In a review Birch, (2011) noted that there is an odd absence of any evidence for early Anglo-Saxon smelting on sites previously used for smelting in Roman times, although early Saxon iron artefacts were found. He acknowledges that this may be because the early Saxons re-worked Roman iron (smithying) or that the artefacts were imported from Scandinavia. Birch looked at the cultural differences, between the Roman and Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards smelting, from the Scandinavian archaeological viewpoint. He suggested that there may have been another reason for the absence of Saxon iron smelting sites – they hadn’t been found because investigators had been looking in the wrong place.
Birch used the Scandinavian concept of “utmark” and “innmark,” terms for which there is no direct translation, but which means a combination of outfield and infield, and unknown and known, combining the physical and conceptual meanings of “this” and “other”. He suggests that the smelting people were regarded as utmark. They were utmark in the physical sense because they lived outside the settlement close the ironstone probably for practical reasons – proximity to the raw material, remoteness from noise, smoke and fire-risk to the main settlement. They were also utmark in the conceptual sense. They were itinerant people from other lands and they apparently used some kind of sorcery to change rock into metal. They were part of the other world.
Birch suggests this provides a compelling reason, for those investigators interested in finding early Saxon smelting sites, to look at areas around ironstone workings rather than settlements, which at the time of his review was not customary practice.
Reference:
Birch, T. (2011). Living on the edge: Making and moving iron from the “outside” in Anglo-Saxon England. Landscape History, 32(1), 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/01433768.2011.10594648
Geomusings 