LA SIDERURGIE DIRECTE EN COTE D’IVOIRE: CONTEXTE ET RESULTATS DE LA RECHERCHE

Abstract

Research these last years recorded an undeniable wealth of sites of the direct iron and steel industry on most of extended of the territory of Côte d'Ivoire. Indeed, the archaeological vestiges of this iron and steel industry were announced as well in forest zone as in savanna area with various remains going from extraction and reduction vestiges to the remains iron-made objects. The approach of this industry on these two zones poses different and complementary problems at the same time, on the level of the chronology, anteriority of the technological surfaces, diffusions of the techniques and diversity of technological richness’s, etc.
However, these iron and steel industries of the two zones which could give significant and decisive scientific results for the comprehension of the transition from the Neolithic era to the iron age and the beginning of this one in Côte d'Ivoire, remain absent in international debates and scientific research until a recent date, period of the resumption of research on this set of themes by the Department of Archaeology of the ISAD.
Indeed, since 2002, the program on the history of the techniques was set up to avoid inter alia the insufficiencies of research on this set of themes. The research project on the ancient metallurgy of iron, set up by the Department of Archaeology, the Institute of Prehistory of Neuchâtel and the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, financed by the Swiss Foundation - Liechtenstein for Archaeological Research Abroad (SLSA) and the PASRES (Strategic Program of Support to Scientific Research) made it possible to make significant scientific projections on the history of the direct iron and steel industry in Côte d'Ivoire.