Archaeological Iron Making

Dr. Shelley Rabinovitch posted a link to a Science Daily article looking at pre-industrial iron making:

Jeffery is studying bloomery furnaces that were used to make iron and steel in Europe and the United States up until about 200 years ago. These furnaces also have a long history in many cultures, stretching back more than 2,000 years.

"Like a lot of ancient technologies, it gets treated as a simplistic technology," Jeffery said. "But attempts to recreate it have proven that it's not nearly as simple as people would like to believe. So far, we have conducted two separate smelts with bloomery furnaces and neither was terribly successful."

Iron from bloomery furnaces were used in Japan, Renaissance Europe, ancient Rome, Africa, and many other places to make iron and steel for armor, swords, locks, tools and hundreds of other household items.

"Iron has been a critical, fundamental part of human existence for centuries," Jeffery said. "Understanding how iron was produced and having a clear concept of what it took to do that and replicating that process today is significant from a scientific and human perspective."

I was going to try to make a pun on "Industrial Archaeology" and the archaeology of industry, but my lack of creativity defeated me.

Update: Neil Peterson posted a follow up to Dr. Rabinovitch's message, with a link to a Canadian group doing similar things.