Overview

• The peer-reviewed study, published September 26 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, reinterprets the Kvemo Bolnisi workshop in southern Georgia.
• Researchers report that workers smelted copper and deliberately added hematite as a flux to boost yields from iron-poor ores.
• Microstructural, mineralogical, and chemical analyses—including scanning electron microscopy—substantiate the flux interpretation.
• The findings bolster the long-standing hypothesis that experiments by copper-workers paved a route toward extractive iron technology during the Bronze-to-Iron transition.
• The Soviet-era site, first misclassified in the 1950s, was relocated using hand-drawn maps, underscoring the value of reexamining older excavations with modern methods.