Abstrakt
Prior to the Persian wars, the western Anatolian littoral - in historical period known as Ionia - was the main political, economic, and cultural centre of the Greek world. According to the literary evidence, metallurgy and metalworking played a significant role within this flourishing environment - best impersonated by Glaucus of Chios, the inventor of iron welding and the artificer of a splendid silver bowl for the Lydian king Alyattes.
If one, however, has a look at the evidence, it quickly became clear that finds attesting use of metals, and more particularly iron technologies, have rarely been analysed in detail, which is in a sharp contract to local architectural and ceramic productions. In order to reconstruct the different technological requirements and choices implemented within the chaîne opératoire of iron, a broad analytical program was initiated in the region.
The paper presents the preliminary results of the project and discuss these from archaeometallurgical and archaeological perspective.