The FLAME (Flow of Ancient Metal across Eurasia) is a European Research Council funded project led by Professor Mark Pollard of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA) at the University of Oxford.
It sets out to investigate the movement, exchange, and transformation of metal in Eurasian societies during the Bronze and Early Iron Age.
The FLAME project, which reinforces the position of RLAHA as a centre of excellence in this archaeomaterials research, builds on more than 10 years of innovative methodological development focussed on the identification and investigation of recycling, remelting, and remixing of metal in the past.
One of the major outputs from this project will be a database of existing metallurgical analyses from across Eurasia.
In creating this resource, FLAME continues a tradition of collecting and compiling archive data for the benefit of the wider research community.
As with previous archives of this kind at RLAHA, such as the OXALID Lead Isotope database, the OXSAM database of Ancient metalwork from the British Isles (access by request), and the recently renovated Tylecote Collection, the FLAME databases will be made available online over the course of the project.
More About FLAMEFLAME Publications
The FLAME team, led by Prof. Mark Pollard and based in the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA),consists of Drs Ruiliang 'Ray' Liu, Philly Howarth and Victoria Sainsbury, ably supported by Dr John Pouncett (our advisor on GIS) and Samantha Bowring (our tireless project administrator). We are also supported by a new GIS Technician, Karl Smith.
The core team will be advised and assisted by an academic board of leading regional and technical experts from leading research institutions across Europe and Asia
University of Oxford
University of Oxford
Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar
Needham Research Institue, Cambridge
Goethe University, Frankfurt
University of Oxford
Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg
State Historical Museum, Moscow
Peking University, Beijing
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei
British Museum
University of Southampton
University of Science and Technology, Beijing
University of Oxford
University of Reading
University of Liverpool
The FLAME Project is committed to providing useful freely accessible resources for students, researchers, and educators with an interest in archaeometallurgy and archaeology in Eurasia.
These resources will include tables of collated data from existing publications, collections of images, bibliographic databases, useful maps, and GIS resources.
Though predominatly FLAME related, we will also provide links to valuable external resources not managed by the FLAME Team. If you find these useful, please let us know how/where you use them and tweet/blog about them so others can also find them.
Most of our resources will be distributed under a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) License, but please read the individual resource descriptions before use. Also, as many of these resources will be updated over the lifetime of the project, please check in regularly to make sure that you have the latest version.
Tylecote Collection OXALID Historical Metal Data RLAHA Chinese Analyses
