Ust-Polui: the earliest evidence of iron metallurgy in the Arctic region

The article reveals the ancient iron smelting sources discovered in 2010-2015 in the ancient sanctuary of Ust-Polui (on the territory of the Russian city of Salekhard). Ust-Polui's iron production artifacts that date back to the III century BC and the I century AD are the earliest evidence of iron metallurgy in the circumpolar area. The iron production sites found in Ust-Polui were associated with an ancient ditch, at the edge of which the bloomery process must have been organised. It is suggested, based on the thickness of bloomery walls (1.5-3 cm), preserved bottoms, and slag morphology, that Ust-Polui smelters used small smelting clay and stone furnaces (0.5 m high at the most). Ancient metallurgists knew the technologies of draining liquid slag and added animal bones to a charge as a flux. Archaeological and geochemical analysis proves that all slag described in this article was produced as a result of developing the same iron ore deposit. There is no other similar evidence of iron smelting and blacksmithing found that far north at the cusp of the epochs. It was only in the Middle Ages that smelting furnaces began to appear in the circumpolar zone of Scandinavia, the largest metallurgic region of Northern Europe, and furnaces of the Early Iron Age were found much further south from the Arctic circle. Ust-Polui is probably the most northern point on Earth where iron metallurgy was developed by ancient people. Finally, the impulse to the emergence of the earliest metallurgy in the polar region, in our opinion, came from migration of smelters from the territory of East Ural, where iron metallurgy had been developed long before its transfer to the Lower Ob region.

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