中国宋元时期的高炉

Blast Furnaces in Song-Yuan China

中国在11世纪的'商业革命'中伴随着一些重要技术的发展。在古代钢铁业,水作为动力被广泛应用,煤炭和焦炭开始取代木炭作为燃料,这一时期的高炉设计出现了最后一次重大进展。这类拥有新构造高炉的使用,就某种程度而言,成为了欧洲早期高炉设计的先兆,从19世纪到20世纪的中国传统钢铁工业中也能认识到这类高炉的一些情况。本文综述了宋元时期冶铁高炉建造和运行的现有证据材料,特别提到矿物燃料的使用。考古出土的宋元时期高炉有两种类型:穴筑于山坡内或是采用木框架夯土构筑。高炉中使用矿物燃料的证据包括文献资料(尤其是苏轼的著名诗篇《石炭歌》)、铁质文物的化学分析结果和放射性碳测年研究成果。未来对高炉矿渣的研究可能会提供关于矿物燃料如何被使用的可靠证据,但就目前而言,利用17、18世纪英国在高炉中使用煤和焦炭的经验进行比较研究,不啻为一有益的研究途径(本文原文发表于2001年,之后发表的考古材料未被考虑在内)。

The Chinese“commercial revolution”of the 11th century was accompanied by number of important technical developments in all fields of industry.In the iron industry,the last major advances in blast furnace design were made.Water power was widely used for the blast,and coal and coke began to take the place of charcoal for the fuel.New blast furnace structures came into use,in some cases foreshadowing early European designs and those known from the traditional Chinese iron industry of the 19th and 20th centuries.This article reviews the available evidence on the construction and operation of iron blast furnaces in the Song and Yuan periods,with special reference to the use of mineral fuel.Excavated blast furnaces of the period are of two types:built into hillsides or wooden-framed with tampedearth fill.Evidence for the use of mineral fuel in blast furnaces includes written sources(especially the famous poem“Coal”by Su Shi)and chemical and radiocarbon studies of iron artefacts.Future studies of slag from the blast furnaces may provide reliable evidence on precisely how the mineral fuel was used,but for the present,comparison with 17th-and 18thcentury English experience with coal and coke in blast furnaces provides useful insights.The original article in English was published in 2001,and archaeological material published since that time has not been taken into account.