The Project Begins!

Hello Friends!

This post marks the start of our journey in recreating a set of grave goods from a burial near the Iron Age hill-fort of the Heuneburg in Germany. Dating to the 5th century B.C. (400's B.C.), this particular grave is nicknamed "Grave 1" as it was the first burial discovered during excavation of Tumulus 17, a burial mound in the Speckhau group associated with the Homichele "mega-mound." Professor Bettina Arnold at UWM excavated this tumulus grave during her "Landscape of Ancestors" project.

The grave contained an unusual "machete-like" sword with a bird-headed hilt, two long spear heads, an iron helmet decoration, and a belt hook. Utilizing the resources and expertise at the Milwaukee MakerSpace, we hope to re-create the full set of grave goods by the start of the Fall 2019 semester.

To kick off the project, we started by re-creating the belt hook. After a talk on safety in the Smithy, we learned the basics of blacksmithing. Using an artist's rendering of the artifact, we measured out our materials and set to work!

However, we realized that the orientation of the hook as found in the grave might mean that the belt's wearer would have had the end of the hook digging into their midsection; we figured that this position might not reflect how this belt was worn in life. Thus, we decided to flip the hook so that the curve faced outwards as this would be much more comfortable to wear.

Additionally, we realized that neither the artist's rendering nor the CT scans of the artifact offered the best idea of what the end of the hook looked like. We settled on having a slight "bulge" at the end to prevent it from slipping out of the leather twist at the other end of the belt. We took turns "up-setting" the iron (compressing), drawing it out (lengthening), and using the punch to add holes for rivets to the hook and backing plates. 

Adding rivet holes to the hook

One rivet hole down, seven to go

Two of the backing plates, cooling off from the forge

Once we had the hook and the three plates forged, we dug through the MakerSpace's supply of leather scraps to see if we could find a piece large enough to work as a belt. We ended up finding a strip of white leather that fit me nicely, so I acted as the "model" for this "rough draft" of the belt. Finally, we assembled all our pieces together and voila! we had the first iteration of our Iron Age belt!

The finished product!

Our key take-away from this initial foray into iron working: taking an experimental approach made it possible to have several testable hypotheses about how the belt would have been worn.

Wearing the belt

Next up on the agenda is to make the second iteration of the belt, using more historically-accurate techniques.

Stay tuned!