> Now I'm woefully ignorant of real world metallurgy, but I don't see how
> iron plows would be significantly better than bronze (on Earth or
> Glorantha).
This may help:
Georges Duby (a fine historian, for a Frenchman) includes a chunk on the inadequacy of non-iron ploughs in his (excellent) book "The Early Growth of the European Economy" (aka "Warriors and Peasants"). As an indication of the backwardness of Dark Age agriculture, he notes:
The amount of iron in agricultural equipment seems to have been extremely limited, and the scarcity of this metal is confirmed by other records... [The plough] would have had a ploughshare made wholly of wood hardened by fire or at best covered by a thin sheath of metal, and would have been incapable of use in stiff soils, even when the plough was very heavy, provided with wheels and drawn by six or eight oxen. It could not even turn over light soils thoroughly enough to provide an active stimulus for the replacement of their fertility content. It must have seemed a derisory weapon when brought face to face with the strength of the natural vegetation.
He suggests later that the addition of pieces of iron serve to reinforce the action of the plough's points of contact with the soil -- "coulter, share and mould-board".
As important as the metal of the plough is the team, the soil, and the agricultural technique. Tools alone don't make for prosperity, and the distinction between light and heavy soils can make all the difference.
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