Summarizing the day...

I've done well today, finishing a load of routine stuff and the metalwork article (first pass). There were times it was hard to concentrate on the text, because the article would mention an item that had been recovered from some 5th century burial site that turned out to have something really eye-opening about it (either in terms of blacksmithing or metal content). And I'd get to thinking about the type of culture you'd need to have to support that kind of experimental metalsmithing.

Was it some kind of large (for its time) smithy that employed enough people to deal with day-to-day production leaving one or two master artisans free to try stuff out? The article also suggested that, at that place and time, iron would have been considered a precious metal, and that caches that have been found of small, axe-shaped objects might actually have been monetary tokens.

It's been a long day. Time to give the eyes a rest.