This work explores the contribution of the peoples of the Barbaricum to the shaping of early medieval technology in Europe, with a particular reference to iron-making. Within this general cultural framework, the case of Lombards is analyzed in more detail, tracing the way their iron-making technological heritage developed: first, during their settlement on the Lower Elbe (first centuries AD) characterized by a Western Germanic technical culture, then, in Central Europe (AD 3rd/4th-6th), where they came into contact with a Celtic and provincial Roman substratum, and finally in Italy (second...