Bronze to iron in Georgia

[Imperial Dave]

https://arkeonews.net/discovery-in-georgia-reveals-how-bronze-age-smelters-sparked-the-iron-age/

Hopefully of interest

[Jim Webster]

It is fascinating.
Especially the phrase, "If a furnace charge contained less copper and more hematite—and if reducing conditions were intensified—then usable metallic iron might have been formed."

It only has to appear a couple of times 'by accident' for some bright lad to decide to try and produce enough to see if it's a workable metal

[Ian61]

It is fascinating.
Especially the phrase, "If a furnace charge contained less copper and more hematite—and if reducing conditions were intensified—then usable metallic iron might have been formed."

It only has to appear a couple of times 'by accident' for some bright lad to decide to try and produce enough to see if it's a workable metal

Indeed. In these circumstances folks might well have been trying to push the limits of how hot they could get which would also help.

[Sharur]

This is fascinating indeed. There's been a long-standing assumption that all iron objects that predate the "official" archaeological Iron Age "must" have been meteoritic - i.e. fallen from space (and ignoring the complication that the "official" Iron Age starts at different times in different places...). However, metallurgical analyses from more recent times (which themselves often have considerable difficulties), have indicated this wasn't always so. Findings of this kind can only help clarify the potential timing of the reality, because the amount of iron recovered archaeologically isn't great from most "Bronze Age" contexts (as you might expect).

[DBS]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440325001876

The source paper.

[Nick Harbud]

I thought this map from Wikipedia was quite useful in visualising some of the ancient metal ore extraction.