Heavy Metals

Study of the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age transition in the Aegean has bloomed since the 1980s. Heavy Metals adds to the increasingly rich intellectual milieu of work on this topic by reassessing an often overlooked question. What impact, if any, did the adoption of iron metallurgy have on life in the Aegean around the start of the Iron Age?

Sarah Murray offers a re-evaluation of iron metallurgy's position in Early Iron Age Aegean economies and societies, engaging with the question of iron's role in Aegean society in two ways. First, Heavy Metals synthesizes relevant archaeological and analytical evidence, of which a great deal has come to light in recent decades. Second, Murray critically assesses the relationship between observable patterns in the production, circulation, and consumption of iron artifacts and wider changes in Aegean economy and culture.

Heavy Metals argues that the introduction of iron metallurgy did not change the economy of the Aegean, let alone usher in anything approximating an epochal transformation. Moreover, by consolidating the advances in archaeological thought regarding technology and society over the past fifty years, the book challenges the reductive notion that a simple change in the material from which weapons and tools are manufactured might ever instigate sweeping social change.