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A University of Bradford researcher has discovered the oldest reported tool from Europe made of the alloy 'ultrahigh' carbon steel.

The tiny object - a 6cm long punch - is made from 2% carbon steel. It is the earliest European example of a finished, functional tool made from this rare type of steel, which is more usually seen in later, Medieval 'Damascus steel' and cast 'crucible steel'.

The tool was found in a securely dated context at a Late Roman Iron-Age iron-smelting site in Holland, and analysed, along with other iron artefacts from the site, by Evelyne Godfrey, a specialist in ancient metallurgy in the University's Department of Archaeological Sciences.

Ms Godfrey has written an academic paper on the find, currently in press with the Journal of Archaeological Science.

"This find could represent a tradition of Northern European technological innovation which was previously unrecognised, and which developed largely independently of what was happening in Romanised regions, such as Britain, at the time," Ms Godfrey said.

"The people who lived outside the borders of the Roman Empire have been dismissed as 'barbarians', but the technology of this artefact is actually more sophisticated than what we see from Roman sites. The punch has been broken in use and then it was lost. But it was a finished, functional tool. Its production was no accident."

Even in the Early Iron Age, people had learnt how to improve the quality of iron by controlling the content of carbon to make steel, but the objects they produced generally contained less than 1.5% carbon.

The origins of ultrahigh carbon steel production are traditionally thought to lie in Asia. In India, the production of a type of cast iron known as crucible steel can be traced to the 3rd Century BC. Romans were demonstrating knowledge of cast iron by at least the 5th or 6th Centuries AD, possibly acquired by trading contacts with India and China.

But the 4th Century AD steel punch - discovered at Heeten, in the Netherlands - could be evidence of an indigenous steel-making tradition in Northern Europe.

The results presented by Evelyne Godfrey and her colleague Matthijs van Nie make it necessary to reconsider the established views that extremely high carbon steel technology was of uniquely Near Eastern or Asian origin.

The authors also suggest that the steel punch was not made using iron casting, but with the traditional bloomery furnace smelting process used throughout Iron Age Europe.

This involved tapping molten slag out of the bottom of the bloomery furnace. In the furnace, a mainly solid-state iron 'bloom' would form, which would then be removed.

"The punch's 2% carbon content is at the limit of what can be produced using the solid-state process. There is as yet no evidence of cast iron processing in Northern Europe in the Iron Age. This discovery suggests that simple unalloyed iron was not the only intended product of the solid-state iron bloomery smelting process," Ms Godfrey added.

A web version of Evelyne Godfrey's academic paper, entitled 'A Germanic ultrahigh carbon steel punch of the late Roman-Iron Age', can be found at www.Sciencedirect.com (external link, will open in a new window) listed under Journal of Archaeological Science, Articles in Press.

Further information

For further information, please contact Emma Scales in Corporate Communications on (01274) 233084/9 or 07879 437986. Alternatively, e-mail press@bradford.ac.uk or fax on (01274) 236280.

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