Arctic Hunter-Gatherers Were Advanced Ironworkers More Than 2,000 Years Ago

upstart writes:

Arctic hunter-gatherers were advanced ironworkers more than 2,000 years ago:

Hunter-gatherers who lived more than 2,000 years ago near the top of the world appear to have run ironworking operations as advanced as those of farming societies far to the south.

Excavations in what's now northeastern Sweden uncovered ancient furnaces and fire pits that hunter-gatherers used for metalworking. A mobile lifestyle did not prevent hardy groups based in or near the Arctic Circle from organizing large-scale efforts to produce iron and craft metal objects, say archaeologist Carina Bennerhag of Lulea University of Technology in Sweden and colleagues. In fact, hunter-gatherers who moved for part of the year across cold, forested regions dotted with lakes and swampy patches apparently exchanged resources and knowledge related to metallurgy, the extraction of metals from ores, the researchers report in the December Antiquity.

Ancient hunter-gatherers at two Swedish sites "probably manufactured more iron and steel, and were more socially organized and sedentary than we previously thought," says Lulea archaeologist and coauthor Kristina Soderholm.

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