Identification of historic wootz steel weapons and weapon-production workshops through the analysis of Indo-Persian blades

The analysis of Indo-Persian arms and armour in the Wallace Collection and the identification of those made from wootz crucible steel have been the principal aims of a long-term Wallace Collection Armoury project. The results obtained so far demonstrated that wootz steel is characterized by hypereutectoid steel in which cementite only presents anisotropy at various levels as can be identified by observing the time of flight diffraction peak intensity variation as a function of the scattering angle.We believe that these variations are a consequence of different forging histories and temperatures, and, if so, that would be a mean of identifying different workshops. We propose to analyse, using neutron diffraction, the presence, type and intensity of anisotropy in cementite for a set of known origin wootz steel weapons from the Oriental gallery of the Wallace Collection.