Iron Age in India

"Of greater implication is Shaffers argument (1984a, 49) that during the late third millennium B.C.E. iron ore was recognized and utilized in southern Afghanistan and was manipulated to produce iron luxury items. The fact that there are early Harappan artifacts in the same stratigraphic proveniences as the iron artifacts suggests to him that "the Early Harappan complexes had access to, or knowledge of, an iron technology." In actual fact, although there is no evidence for awareness of smelted iron technology, iron ore and iron items have been uncovered in eight bronze age Harappan sites, some going back to 2600 B.C.E. and earlier. So there was as awareness of iron, which may have been encountered accidently during the smelting of copper, and a willingness to exploit it. The Harappan awareness of iron ore cannot be considered an "iron age," which is when smelted iron items became common items of household use and occurred around 1000 B.C.E."

"The introduction of iron into the subcontinent by the Indo-Aryans is another discarded intruding-Aryan tenet that is no longer accepted by archaeologists: "Archaeologically . . . the problem of the Aryans and their association with iron remains as confusing as ever, regardless of the earlier strongly expressed theories of their apparently tautological association" (Banerjee 1981, 320)."