text: The experimental archaeometallurgy of iron is more recent then that of copper in that for the most part was not widely studied until the mid-20th century.  This can be attributed to the modern smelting of wrought iron still being produced as an industry up until 1900, when the last of the large-scale production shut down, along with the belief among researchers that many of the same techniques had been passed down since the inception of bloomery iron.  A static technique simply was not the case as the technology used to make Roman Era iron showed the use of a technology that had long since disappeared.  That being said research in iron has progressed beyond that of copper due to the greater amount of historic text and surviving remains of iron production.
  Several experiments have taken place to reproduce bloomery iron.  Clough presents an average example of experimental ironwork with the reproduction possible Roman bowl furnaces. Clough found the reproduction bowl furnaces to be inefficient by producing small amounts of poor quality iron, which, when compared to excavated findings of much larger better quality blooms of iron led to the conclusion that bowl furnaces were not used by the Romans.