04-14-2007, 09:32 AM
The conclusion seems to be reasonable enough; apart from the 9th century Catalan forge, a rising size of blooms (which do not really affect quality) and some other improvements in forge carburization, relatively little happened in the field of iron metallurgy in Europe and large parts of the middle east until the high middle ages. (excepting importen indian wootz ingots and suchlike) I have to admit, though, that a statistical sample of 12 objects seems rather sparse...we're talking 2000 yea rs and a great deal of different geographical regions and cultures, after all. It is great to see that they did perform several tests as well, although it would have been good to see them doing more than one cross-section of each object.
