The 22 papers in this volume were delivered at a conference held at Hüttenberg in Austria in 2008, which was intended to remedy a perceived bias towards copper and the noble metals in archaeo-metallurgical studies. Between them the papers, which vary in their degree of metallurgical detail, cover iron production in much of western and northern Europe in the La Tène and Roman periods, and range from detailed summaries of individual production sites to wider studies of iron-producing regions.

Among the papers which will be of interest to readers of Britannia is Gassmann and Schäfer's summary of early iron production in Germany, which makes the important point that production within the German provinces was reduced in the Roman period while it increased in the areas beyond the frontier. De Rijk and Joosten's paper on Germanic iron production in the Netherlands (a.d. 150–350) summarises changes in furnace types over time and the problems of estimating production figures for such sites. The general assumption that the smelting and fabrication of iron artefacts were usually undertaken in different workshops is challenged by a study of a workshop at Oulches (France) by Coustures et al., where it is suggested that all the stages in the production of iron artefacts, including the preparation of charcoal, took place in the same workshop. Bauvais and Fluzin discuss the changes (or lack of them) in forging activities in the Northern Paris Basin in the final La Tène period when open agglomerations of villages were replaced by oppida. A study of the use of iron in Roman Switzerland by Serneels concludes that while there is extensive evidence for smithing, a lack of evidence for smelting suggests that the metal must have been imported from Gaul and/or Austria. Across the Alps, Cucini and Tizzoni's paper on Roman Lombardy concludes that for much of the period metallurgical activity was undertaken on a large number of small sites. However, the late Roman period saw an extensive exploitation of the iron ores of the Alpine valleys, perhaps as a result of the establishment of fabricae for the production of weapons in towns in the adjacent plains. In another paper Corretti et al. consider the relationship between the exploitation of the extensive iron ore deposits on Elba and the city of Populonia on the Tuscan coast. Four papers discuss aspects of iron production in Scandinavia, where variant forms of the shaft furnace with a slag pit prevailed throughout the period. Espelund's study of blooms from Norway reveals the extremely high quality of the iron produced in that area, while Larsen and Rundberget consider the industry in its wider historical context.

Three papers are concerned with Britain. Peter Halkon's discussion of iron and the Parisi of Eastern Yorkshire provides a useful summary of the evidence for the exploitation of the bog ore deposits of the area, but his assumption that the iron artefacts found in Eastern Yorkshire were locally produced is less convincing, for such assemblages are found in most of the more Romanised parts of Britannia. His discussion of the cult of a smith god in East Yorkshire in the Roman period provides a useful summary of the evidence. In an important paper Tim Young discusses a number of iron production sites in south-east Wales (Caergwanaf, Cardiff, Usk and possibly Monmouth) which were probably under the control of Legio II Augusta at Caerleon. Of these Caergwanaf, which was on the site of a short-lived late first-century fort, appears to have operated until the third century, producing, Young estimates, some 10 tonnes of iron a year. The Weald of Kent was one of the major centres of iron production in the Roman period and in a paper devoted to a study of the identifiably Roman slag heaps in that area, Hodgkinson is able to show that of 81 known Roman sites, 16 accounted for about 90 per cent of the slag and of those, three for some 44 per cent. Given the presence of Classis Britannica stamped tiles on some of these sites an association with the Roman fleet appears highly likely.

Although, inevitably, there is some variation in the quality of the papers, taken as a whole the volume provides a valuable summary of our current understanding of iron production in western and northern Europe over a period of around a thousand years.