Heavy Metals

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>What impact, if any, did the adoption of iron metallurgy have on life in the Aegean around the start of the Iron Age? Various ideas about the impact of iron metallurgy have been set out over the last several decades, but a detailed study connecting archaeological evidence to the hypothesized outcomes has never been published. Thus, although iron gives its name to the Iron Age, an established consensus about the relationship between this material novelty and the societies, economies, and cultural practices in which it became embedded has not been forthcoming. This book, consequently, offers a re-evaluation of iron metallurgy’s position in Early Iron Age Aegean economies and societies. It engages with the question of iron’s role in Aegean society in two ways. First, it synthesizes relevant evidence, of which a great deal has come to light in recent decades. Second, it assesses the relationship between observable patterns in the production, circulation, and consumption of iron artifacts and changes in the Greek economy. Against current consensus, this assessment demonstrates that the introduction of iron metallurgy did not change the economy of the Aegean, let alone usher in anything approximating an epochal transformation. Nor does the notion that change in the material from which weapons and tools are manufactured should instigate sweeping social transformation do justice to advances in archaeological thought regarding technology and society accruing over the last fifty years. The book therefore concludes that Aegean prehistorians should reconsider the use of epochal terms such as Iron Age.</jats:p>