江西上高蒙山遗址古代银铅冶炼技术研究

A Study of Ancient Silver and Lead Smelting at the Shanggao Mengshan Site in Jiangxi

江西上高蒙山遗址是一处宋元时期大型银铅生产遗址,历史文献对其兴废时间、岁课额、生产组织方式等有过较多记载,但就其银铅生产技术则未有记录。本文对蒙山遗址多个地点的冶炼炉渣进行研究,通过与世界范围内多处银铅生产遗址的炉渣分析结果进行对比,重建蒙山遗址东西两冶炼区的古代银铅冶炼技术。研究结果显示,蒙山西区主要使用烧结—还原熔炼法冶炼含银铅矿石,而东区则主要使用铁还原沉淀熔炼法进行冶炼。铁还原沉淀熔炼法的技术优势在于可以避免对含银铅矿进行死焙烧,从而减少银在这一步骤中的损失,提高银的提取效率。目前由于缺乏两区域冶炼活动的准确年代数据,尚无法判断两种技术间的相互关系。对遗址冶炼遗物堆积进行考古发掘与年代测定将为理解该遗址空间布局及技术演进历程提供关键信息。

The Shanggao Mengshan site in Jiangxi was an important site for large scale silver and lead production in the Song and Yuan periods. Historical sources record a great deal about the period of its rise and fall, annual quotas and the organization of production at the site, but say nothing of the production techniques. This paper studies the slag produced at multiple sites around Mengshan and compares it with several silver and lead production sites from around the world. In this way, silver and lead metallurgical techniques at the Mengshan site can be reconstructed. The area west of Mengshan mainly used sintering-reduction smelting to smelt silver and lead deposits; the eastern side used iron reduction precipitation smelting. The advantage of the iron reduction precipitation smelting method is that one can avoid dead roasting the silver and iron ore, thus decreasing the loss of silver during this step and increasing the efficiency of silver extraction. As there are presently no data to date the smelting activities of these two areas, we are unable to determine the relationship of these two types of techniques.