{"id":286163,"date":"2025-10-08T09:24:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286163\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T09:24:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:24:13","slug":"a-3000-year-old-workshop-may-have-revealed-the-origins-of-the-iron-age-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286163\/","title":{"rendered":"A 3,000-Year-Old Workshop May Have Revealed The Origins of The Iron Age : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Iron Age<\/a> was one of the most significant epochs in human history, and researchers may have uncovered the secrets of how we left the Bronze Age<\/a> behind \u2013 via a 3,000-year-old smelting workshop called Kvemo Bolnisi, in southern Georgia.<\/p>\n

This is a site that’s been pored over before, but anthropological archaeologists Nathaniel Erb-Satullo and Bobbi Klymchuk, from Cranfield University in the UK, wanted to take a fresh look at the evidence.<\/p>\n

The place was previously thought to have produced iron, due to the extensive amount of hematite<\/a> (an iron oxide mineral) and slag waste<\/a> (a byproduct of smelting) found there.<\/p>\n

Using chemical analysis techniques and microscopic imagery, the researchers came to a different conclusion: iron oxide was actually being used as a flux<\/a>, a substance added to smelting furnaces to improve, in this case, copper production.<\/p>\n

Related: Iron Age DNA Reveals Women Dominated Pre-Roman Britain<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

That then suggests that iron was discovered through experimentation in copper smelters, rather than being developed separately. This is something that’s been hypothesized<\/a> before, but without much direct evidence to back it up.<\/p>\n

“It’s evidence of intentional use of iron in the copper smelting process,” says<\/a> Erb-Satullo. “That shows that these metalworkers understood iron oxide \u2013 the geological compounds that would eventually be used as ore for iron smelting \u2013 as a separate material and experimented with its properties within the furnace.”<\/p>\n

“Its use here suggests that this kind of experimentation by copper-workers was crucial to [the] development of iron metallurgy.”<\/p>\n

\"KvemoThe Kvemo Bolnisi site in the modern day. (Cranfield University)<\/p>\n

Once it was underway, the Iron Age<\/a> \u2013 spanning 700 years \u2013 marked a significant time of change and disruption for humanity. Farming became more efficient, battles got more brutal, and new tools were developed with this hard, durable metal.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is only one location, and the production of iron is likely to have developed differently in different places. However, the researchers do draw comparisons with other similar sites \u2013 including one in Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It may also be significant that iron-bearing minerals are often found<\/a> in the same locations as copper deposits, making it more likely that copper smelting processes regularly involved elements of iron as well.<\/p>\n

“Iron is the world’s quintessential industrial metal, but the lack of written records, iron’s tendency to rust, and a lack of research on iron production sites has made the search for its origins challenging,” says<\/a> Erb-Satullo.<\/p>\n

“That’s what makes this site at Kvemo Bolnisi so exciting.”<\/p>\n

\"HematiteHematite was put under the microscope to see how it was handled. (Erb-Satullo & Klymchuk, J. Archaeol. Sci., 2025<\/a>)<\/p>\n

It’s a fascinating period of history, which is constantly being reassessed. A whole host of other factors, including supply routes, trade deals, and political turmoil also need to be taken into account when considering the transition between the Ages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As analysis techniques and tools continue to improve, it gives experts a reason to go back and look again at archaeological sites \u2013 including the Kvemo Bolnisi one, which has revealed new secrets decades after it was first discovered.<\/p>\n

“There’s a beautiful symmetry in this kind of research, in that we can use the techniques of modern geology and materials science to get into the minds of ancient materials scientists,” says<\/a> Erb-Satullo.<\/p>\n

“And we can do all this through the analysis of slag \u2013 a mundane waste material that looks like lumps of funny-looking rock.”<\/p>\n

The research has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Iron Age was one of the most significant epochs in human history, and researchers may have uncovered…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":286164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[352,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-286163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115337826820056402","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}