“Chase, we’re in trouble now!” That’s what I told my grandson the afternoon of Monday, June 30, 2003. We were at the Garrett site in Ross County, Ohio, in a wooded terrace just above the flood plain of the North Fork of Paint Creek, where years ago a resident of nearby village of Anderson Station found “iron furnace debris” of the same kind once made famous by amateur (and very controversial) archaeologist Arlington H. Mallery. While Mallery claimed to have found remains of pit iron furnaces of ancient design elsewhere in Ross County some 50 years ago, he never found evidence of cast iron deliberately made and then poured into a clay mold to form a finished product.
Well, that is exactly what happened when Chase dug up a big and heavy hunk of clay and handed it to me. We had come to the site to do “a shovel survey” in hopes of finally finding the top of a pit iron furnace I felt surely had to be there somewhere. We didn’t locate the furnace, but we did find an greater prize than that -- evidence of the use of a pit furnace to deliberately make molten iron for casting. Always before this, I and others who have investigated Ohio’s mysterious pit iron furnaces, found only evidence of direct reduction iron smelting. In this process, ore is smelted directly into mixed lumps of slag and wrought iron called a “bloom,” and this is forged on an anvil to squeeze out slag until the iron is pure enough to be used by a blacksmith.
Certainly, what I meant by saying “we’re in trouble” was that I was in trouble – more trouble, that is, since I’d been finding things beyond the pale of ordinary archaeology for the past 13 years in the same general area of South Central Ohio in general and Ross County, Ohio in particular. As a retired journalist who worked and a news reporter, editor and public relations man, I always sought to keep focused on the facts at hand, and keeping the perspective of an obserer of events while keeping myself "out of the story."
Also, my accomplishments are only part of the story. I have much reason to acknowledge both the professionals and amateurs who have assisted me in many ways as I have probed deeper and deeper into the mystery of furnaces of ancient design first identified and studied by my old mentor, the late Arlington H. Mallery. This book very clearly belongs on the shelf right beside Mallery’s original Lost America and the second and expanded edition, The Rediscovery of Lost America, edited by Mallery’s literary successor, Mary Roberts Harrison. And, though Mallery had a number of short-comings as an archaeologist, no one can deny that he found a whole new kind of archaeological site in North America – the pit iron furnaces of ancient design, a design that goes back in Europe to about 500 years before the Christian Era.
I must acknowledge above all, the fine partner I had in the early years of my involvement with the pit iron furnaces, David Orr, a Ross County farmer. Orr not only contributed himself as half of the leadership for our late 20th century investigating team, but also served as the on site leader of our dig teams at the Glacial Kame and Lynn Acres excavations.
Well, that is exactly what happened when Chase dug up a big and heavy hunk of clay and handed it to me. We had come to the site to do “a shovel survey” in hopes of finally finding the top of a pit iron furnace I felt surely had to be there somewhere. We didn’t locate the furnace, but we did find an greater prize than that -- evidence of the use of a pit furnace to deliberately make molten iron for casting. Always before this, I and others who have investigated Ohio’s mysterious pit iron furnaces, found only evidence of direct reduction iron smelting. In this process, ore is smelted directly into mixed lumps of slag and wrought iron called a “bloom,” and this is forged on an anvil to squeeze out slag until the iron is pure enough to be used by a blacksmith.
Certainly, what I meant by saying “we’re in trouble” was that I was in trouble – more trouble, that is, since I’d been finding things beyond the pale of ordinary archaeology for the past 13 years in the same general area of South Central Ohio in general and Ross County, Ohio in particular. As a retired journalist who worked and a news reporter, editor and public relations man, I always sought to keep focused on the facts at hand, and keeping the perspective of an obserer of events while keeping myself "out of the story."
Also, my accomplishments are only part of the story. I have much reason to acknowledge both the professionals and amateurs who have assisted me in many ways as I have probed deeper and deeper into the mystery of furnaces of ancient design first identified and studied by my old mentor, the late Arlington H. Mallery. This book very clearly belongs on the shelf right beside Mallery’s original Lost America and the second and expanded edition, The Rediscovery of Lost America, edited by Mallery’s literary successor, Mary Roberts Harrison. And, though Mallery had a number of short-comings as an archaeologist, no one can deny that he found a whole new kind of archaeological site in North America – the pit iron furnaces of ancient design, a design that goes back in Europe to about 500 years before the Christian Era.
I must acknowledge above all, the fine partner I had in the early years of my involvement with the pit iron furnaces, David Orr, a Ross County farmer. Orr not only contributed himself as half of the leadership for our late 20th century investigating team, but also served as the on site leader of our dig teams at the Glacial Kame and Lynn Acres excavations.
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