Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

White, Kenneth D.: The Great Chesterford scythes

of excavation work on a Romano-British farm site at Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire, Dr. Graham Webster unearthed two scythes of identical pattern and of approximately the same size, in association with a building dated approximately to the years 320—360 A.D.

2 These blades were in poor condition — neither being complete and unbroken; only the heel survives entire in the case of one of them, and the other was broken in several places. The latter, as now reconstructed in the British Museum, resembles the Great Chesterford types in curvature of blade, and both possess the typical strongly recurved heel. C. Work done at the Iron and Steel Institute A third blade from the hoard was subjected to a full-scale chemical and metallographic analysis by Mr. G. T. Brown of the Research Division of the British Iron and Steel Institute, with a view to establishing the precise composition of the material used, the formation of the cutting edge of the blade, and the method of manufacture. In view of the amount of speculation that has gone on concerning the technical knowledge possessed by Roman smiths, the prospect of reaching some conclusions on whether they were able to distinguish between blooms of high and those of low carbon content, and whether they understood the processes of hardening by quenching and tempering by reheating, made these investigations of more than passing interest to students of ancient metallurgical technology, as well as to those concerned with the history and development of agricultural implements. The results of these investigations may be summarised as follows: Chemical cleaning of the surface revealed degrees of darkness on the surface of the cutting edge, indiaatiing variations in carbon content. In order to define these areas throughout the blade, it was divided into eight sections. These were then subjected to both macrographic and micrographie analysis, producing the following overall picture. "The blade has been constructed by joining strips of medium to high carbon content to form a cutting edge and subsequently joining this to a very low carbon backing strip. The outer or trailing edge" (the flange) "was thickened, partly by pure forging and partly by adding extra thin strips of iron, probably at a fairly late stage in forging. The iron itself displayed the normal heterogeneity of bloomery iron. There has been no attempt to harden the cutting edge by quenching."

3 We shall now examine one or two interesting points of detail emerging from the Iron and Steel Institute's analysis: ^Personal communication from Dr. WEBSTER. The material associated with the Barnsley Park villa site has not yet been fully published. 3

That hardening by quenching was normal practice, at least in the late first century B. C. is evident from the following remarks made en passant by VITRUVIUS while discussing a quite different subject: 'One may observe the same phenomenon even in the case of iron; although it is naturally hard, when thoroughly heated up in the furnace, it nevertheless becomes so soft that it can be easily fashioned into any desired shape. Yet when, soft and glowing, it is colled by immersion in cold water, it becomes hard again, and is restored to its former shape'. De arch. I. 4. 3.