[Dashiell Harrison]

So I know a lot of the popular historical narrative about bronze and iron is inaccurate: bronze didn't give way to iron because iron was just all around better. Changes in weapon and armor technology had more to do with economics, trade, difficulty of getting the components for good bronze, etc.

All this leaves me wondering, when were bronze arms and armor truly left in the dust by steel and iron? Would an army of late Bronze Age warriors (let's take Ewart Park Phase Britons, for the sake of argument) be steamrolled by iron and steel-armed Romano-Britons? Anglo-Saxon Housecarls? 12th century men-at-arms? Assuming this is one of those fantasy scenarios where we assume roughly equal numbers of men with similar levels of training, similarly high morale, similar quality commanders duking it out in open terrain, at what point in technological development does the bronze age army truly find itself at a critical disadvantage? How bad? What would it take in terms of numbers to give the Bronze Age army a chance.

[Jason O C]

Hmmm interesting question. To give you a better answer perhaps you could give us more details about what equipment your hypothetical late bronze age army is using. Obviously they have spears and shields, but do they also have swords, helmets, and cuirasses? if so what percentage of the army has the full kit, and how many have only a spear and shield? How big are the shields? are they fighting in a phalanx like formation, or more as individual warriors?

Jason

[Dashiell Harrison]

[Matthew Amt]

As they say, "It's complicated!" And we don't have all the answers, by any means.

In another thread somewhere (maybe Armour Archive?) it was noted that bronze and other copper alloys were being used for armor right through the middle ages, into the Renaissance. And not just for trim or parade pieces. So it still worked. But as you say, a lot of that is due to infrastructure, logistics, tradition, etc. You just won't get a lot of bronze armor in an area where everyone is an ironworker!

I have long had my doubts that iron came into use because copper and tin became harder to find, simply because the overall amount of bronze in production was far greater in the Iron Age. I suspect iron took over for weapons at least in part because of the need to field *armies*, rather than just bands of wealthy warriors who had no concerns over price or wait times for fine bronze weapons. Though of course the first iron weapons show up in high-end warrior graves!

It also seems to me that there was almost no bronze *armor* in northern/western Europe until the Iron Age. Probably a lot of the helmets that are classed as Late Bronze Age actually were, but all the armor I've seen is just variations on the Archaic Greek bell cuirass, with different decoration. In any case, the percentage of armored men you list may be unrealistically high--from the Roman era most estimates run 5 to 10 percent of a "Celtic" or other non-Roman force having body armor, with a few more having helmets. The vast majority just have shield and spear.

How well a force with Bronze Age equipment would fare against a later army probably has less to do with what metal their stuff is made out of than everything else. Bronze Age warriors simply never faced medieval heavy cavalry, for example. Romans beat Celtic opponents due to organization and training plus a much higher ratio of armored men in the ranks. But experienced and motivated warriors would be a force to be taken seriously no matter what they were wearing or carrying. (Doesn't mean they'll *win*...) My general take is that they'd be basically equivalent to most anything up through the Viking era--shields, spears, some helmets, a little armor. We know chariots existed, but not how many might be present in any battle. Once medieval armies become more cavalry-oriented, I think the Bronze Age guys will be at a disadvantage. NO infantry force wants to be out in the open on flat ground when a heavy cavalry charge is rolling in! Even pikemen would prefer to have a ditch or a lot of pits and caltrops in front of them.

Obviously things changed very slowly, back then, but they did change. The reason was not always "This weapon is BETTER" in just one single respect. The problem is figuring out what those reasons were.

Matthew

[Pieter B.]

[Dan Howard]

Any book by Tylecotte will give you the metallurgical differences between items made from bronze and items made from steel. In general, the bronzes used for weapons and armour have similar properties to unhardened medium carbon steel. There was a period of almost a thousand years before steel weapons/armour started to outperform bronze ones.

There are dozens of reasons why one army might defeat another. If they were listed in order of importance, weapons and armour would be down near the bottom. Before the development of gunpowder munitions, technological differences between armies had a minimal role in determining the outcome of a battle.

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

If you are wondering if bronze-age people could beat iron-age empires, the Battle of Teutoburg is your aswer. Not the common occasion of having roman soldiers into an ambush, but a remarkable one for sure.

[Matthew Amt]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Matthew Amt]

Steel was definitely being deliberately produced by Roman times. From what I know, they could not yet achieve the higher-carbon steels that we see in the middle ages, but it's still decent steel. Blades and armor both included some complex and well-planned metallurgy.

Smelting and forging iron *always* results in some carbon content. Controlling that was the trick, of course, but the ancients were well aware of how different substances and techniques gave different results to metals of several types. There were even iron alloys that included sulfur and phosphorous as hardening agents, though nothing matched carbon for both hardness and flexibility.

Unfortunately I haven't seen any good analyses of early Greek iron. I suspect they were able to achieve at least a decent high-carbon iron, if not what we might list as "steel".

Matthew

[Dan D'Silva]

I imagine that quench-hardening steel was discovered when experimenting with annealing, since the latter would've been a process familiar from bronze smithing.

[Greg Ballantyne]

Separately from how two similarly equipped warriors, one with bronze and one with iron, or two similarly equipped armies would fare against each other, there are a number of considerations that may have played a part in why weapon tech progressed as it did.

Ability to hold an edge over time might make one material superior or more desirable to another, without regard to the outcome of the hypothetical comparison battle.

Ability for a maker to enhance his products, leading to "fashion" considerations might also play a part.

Economic forces acting on a blade producer, availability of materials, supply train & trade route changes, political shifts, could all be things that separately or in combination could trigger change in that progression.

Generally things progressed toward superiority, as dictated by defining conditions......but change those conditions, and the older tech could emerge as superior.

[M. Eversberg II]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Matthew Amt]

The speculation is getting a little wild, here. I don't think it's possible for a sword of the Early Iron Age to have a carbon content high enough that it *snaps* in use, or even cracks. Hardening through quenching may not be practical, either. Remember that a lot of swords, both bronze and iron, are found folded in half or rolled up in a circle. Those don't sound brittle to me.

Remember that copper and tin were not the only metals in use in the Bronze Age: gold, silver, and lead, at least, were also well known, and all have different properties. So there's no reason for bronze workers to expect iron to be worked the same as bronze. They'd figure out a lot of basics pretty quickly. For example, if meteoric iron was utilized before smelted iron ore, it would quickly become obvious that it could not be melted and cast, but could be forged hot.

Also, while a craftsman would never be too eager to waste a lot of effort unnecessarily, the people using these early iron swords were NOBLES, and were all about conspicuous consumption. High cost was a *benefit*. Know anyone today who shops for a cheap Lamborghini? Bronze swords were long gone before anyone was interested in large-scale production.

Random thoughts!

Matthew

[Jens Nordlunde]

Steel ingots were exported from India to Rome and north Africa in the very first centuries, if not before BC, either by boat from south India where they have a lot of iron ore, or via the Silk Road.

[Dan Howard]

The Silk Road seems to have been a myth. Most of the trade goods allegedly transported through that region by land were actually transported by sea.

[Henry O.]

We know that pure bronze is harder and stronger than pure elemental iron, but how much variation would there be depending on the material actually used by early medieval smiths? Even putting aside the possibility that some smiths accidentally discovered case hardening or other methods of strengthening iron before their time, it seems to have been recognized that iron from certain places was "better" than others. Is it possible that some sources of iron did have just the right amount of slag or natural carbon in it to give it properties more comparable with bronze?

Another possibility is that certain properties such as hardness just weren't seen as important to ancient and dark age peoples as we think they are today. iirc some sword examples from the early middle ages seem to have been left deliberately unhardened or made softer near the edge of the blade than in the middle.

[Luka Borscak]

There is no pure bronze, bronze is an alloy.