metallurgical studies on iranian ancient crafts of middle ilam

this study mainly concentrates on metallurgical structure of the ferrous ancient crafts, specially the discovered ferrous man-made pieces in ilam which are aged more than 3000 years. the pieces were discovered in ize a town located in the south east of ahvaz , in the southern of iran. the crafts include an ferrous bar, a 3-side and a 4 side bayonets which were microscopically studied by electron and optical microscopes. the microscopic result shows that the main microstructure of the ironic crafts are ferritic with a minor pearlite which means the main composition of the crafts is low carbon iron. this finding was also confirmed by chemical analysis of the craft. in addition, a few micro-impurities were detected in the microstructures which were characterized as slags. the slags were supposedly constrained in the crafts during hot forging process. although the slags had different morphologies their compositions were iron oxides.