeological and ethnographical literature has shown that bone anvils were not only manufactured in different geographical regions, extending from Ukraine to the Iberian Peninsula and northern Africa but also that they have been in use from the Hellenistic period until today. Although cattle and equid metapodials appear to be the preferred bones, other parts of the skeleton such as mandibles, humeri, radii, pelves, femora and tibiae were employed too. Here we present a bone anvil fashioned from a dromedary ( Camelus dromedarius ) right radius-ulna recovered from an urban excavation in the city of Seville (Spain), dated to the Taifa-Almoravid Moslem period (11th-12th-centuries). Besides it being the first archaeological bone anvil of this animal species it constitutes a new record to add to the scarce number of camelid remains in the Iberian Peninsula. Detailed observation of its worked surface and ethnographic information allow us to understand how the medieval blacksmith used this anvil. Keywords: Dromedary, Bone anvil, Al-Andalus, Blacksmiths Resumen: La revision bibliografica de trabajos arqueologicos y etnograficos muestra como los yunques de hueso no solo fueron manufacturados en diferentes regiones geograficas, desde Ucrania hasta la Peninsula Iberica y el norte de Africa, sino que tambien fueron utilizados desde el periodo Helenistico hasta nuestros dias. Aunque los metapodos de bovidos y equidos parecen ser los huesos preferidos, otros elementos anatomicos como mandibulas, humeros, radios, pelvis, femures y tibias, fueron tambien utilizados. En este articulo presentamos un yunque elaborado a partir del radio-ulna derecho de un dromedario ( Camelus dromedarius ), recuperado en una excavacion urbana en Sevilla (Espana), datado de epoca Taifa-Almoravide (siglos XIXII). Ademas de ser el primer registro arqueologico de yunque oseo de esta especie, constituye un nuevo resto a anadir al escaso numero de ejemplares de camelido existente en la Peninsula Iberica. La observacion detallada de la superficie trabajada y la informacion etnografica disponible nos permitieron comprender como el herrero medieval utilizo este hueso. Palabras clave: Dromedario, Yunque oseo, Al-Andalus, Herreros

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.