Ancient iron making from lean grade ores in India - An introspection

In India iron making commenced for more than 3000 years back in small furnaces having slight variation in their designs, making use of lean grade iron ores freely available in rural/tribal areas as surface cape of hills and mostly sal wood charcoal as fuel cum reductant. The iron so produced was being used for preparing agricultural and household articles, arrows, daggers etc. The process of iron making is not well documented and the recovery of iron is poor due to major loss of iron in slag. In view of this fact, an attempt has been made to introspect the minute details of iron making process at tribal sites namely around Jamshedpur and Bishunpur in Jharkhand and Bastar in Chhattisgarh states, India. The special features of the ancient iron making processes have been discussed in detail with a view to improve the design of the furnace and overall performance of the process.