The innovation of crucible steel, a high-carbon, homogeneous, slag-free steel, is regarded as a milestone in the history of the development of ferrous metallurgy. Associated in popular literature with the making of swords, particularly in the Early Islamic period, crucible steel, also known as wootz, possesses exceptional properties of hardness and strength. While much is now understood about its metallurgical composition and structure, little is known of its origins and spread. Few archaeological sites have been uncovered and to date pre-industrial production of this alloy is only known from Central Asia and South Asia. Previous studies have largely focused on individual sites in isolation from wider regional patterns of ferrous metallurgy. As a refining process of iron, it is argued here that crucible steel has a symbiotic relationship with the smelting technologies that produced the raw material for refining. This thesis explores the value of assessing crucible steel production within its wider landscape, cultural and technological context by presenting the evidence from Northern Telangana, India. Historical sources and recent archaeological field surveys have shown that Telangana has a rich metallurgical past, including the manufacture of crucible steel. Despite this, little archaeological work has been conducted in the region to elucidate the nature, scale and diversity of the metallurgical technologies that underpinned its production. Following a major reconnaissance survey in 2010 by the Pioneering Metallurgy Project, the present study tackled the assessment of the large body of field data and the recording of the technological waste assemblage collected. By combining detailed morphological analyses of the collected materials and contextual information recorded during field survey, a better understanding of the techno-cultural role of crucible steel was gained. Technological variations were identified across the survey area and the inter-relationship between iron smelting and crucible steel was assessed. The study reveals that crucible steel was embedded within a long-established local and regional tradition of iron smelting and concludes that it represented the intensification of a pre-existing iron processing industry. The evidence points to a widespread crucible steel production industry with varying degrees of site specialisation, indicating that it was perhaps more common than the few isolated sites commonly referred to in the literature suggests. The comparison of the material evidence with other production sites in Central and South Asia also revealed close parallels to the latter suggesting that they belonged to the same regional manufacturing tradition.

Successful leadership is the dream of all the students of leadership for which various elements including personality, skills, vision etc. are mentioned by various scholars and researchers, but what is interesting to acknowledge is that all these elements are a manifest of the moment that alter the identity of an ordinary person into a successful leader. These moments are known to be called crucible of leadership.Crucible has a strong connection to the leadership but the mystery of what shapes these crucibles is an ever going process of research and narration. The fascination with studying the recipe of crucible is built on the foundation of my own crucible of leadership that shaped my skills and vision. Considering that, I decided to explore the recipe of crucible for what is close to me and for which I have the most knowledge about, I was ascertain to produce an informative piece of document for the readers with good authenticity and reality in my work. For this purpose I chose to explore the recipe of crucible for Pakistani female leaders.In the crucible of leadership, one of the most important element that plays role is the antecedents of a life story that builds a way to crucible and successful leadership. Thus, my focus of this study was to explore and narrate such antecedents that are the prime source of crucible of leadership for successful Pakistani female leaders. In order to do so, I had to get deep knowledge of the personal life of Pakistani female leaders, which I did by studying their biographies and testimonial accounts building a theory of antecedents as recipe of crucible through the approach of grounded theory.My qualitative analysis and sound coding, suggested a theory that, the most essential antecedents that hasn’t change in generation for Pakistani female leadership are the family antecedents (education, gender equality and a strong belief on principles) and social antecedents (lack of social acceptance), participating highest in shaping the crucible. Whereas, religion is a supportive antecedent but is not significantly impacting the crucible of leadership, as is widely perceived in the world. Furthermore, I concluded my study with highlighting the factor of patriarchy and role expectancy as the major hindrance in the successful female leadership in Pakistan.