The Society holds a number of meetings throughout the year. The Annual General Meeting is usually held in different part of the UK in May or June each year. Visits and fieldtrips form a part of many of our events and these cover a range of different activities from visiting mines, to the remains of furnaces or workshops, visiting working mills, seeing live metallurgy experiments or even going behind the scenes of museums or exhibitions. In the autumn the Research in Progress meeting provides a forum for the presentation of current, usually unpublished research. At these meeting there is an award for the best student presentation by a current or recent student (within 12 months of graduating).

HMS also manages a list of events that might be of interest to our members.

A Historical Metallurgy Society event combining ‘bigger picture’ presentation with demonstrations in metal-related craft.

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The Historical Metallurgy Society maintains a list of events that may be of interest to our members. Below are the events that we have heard about but if there are events we should be aware of or if you want your metallurgy related event listed please contact our events officer.

Details to follow

The prize is offered for the best presentation by a student (or recent graduate within 12 months of graduation) at the annual Research in Progress meeting as chosen by those members of HMS Council present at the meeting.

Recipients of the HMS Council Prize for the Best Student Presentation at the annual Research in Progress meeting are listed below.

2023 – Evgeny Shnyr: ‘Data science in the service of archaeology: Pinpointing the geographical source of ancient lead-containing metals using machine learning.’

2022 (delayed until April 2023) – Raluca Lazarescu: ‘Copper production in the medieval Moroccan Sahara’

2021 – Braden Cordivari: ‘Copper production in the Niari Basin (Republic of the Congo) during the 15th-17th centuries CE’

2020 – no award (Covid pandemic)

2019 – Saltanat Amirova: ‘Copper and tin bronze metallurgy on the Late Bronze Age site of Semiyarka (Kazakhstan)’. UCL

2018 – Ethan Greenwood: ‘Roman iron production in the Weald of South East England’. York

2017 – Alan Williams: ‘Characterising Bronze Age copper from the Great Orme mine to reveal its spatial and temporal distribution’. Liverpool

2016 – Yi-Ting Hsu: ‘Analysis of cupels and minting materials from the late medieval Mint of Porto (Portugal).’ Birmingham

2015 – William Hawkes: ‘Polishing our performance and winning silver’. Brunel, London

2014 – Ragnar Saage: ‘The evolution of smithies from 11th to 19th c. in Estonia’. Oxford

2013 – Giovanna Fregni: ‘Minimum tools required: a system for organising Bronze Age metal-smithing tools’. Exeter

2012 – Yvette Marks: ‘Any way the wind blows: a re-assessment of the working parameters of the Bronze Age Aegean perforated furnace’. Newcastle

2011 – Sian James: `Faunal Remains from the Great Orme Copper Mines´. Sheffield

2010 – Loïc Boscher: `Speiss and arsenical copper production in Early Bronze Age Iran´. UCL, London

2009 – Jui-lien Fang: `Colour Change in Copper Alloys through Alloying´. Bradford

The Historical Metallurgy Society also awards student prizes at other events. If you are running a metallurgy event and would like HMS to sponsor a student prize please contact the HMS event officer.