The Smith, the Smithy and Bagpipes

This is a paper about the smithies of Bronze Age Britain.  The author seeks to better understand the shop, the tools and the techniques of the early smiths.

The center of the shop was certainly the anvil.  It is by far the oldest tool in the smithy and central to a lame god poisoned by what we know today is arsenic.  Many smaller anvils have survived in Britain and the Netherlands. [examples: Drenth, 2013]  Most of these, like that of the Amesbury archer, where IMO carried around by those who needed to frequently re-shape practical, everyday tools.

The smithy anvil was probably a much larger stone secured to a tree stump.  There would have been a large whetstone, a flat standard, a furnace and a work bench.  Fregni illustrates some of the basic skills and terminology in the British metalwork of the Bronze Age.

One point Frengi throws a wet towel on is the idea that early European smiths were itinerant (traveling doers of good metallurgical deeds).  This was first proposed by Gordon Childe and is very often repeated as a catalyst for the spread of Beaker culture.  He uses a few ethnographic examples to show how even itinerant African smiths generally service villages within a radius of their own village.

I got sidetracked as usual with the description of the early blast furnace bellows.  Here Frengi describes the earliest as probably 'wine skins and reeds tipped with refractory'.  I did some quick google searching on the origins of bagpipes and thought for certain that someone, somewhere has made the association between furnace bellows and bagpipes, but haven't found anything yet.

Regardless, it is no accident that bagpipes historically overlay the CMP area.  I would imagine that a reed was placed at the base of the blast tube (drone) so the smith workers could hear changes in airflow to the base of the furnace.  In my own furnace, the different sounds of a hairdrier was indicative of different airflows for different temperatures.  (I melted the hairdier ((and the furnance)), but it worked for aluminum)

I would guess pipes would have been a development of the regular bronze age when metal moves from simple ornaments and weapons to stressed pieces in caldron rings and chariot components.  It's not impossible that a certain tube length and diameter would resonate a particular key for a certain temperature/airflow.

The mythology surrounding witches and smiths is a good start to understanding Beaker religion in my view. 

The Compleat Metalsmith: Craft and Technology in the British Bronze Age. ELPIDIA GIOVANNA FREGNI, 2014 [Link]

**Footnote Update**

Here's an interesting etymology for the "bellow" as descended from PIE through various languages.

bellows descends form Middle English belwes which means 'leather bags, bags or belly' which appears to have been usually plural.  It was apparently shortened from blaestbaelg, apparently 'blast bag'.  (as a side note 'blast' is generally referred to as the induction of a blast furnace or blast cooled generators, etc)
Blast and Bladder apparently descend from a common word blase or blaze (Skeat), which reconstructed forms various words in IE languages for blowing a trumpet or similar. (2)

to bellow (v.) similarly comes from Old English bylgan from PIE bhel, meaning to roar, blow or bleat (generally of a ruminant animal, in modern usage a doe or non-bovid ruminant cow).  The last point is interesting in that most commercial bleats and grunts for hunting are reeds inserted in a small tube.

to bleat also descends from the same root of bhel via PtG blētijanan (1) and Old English blǣtan, again meaning the cry of an animal, more appropriately from hot does or cows.

Various other reconstructions can be made from Slavic, Celtic and Latin.