text: Copper and copper-based metals continued to be the major metal in use during the first part of the Iron Age (end of 2nd–beginning of 1st millennium BCE). Bronze scrap re-melting continued (mainly v-shaped clay crucibles, slags, clay tuyères) and structures of open campfires full of metal production remains were found in several sites in Israel associated mainly with the Philistines and the Sea People settlements on the northern Sharon coast between modern Tel Aviv and Haifa, e.g., Tel Qasile, Tel Gerisa, Tel Dor, and Tel Dan, in northern Israel. Only later in the Iron Age  did metallic iron start to play a major role as a base metal for tools and weapons.
  XRF analyses of metals, metallurgical remains, and FTIR + XRF analyses of archaeological sediments
  from the open industrial area G in Tel Dor  enabled the identification of the exact locations of metal working during the end of the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. It was also possible to partially reconstruct the pyrotechnological events that probably involved re-melting bronze in an open fireplace. Even after thousands of years the ash, charcoal, calcite, and burnt ground in the immediate vicinity of the metal work area retained significantly higher values of copper (circa 0.05 wt% Cu) than the surrounding archaeological layers.
  During Iron Age II and III and the Persian Period (the first half of the first millennium BCE), copper-based objects continued to be present beside growing numbers of iron products. Silver hoards containing small tongueshaped bar chunks or scrapped jewellery became more and more common in the archaeological context in Israel as well as all over the Mediterranean. A similar phenomenon was evident during the Persian Period on the coast of Israel, where copper and copper-based objects were found in relatively large quantities  and with parallels in other sites all around the Mediterranean Sea. What could be defined as a basic Phoenician metal “kit” is composed mainly of the “Irano–Scythian” shape of three winged and socketed arrowheads made mainly of tin bronze, sometimes with arsenic and/or lead and left as-cast, and “hand”-like decorated fibulae made of good quality (7 wt%–12 wt% Sn) tin bronze and lead (up to 17 wt% Pb). They underwent mechanical treatment after casting and an extensive final cold working in the area where the needle spring was fastened into the fibulae body. Long unalloyed copper nails that were found in coastal sites as well as part of the structure of ships were found in the shipwreck from Ma’agan Mikhael.