This paper discusses the invention of gold metallurgy within the Southeast European Chalcolithic on the basis of newly investigated gold objects from the Varna I cemetery (4550–4450 cal. bc). Comprehensive analyses, including preceding gold finds, shed new light not only on the technical expertise of the so far earliest known fine metalworkers, but also on the general context and potential prerequisites in which the invention of gold metallurgy may be embedded. Here, these structural trajectories as well as the unprecedented inventions connected to this early gold working will be highlighted in order to contextualize the apparently sudden appearance and rapid development of this new craft.

The invention and spread of lost-wax casting in South America is not amenable to explanations based on the concepts of practical or prestige technologies. Here we propose an alternative model to explain this phenomenon, based on a combination of technical analyses of Colombian metalwork and ethnographic information. A crucial element of our argument is that we should not focus on the cast objects or the casting process only, but rather we should consider the role of wax in this innovation. We develop the claim that the use of wax may have been culturally just as important as the metals, and that perhaps metals were used in a process of transformation that required the use of wax, as opposed to wax being simply the medium to make gold objects more beautiful. The focus on wax and its symbolic role may help explain both the invention and the adoption of the new technology, thus subsuming these two categories that those studying innovations tend to separate heuristically.

Distinctions between the concepts of ‘invention’ and ‘innovation’ are often confusing and ambiguous. Rarely, if ever, is invention the result of a lightening-strike ‘aha’ moment. Rather, invention tends to be the application of clever innovation from one aspect of life to another, shaped through personal observations and/or experiences. The ‘invention’ of metallurgy, for example, did not simply spring from the earth one morning, but rather evolved from observations of and experiences in other pyrotechnological processes. Past scholars have speculated on the invention of various early pyrotechnological activities, such as glass making and glaze production. What has not been fully explored, however, are the aspects of cross-craft interactions linking these and other pyrotechnologies. An example of this is the limited research exploring the technological connections between the advent and development of glass technologies and developments in metallurgical and other vitreous technologies. In this paper, these connections will be explored from pyrotechnological and craft technique perspectives. Ideas concerning connections between glass and non-ferrous metallurgy and glazing are discussed.