Bloomery Iron, Steel, and the Interdisciplinary Search for an Early Modern Armor Industry

Abstract

This essay calls for a collaborative multidisciplinary approach to the study of early modern Western European plate armor to better uncover the production methods and history of the industries that supported its development. It explores the insights gleaned from the Art Institute of Chicago’s own attempts at experimental or reconstructive archaeology of a late sixteenth-century breastplate produced with bloomery steel. Experiments affirmed the theory that bloomery furnace production methods and limitations played a role in the gradual development of plate armor.