tl;dr The article examines some context around a 5 ton hoard of ancient roman nails discovered during 1959, at Inchtuthil (near Dunkeld in Scotland). The romans built a fort and stockpiled these nails (and other materials) at Inchtuthil. However, they needed to abandon the fort and opted to bury a cache of nails six feet below ground, rather than cart them away or leave them in place. This prevented the locals from impounding the nails and melting them into other weapons against the romans. The quantity of nails indicates the scope of materials needed to construct a fort, as well as the blacksmithing quality available at the time.<p>If this interests you, I recommend Bret Devereaux's five part series about medieval iron production and use, <a href="https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-hammer-time/" rel="nofollow">https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-...</a>