As similar as black and white: steelmaking crucibles from South and Central Asia

In recent years, fieldwork by archaeometallurgists, and laboratory analysis of the materials found at sites of early iron- and steelmaking, have led to the discovery that liquid steel was being made in parts of South and Central Asia a thousand years ago, long before it was manufactured in Europe. Research students and members of staff of the Institute of Archaeology have been in the forefront of these investigations, some of the results of which are described here