The south-eastern Black Sea area is a key region for understanding the history of iron metallurgy. While Classical texts mention the people living in this area as producers, and perhaps even inventors, of iron, material evidence has been lacking. Recent archaeological survey and scientific analyses now make it possible to investigate iron technologies in the region during the mid to late first millennium BC and the medieval period, providing new insights into the metallurgical tradition that inspired such admiration in the Graeco-Roman world. These results have implications for the smelting of iron in liquid state, although it remains unclear where and when this technology first appeared in Western Eurasia.

The ‘Qin & Han Iron Smelting Site Investigation Project’ aims to illuminate the early use and production of iron during the Qin and Han Dynasties in south and south-west China. Here, the authors report on attempts to discover the origins of iron objects from the Lingnan region.

Iron-production sites of the early historic period in Mainland Southeast Asia (fifth to fifteenth centuries AD) are rare. Recent excavations at the Tonle Bak site in central Cambodia now provide the first evidence for furnace technology, metallurgical characteristics of slag concentrations and evidence for the organisation of local smelting communities and ritual practices during the peak of the Angkorian Khmer Empire. The results demonstrate that the smelters were directly integrated with Angkorian state-exchange networks. They also raise questions about the use of ethnohistorical records for understanding the identity and organisation of these early metalworkers.