Iron

Iron was the most widely used metal in the Classical Mediterranean, however, since iron production doesn't release special elements in the atmosphere we cannot determine clearly the trajectory of iron production during ancient times. However, based on local archaeological evidence, we can reconstruct the trajectory of iron production in certain areas of the ancient world.

In Britain, where extensive surveys of iron making sites were made, we can roughly reconstruct...

Behold! All the graphs that I have ever posted in the forum condensed in one blog post.

Using the products of modern archaeology it is becoming possible for us to reconstruct the trajectory of the total volume of economic activity of the classical world during antiquity. The evidence apparently indicates that aggregate economic activity in the ancient world peaked in the 1st century AD, after rising for nearly a thousand years and then started to decline, nearly continuously, for...

It has been a common theme among forum members and even among professional historians the idea of the industrial revolution as a well defined type of social process: a social situation requiring a certain set of conditions that, if satisfied, will trigger an "industrial revolution" in the society.

An "industrial revolution" is generally defined as being a radical discontinuity in the previous economic history of a society. It would be characterized by a shift...