The study focuses on the reconstruction of the technological process in the 16th–17th century lead smelter in Sławków based on chemical and petrographic analyzes of slags. There are three main types of material at the landfill: glassy, crystalline, and weathered. Glassy slags are made of amorphous phase in which crystals of pyroxene, willemite, olivine, wüstite, and lead oxide appear. Crystalline slags are composed of wollastonite, rankinite, melilite, anorthite, quartz, and Fe oxides. Weathered slags have a composition similar to glassy slags, but they also contain secondary phases: anglesite and cerussite. Chemical analyzes confirmed that the smelter used sulphide ores, which were roasted, and the main addition to the charge was quartz sand. The smelting process took place in a brick-built furnace, under reducing conditions, with varied oxygen fugacity ranging from WM to MH buffer. The slag characteristics show a knowledge of the workers in the field of smelting methods. The addition of SiO₂ allowed for the binding of elements that could contaminate the obtained lead, and at the same time, the low melting point of the material (1150 °C) and the melt viscosity (logη = 1.34 for 1150 °C) was maintained, enabling the effective separation of liquid lead.

Silesian Ridge in the light of petrological analyses and LA-ICP MS U-Pb analyses of the cohesive debrites from the Istebna Formation (Silesian Nappe, Outer Western Carpathians, Poland)