[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Jean, of course.

I sometimes do get a little bit too focused on Jawa/Bali.

Luwu was a major producer & exporter of nickel/iron, and was producing this from very early times --- & still is. Hardjonegoro gave me some Luwu nickel, but I never got around to using it.

There have been some quite informative archeological investigations of work sites carried out in South Sulawesi, especially around Lake Matano & Katue, I think some of the Kutue sites date back to the first millenium.

You're right Jean, I should stop & think for a moment before extending my Jawa focused thoughts into other places.

So we can just delete my off the cuff comment, & I thank you Jean for waking me up.

However, from memory, I think that those South Sulawesi smelts produced iron/nickel alloy, cannot recall if there was any evidence of pure iron smelting. I think they were smelting from laterite ores, so it might have been impossible to get away from the nickel inclusion.

EDIT

There was a big project a while back that looked closely at this matter, I'm pretty sure it was called the "OXIS Project" and a very good paper was written on it by a Misol Do, I have a copy of the paper but i cannot find it on the net, I'm sure somebody with more time than I have could locate it.