A very interesting read. It's amazing what archaeology can find, sometimes by literally searching the garbige of societies long gone. And good Oudysseos has vowed to post every slightest detail of it! :-P
I had not realised till now that iron weapons were in fact inferior to the bronze ones and that it was just their greater availability that made them so popular. When for example Xenophon states in his Anabasis that the Greek mercenaries wore bronze helmets, I thought that those helmets were a cheaper version of the more effective iron ones. It turns out that I was wrong and that those boys wore the good stuff after all...