Heat-treated or no?

[Dan D'Silva]

So if it can be made out of high carbon I would have thought it would be be heat treated as part of the extra cost.

It is.  The maker on their listing for a Scythian sword states "Steel spring forged and passes through all the stages of heat treatment (forging, annealing, hardening, normalization)."  (The maker is Russian and the page is computer-translated.)

This is also why I'm looking at this particular maker, because it appears labor cost in Russia is a lot lower and they are producing lots of iron and bronze blades not sold by more familiar manufacturers out of South and East Asia.

Thats little more then a large knife I should think it would be possible to heat treat this with a large gas torch with care,

Theoretically, yes.  I have read instructions on how to do it, but I very much doubt I can do it better than someone with any degree of experience.

I assume that your refering to the weapons in this catalogue:

https://www.academia.edu/31521572/Cemete...C3%BCk.pdf

Yep.  These are the only iron/steel akinakai that I know of from an Achaemenid context.