Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c15.s5.2

v1.c15.s5.2

Several suggestions have been made that iron metallurgy has been an off-shoot of copper metallurgy (Charles, 1979), and that iron was made at Ahar from copper slag (Chakrabarti, 1985). Vibha Tripathi refuted this suggestion, ‘since it is just not possible to produce iron from chalcopyrite ore’. The Ahar samples which have not been thoroughly analysed could however be iron-rich copper having magnetic properties.