DanAngleland said:
That sounds more in line with my preconceptions. My understanding about the period is that the secret to iron becoming widely used for tools and weapons was learning how to extract it, and that the sources of iron were plentiful, so there was no reason to use bronze for purposes that benefitted from the superior physical toughness of iron (purposes such as making weapons and armour for war).
People have a misconception that iron have replaced bronze because iron was superior (harder) metal. But that's not the case. Pure iron wasn't used at all, it's iron alloy we usually call steel that was used (most often iron-carbon alloy). And even if we use to call alloy with low carbon content "iron", it still have carbon content and is technically steel.
Moreover bronze itself is not that soft. Hardened bronze have hardness similar to average steel. Hardening is done by simple hammering.
Good steel (for weapon, armor and tool making) have carbon content of around 0,5 % - 1,5%. Lower carbon content and it becomes too soft (wrought iron), higher and it becomes too brittle (cast iron).
Problem with iron is that it have very high melting point. Ancients could not produce temperatures high enough to melt iron ore to obtain iron. Luckily it can be obtained through solid state reduction (without melting). That was done in furnaces. However because they could not melt it, they could not mix it precisely to get alloy with optimum content, like with bronze. What you got from furnaces were lumps of metal with varying degrees of carbon content and full of impurities called slag. Challenge was to pick pieces with right carbon content and then hammer slag out of it. And since they knew next to nothing about modern chemistry, they could not just make a carbon test.
Because steel they got was so inconsistent, they combined different pieces in complicate and laborious process.
At the end what made the difference is that bronze was expensive and hard to get. One of it's two components -tin is very rare and could be found only in few places, like British Isles which ancient Greeks called "Tin Islands". Iron on the other hand was relatively plentiful.