Before the workshop bench: ore, scrap, fuel, furnace, and alloy.
Explain raw materials, recycling, and alloy preparation.
Raw materials and routes
Metals reached workshops through mining, trade, taxation, gift exchange, war booty, salvage, recycling, and purchase from merchants. Ore sources, fuel supply, transport routes, and political control shaped what workshops could make. A copper-alloy vessel may therefore embody regional geology and long-distance trade as much as local style.
Alloying and recycling
Alloying changes color, hardness, melting behavior, and workability. Tin, zinc, lead, silver, gold, carbon, and other elements could appear deliberately or through recycling. Old vessels, coins, arms, fittings, and scrap might be melted into new objects, making chemical analysis complex. The site should explain that ancient alloy labels are often modern analytical categories.
Workshop preparation
Before casting or hammering, metal must be refined, melted, cast into ingots or blanks, rolled or hammered into sheet, or prepared as wire, strip, granules, solder, or foil. The page should show that decorative inlay begins with material preparation long before the chisel cuts the design.