Center for Coal and Archaeology
Introduction
The Center for Coal and Archaeology is a part of Coal Combustion, Inc. that treats coal and slag samples as a human artifacts. Cooking, heat, blacksmithing, smelting, coking, power, all involved fuels like wood and coal. Coal is mined, transported, sold and consumed on a world wide bases. There is potentially a historical record of many coal transactions taxed at ports. This historical record with archaeologically derived samples could lead to additional knowledge of human interactions.
We obtain most of our coal samples from underwater ships. The coal is well preserved under water as oxidation degrades coal. Our goal is to expand our data base of known coal samples and analyses specific to a time and/or place. In the US, coal type changes over time as the railroads progressed up the mountains. Economics and utilization could influence coal type. Knowing where a coal is from might help determine when it was mined.
Slag samples can come from both marine and terrestrial sites. Old forts and settlements would leave ashes and slags. Early metal industry smelters and foundries leave slags behind. Sometimes the minerals in slags can indicate a temperature that could be particular to a type of process or combustion technology. Maybe slag analyses can help archaeologist tell more of the human story. You never know where slag will show up, a famous Lake Michigan iron ore and charcoal slag from the 1880's is called Lelandite.
We fund our projects from industry donation of time, analysis, and money. Sometimes the archeologist have money for analyses. We hope to be able to add to our data base from multiple sources.
Our sponsors all get linked to information and sites at our
Coal Data Base
Phone: 859-873-0188