Thank you, James, for your review of Tim McCreight’s updated version
of The Complete Metalsmith. I use the book with my classes, but
have always wished I knew where to send a critique of p. 177,
“History of Metalsmithing.” Anyone who has followed the recent
thread on ancient metalworking will know that the first third of the
"history" is incorrect. I love anyone who includes history in
their presentations, but more work is needed on McCreight’s
timeline. The beginning phrase is also troublesome: “Bronze first
smelted.” It should read something like, “Deliberate alloys of
tin-bronze first made.” Smelting is the chemical process of gaining
a metal from its ore. Alloying is a physical process of melting
metals together. Obviously, things are a lot more complex than that
(I’ll not discuss the early arsenic-bronzes that were used in the
Ancient Near East), but for a timeline, I think that phrase would
be a lot better. The rest of the phrases down to about 500 BC need
re-working, too.
On p. 144, McCreight describes the “Basic Etruscan Chain,” and
mentions that examples are found in many early cultures. But he
omits any mention of Mesopotamia, where so many “firsts” in the
world’s history are found. There is a silver “Etruscan” chain
found at the Syrian site of Tell Brak which dates to the
mid-third millennium BC, nearly two thousand years before the
Etruscans.
I’ve never found an e-mail address for Tim McCreight, but I’ve never
actually searched for one, either. I really like all of his books,
and I won’t stop using them, and I hate to carp on this one issue,
but why not get it right?
Judy Bjorkman
