High Heat Innovation: Fire, Food, Ceramics, and Metals

This class explores the transformative role of fire and metals in the development of human civilization. Beginning with early cooking technologies and ceramics, the course traces the progression from the Neolithic period through the Copper, Bronze, and Iron Ages, highlighting how advances in smelting and forging reshaped daily life, technology, tools, art, and “lost-wax” metal casting.

Participants will learn how early metallurgists produced copper, bronze, and iron, and how these materials enabled new tools, weapons, and forms of architecture. A film on the construction and operation of an early iron furnace will complement the discussion, offering a vivid look at ancient metallurgical techniques.

The course situates these technological breakthroughs within their broader historical contexts, including the rise of agriculture, domesticated animals, writing, urbanization, and early state formation—from the Neolithic era (c. 4500–3500 BCE) through the Iron Age (c. 1200–600 BCE).

Richard Lobban, Ph.D., professor emeritus of anthropology and African studies at Rhode Island College, serves as adjunct professor of African studies at the Naval War College. He has a master’s degree from Temple University and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has taught at the American University in Cairo, Tufts University and Dartmouth College, among others. He has conducted field research in Tunis and Egypt and has been excavating a temple in Sudan for ten years. Richard is widely published in urban and complex societies, informal sector economy, gender, ethnicity, race and class, especially in the Middle East. He often serves as a subject matter expert and court-appointed expert witness in political asylum cases for refugees from Africa and the Middle East.