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<p>The discovery of exceptionally well-preserved iron blooms during underwater excavations in the Dor Lagoon provides a rare and transformative window into southern Levantine Iron Age metallurgy and trade. For the first time, unworked iron blooms, still encased in protective slag, have been recovered, representing the earliest securely dated industrial iron products identified to date. Radiocarbon modeling of an embedded charred oak twig, together with additional short-lived carbon samples, dates the blooms to the late 7th–early 6th centuries BCE. These findings challenge assumptions that iron blooms were typically forged immediately after smelting. Instead, the Dor blooms demonstrate that raw iron was transported in its as-smelted state, with adhering slag protecting the metal from corrosion during shipment. Results suggest that Iron Age urban centers focused on smithing rather than smelting activities, while raw iron circulated as a traded commodity, possibly under Saitic-Egyptian rule following the Neo-Assyrian withdrawal from the region.</p>

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Earliest iron blooms discovered off the Carmel coast revise Mediterranean trade in raw metal ca. 600 BCE

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  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月13日

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  • Tzilla Eshel,
  • Andrei Ioffe,
  • Dafna Langgut,
  • Yoav Bornstein,
  • Zachary C. Dunseth,
  • Marko Runjajić,
  • Shmuel Ariely,
  • Thomas E. Levy,
  • Assaf Yasur-Landau

摘要

The discovery of exceptionally well-preserved iron blooms during underwater excavations in the Dor Lagoon provides a rare and transformative window into southern Levantine Iron Age metallurgy and trade. For the first time, unworked iron blooms, still encased in protective slag, have been recovered, representing the earliest securely dated industrial iron products identified to date. Radiocarbon modeling of an embedded charred oak twig, together with additional short-lived carbon samples, dates the blooms to the late 7th–early 6th centuries BCE. These findings challenge assumptions that iron blooms were typically forged immediately after smelting. Instead, the Dor blooms demonstrate that raw iron was transported in its as-smelted state, with adhering slag protecting the metal from corrosion during shipment. Results suggest that Iron Age urban centers focused on smithing rather than smelting activities, while raw iron circulated as a traded commodity, possibly under Saitic-Egyptian rule following the Neo-Assyrian withdrawal from the region.