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13 Things 2008
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
I decided to do my project on the bomb, or the “anti-thing” as someone in class coined it. At this stage, my earliest inklings are to portray the bomb’s technological evolution throughout the ages–beginning with the roots of gunpowder being used as an explosive device (discovered by accident in the 7th-10th centuries CE). A contemporaneous ‘development’ to gunpowder was what is known as Greek Fire (used by the Byzantines). Perhaps I will delve into this innovation’s own history, although it is not as related to a ‘true bomb’ as I had originally thought (purely an incendiary device, and were I to attempt the charting of this path I would have to go back to the 8th/7th centuries BCE looking at all sorts of ‘burning things,’ including the militaristic usage of pitch, pig fat, oil, etc.). Another pitfall that I will be avoiding is the development of actual guns. A neat timeline, presented in a form the likes of which I am incapable of reproducing, is available here: http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/machines_and_engineering/blasters/
Building off of it’s Chinese heritage, I will study the technology’s (gunpowder) various adaptations as it ‘traveled’ across Mongolia, to Russia, to the Arabian world, and finally to Europe (noting Roger Bacon’s 14th century ‘rediscovery’). Bombs, in a pure sense of the term, began to see widespread use during the Mongol wars against Russia and Japan (and everyone else around them). Their primitive grenades evolved into what was used by Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Issues such as material availability in a chemical (or ‘alchemical’?) sense, leading to the inclusion of such course themes as complexity, will take place at this stage. Of course, any ideas of technological choice may seem frivolous to explore, as it is perhaps all too obvious that as ‘the bomb’ is meant to destroy things, and any advancement in technology would primarily be seeking to yield a larger explosion (culminating in nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project). Reaching the modern age, questions of morality will begin to come into play (cluster bombs, recipes on the internet, etc.).
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