A journey of over 200 years: early studies on wootz ingots and new evidence from Konasamudram, India

Recent new evidence emerged from the crucible steel production site of Konasamudram, Telangana, India. A hoard of 60 crucible steel ingots from this site offers a unique opportunity to study details of the early large-scale production of this fabled material, beginning with a detailed documentation of the weights and sizes of 45 of them. Historically, Konasamudram has been an important pre-modern crucible steel manufacturing and trading centre in India, as reported by Persian and European travelogues, and may have been the source of many of the early ingots studied during the past 200 years. The aim of this work is to present a dimensional analysis of these ingots and interpret the data in the context of earlier studies, to address questions of consistency in manufacturing, standardization of weights and other physical attributes. The newly-discovered ingots show considerable uniformity in shape, size and weights, indicative of a single production event during the heydays of crucible steel making, while the ingots previously reported in the literature vary much more widely.