Ancient Europe, Metal Ages (3500 BC-AD 800): Iron Age (500 BC-AD 800)

Iron Age (500 BC-AD 800)

The technique of smelting is more complicated than with copper or tin, since the first smelt gives only an unpromising slaggy lump, the bloom. Hammering at red heat expels stone fragments. Pure iron is too soft for functional use and combining carbon (0.1-1.7 % by weight) with the iron makes steel. Once the technique was discovered it replaced earlier metallurgies because iron ores are much more common than those of copper or tin and the resulting metal is far superior.

The technique of iron working was mastered c.1500 BC by the Hittites. When they were overthrown c.1100 BC and their secret leaked out, the knowledge of iron spread rapidly and it replaced bronze as tools as weapons. In Europe the transition to the Iron Age is conventionally placed at the beginning of the first millennium BC: Villanovan (c.800-c.700 BC), Hallstatt (c.800-c.450 BC), and La Tene (c.450-1st century BC).