Conference Outline - Rationale, Aims and Objectives:

The 'World of Iron' conference will illuminate the social and technological importance of iron; a metal that for the last 3500 years has changed the world and the natural environment in many ways. However, nuances of the evolution and societal role of this metal have often been obscured by overly generalising Eurocentric perspectives. The time has come to diversify our knowledge of this metal, and to ground its social, cultural, and environmental dimensions in a global perspective, beyond unilinear and Euro-biased approaches.

The 'World of Iron' conference both complements and moves beyond recent conferences (e.g. 'Metals and Mines', British Museum, 2005; 'European Ironworking II', Wales, 2007) which focused almost exclusively on European iron metallurgy. The success of those conferences has been demonstrated in both numbers of participants and the credibility of resulting publications. The concept of a 'World of Iron' conference, specifically designed to cover four key regions (Africa, East Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Western/Central Asia) has often been mooted in archaeometallurgical circles, and with the significant increase of new research taking place outside Europe, it is now essential to keep the academic community informed about the work being carried out in other areas. By stimulating an international exchange of ideas and experience, scholars can access and debate novel and integrated anthropological and analytical interpretations of the archaeometallurgical record around the world.

This event is the first attempt to synthesise the latest research being conducted on early iron and steel globally, and to stimulate future research of the highest level. It creates a worldwide comparative perspective, integrating insights gained from emerging analytical techniques, Anthropology of Technology, and environmental history. This is achieved by bringing together scholars and young researchers from over twelve different countries who are active in current research on historical iron, with special focus on Africa, East Asia (China, Japan, Korea), the Indian subcontinent, the Arab World, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and other areas such as Iran and Georgia. Never before has there been a large-scale international forum to discuss the wide corpus of iron-related anthropological, archaeological, and scientific research currently being undertaken outside Europe.

The meeting will discuss results of current fieldwork, and link these to state-of-the-art theoretical, ethnographic and materials-science based approaches to the craft of iron production. Combining these traditionally disengaged approaches will yield significant synergies by linking complementary levels of information. Thus providing much more holistic views, it will emphasise the anthropological significance of the adoption, expansion, and impact of prehistoric iron production across the world, coalescing archaeological and archaeometallurgical studies with wider anthropological issues such as technological style; technological variation, change and development; technical and social adaptation; and the evolving influences of iron on society and the physical environment.

Through a consideration of the embedded nature of iron technology in society, issues such as the transition from bronze to iron (or from stone to iron), and the conceivable impact of that transition on the host culture and society, craft specialization, cross-craft interaction (e.g. ceramic and iron pyrotechnology), social and spatial organization of production, and how these are visible in the archaeological and archaeometallurgical data can be addressed.

The 'World of Iron' will run for one week. Proceedings will be published by Archetype, and constitute a major textbook for anyone working in this field for years to come. The peer-reviewed volume will offer detailed case studies (selection of papers and posters presented) as well as synthesising articles with comparative and analytical-theoretical essays by the session chairs, thus both stock-taking of the latest research and shaping future research.

This conference not only allows for the presentation of research, but the focused discussion prepared by each session chair (typically a senior academic for each region or theme), promotes the development of the ideas presented during each session.