Mössbauer study of ancient iron smelting slag in Japan

Abstract

For an investigation of the ancient iron manufacturing technique, a reproducing experiment was carried out by archaeologists, where ancient type of iron smelting furnace was built and iron sand with high titanium contents was used as the raw material. During the operation of furnace, a large amount of slag flowed away from the furnace. In order to investigate the possibility for the estimation about the operative condition of furnace and the raw material, 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy was applied for characterizing these slags and it was found that these slags mainly consisted of ferropseudobrookite (FeTi2O5).