Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [219]
Mallery (1951, p. 100) stated: “The earliest iron-smelting furnaces in both the Old World and the New were merely shallow pits with rounded bottoms located on the hilltops. In order to catch the usual up-draft of air from the valley below for combustion, they were built close to the edge of the hillside facing the prevailing winds.” In Argentina, the prevailing winds are the southeast trades that blow in from the ocean, so it seems the coastal slopes would be suitable for natural draft furnaces. Mallery (1951, p. 199) further stated: “The bottoms of these pit-furnaces were frequently covered with a layer of clay spread evenly to form a rounded basin from six to twelve inches deep.”
Describing the smelting process, Mallery (1951, pp. 197–198) stated: “iron smelting was performed in three distinct stages utilizing, as a rule, bog ore from swamps. The ore was first piled up in heaps on layers of wood fagots and heated or calcined until it was red. It was then mixed with fuel and burned in a smelting furnace operated at a temperature below the melting point (about 2100 degrees) of cast iron. At or below this temperature, the fusible material in the ore became a fluid slag which seeped down and formed a pool in the pit of the furnace. The iron and mineral oxides in the ore were carried down with the slag and collected in a porous lump or bloom at the bottom of the pool. When the melt was completed the fire was quenched with water and the iron-workers lifted the bloom, still red hot, out of the furnace. It was then beaten with stones or heavy hammers to squeeze out some of the contained slag. In the finishing stage the bloom was usually taken to a smithy, reheated in a smaller furnace or forge, and hammered to squeeze out more of the slag, the process being repeated until forgeable wrought iron was obtained.”
What exactly is bog ore? Mallery (1951, p. 199) explained: “Bog ore is a yellowish-brown, clay-like material composed mainly of clay, loam, and hydrated oxides of iron. Some pottery maker who attempted to use bog ore instead of clay for his pots may have discovered the iron-extracting process. . . . Even now, the small closed furnaces used by the Agaria in India and, until recently, by the Liberian natives, resemble pottery kilns.”
As it turns out, there is an iron-rich earth at Miramar and other localities on the coast. For example, Wright and Fenner analyzed specimens from Miramar, describing them as “brown ferruginous earth” with “pronounced accumulation of limonitic material” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 70). Limonite is an iron ore. Wright and Fenner also observed: “Brown ferruginous earths have also been considered tierra cocida by some investigators. A careful microscopic examination of these specimens has shown that they are simply loess in which ferruginous material abounds” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 89). It is possible that these ferruginous earths could have served as the raw material for iron smelting.
A key indicator is the iron content of the slag left over from smelting. Mallery (1951, p. 200) pointed out: “The iron content of the slag . . . in the mounds of England, Belgium, Scandinavia, Virginia, and the Ohio Valley is very high—from
10 per cent to 60 per cent. Slag produced in modern blast furnaces, which have been in general use since the fourteenth century, seldom contains more than one per cent iron.” He then gave a specific example: “On top of Ohio’s Spruce Hill is an extensive deposit of slag. In this deposit are several low mounds composed