Ile-Ife in southwestern Nigeria is rich in art and craft traditions, most especially iron smelting. The town hosts hundreds of smelting sites with little or no archaeological record. Archaeo-geophysical prospection of a suspected smelting site in Ile-Ife involved the magnetic and electrical resistivity geophysical methods and archaeological excavation with the aim to identify its buried artefacts/features and date the site. The geophysical investigations located a circular/oval-shaped dipolar magnetic anomaly that coincided with a high resistivity zone, typical of a heat-impacted furnace or a slag trench. Iron slag, tuyere, fired clay furnace fragments, and charcoal were recovered from the pits excavated at the locations of the geophysical anomalies. Smelting activity at the site, from dated charcoal, took place at some point between the 13th-15th centuries AD, a middle to late age in Africa’s history of iron smelting. This study, therefore, validated the examined site as an ancient iron smelting site and situated its place in the archaeological history of iron smelting.

尼日利亚西南部的 Ile-Ife 拥有丰富的艺术和手工艺传统，尤其是炼铁。该镇拥有数百个几乎没有考古记录的冶炼场所。Ile-Ife 疑似冶炼地点的考古地球物理勘探涉及磁电阻率地球物理方法和考古挖掘，旨在识别其埋藏的人工制品/特征并确定该地点的年代。地球物理调查发现了一个圆形/椭圆形偶极磁异常，该异常与高电阻率区相吻合，典型的热影响炉或渣沟。从地球物理异常位置挖掘的坑中回收了铁渣、风口、烧制粘土炉碎片和木炭。现场的冶炼活动，来自过时的木炭，公元，非洲炼铁史上的中晚期。因此，这项研究证实了所考察的遗址是一个古老的炼铁遗址，并在炼铁考古史上占有一席之地。