La métallurgie du fer dans l’agglomération antique d'Epomanduodurum (Mandeure-Mathay, 25)

Résumé En

The present work attempts to study the iron working activities in the Roman town of Epomanduodurum (Mandeure-Mathay, France) and their integration in the regional economical space. In this order, the documentation and artefacts of fourteen excavations have been studied. It has enabled us to document fifteen metallurgical contexts, including eight workshops, occupied between the first and the fourth AD. To characterize the smiting activities, around six hundred plano-convex bottoms slags (PCB) have been studied at the macroscopic scale and sixteen at the microscopic scale. Furthermore, a small amount of iron-smiting debris has been added, selected in most interesting contexts.The analysis of these metallurgical remains shows the complete absence of reduction slags, witch could witness an iron production from local ores. The identified activities are in equal parts refining, recycling and shaping of iron objects, alongside with traces of polymetallurgy. A statistical analyse of the wastes assemblies shows three different types of productions : when some workshops executed the entire process, either from refining or from recycling to shaping, other seems to specialise on shaping operations. Interesting point, two very different techniques of recycling were employed, the second appearing only through the fourth century AD ; this precise activity could thus have occupied an important place in the roman region Sequania, where no trace of reduction is known before the Merovingian times.A large amount of smithies were probably in activity in the town, most of which were located in the Faubourg de Pont area. This activity should probably have held an important economical role in this context, along with the ceramic production and meat smoking. But its role was at least more local than that of other well-known sites in the region, producing large amounts of artefacts for the exportation, such as Alesia or Entrains-sur-Nohains.