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MINING IN THE
ANCIENT WORLD
Nathalie Nicole Brandes Professor of Geosciences
New Mexico Tech Alumna
PALAEOLITHIC
• 2.5 Ma to 20,000 years ago
• Includes:Australopithecus, Homo erectus,
Neanderthals, and modern humans
MESOLITHIC
• ~20,000 to ~7,000
years ago
• Begins with hunter-
gatherers, ends
with agriculture.
• Style of stone tools
changed.
NEOLITHIC • Marked by domesticated crops and animals and
pottery
– 10,000 BC Mesopotamia and Levant
– Later in Europe
CHALCOLITHIC
• Obvious social hierarchy
develops
• Copper tools, casting, and lost
wax casting
BRONZE AGE
• Near East: ~4th Millennium BC
• Egypt and the Aegean: ~3200
BC
• Britain: ~2000 BC
• Europe: ~1800 BC
• Scandinavia: ~1700 BC
IRON AGE
• Near East: ~1300 BC
• Europe: ~1200 BC, but varied greatly
PALAEOLITHIC MINING
• Nile Valley
– Extracted chert
from sedimentary
rock
– Trenches
~37,000 years
old
– Underground
mining ~35,000
years old
PALAEOLITHIC MINING
• Underground Mining
at Nazlet Khater:
– Bell pits
– 2 m shafts
– 10 m3 galleries
– 11 pits at site
NEOLITHIC MINING
• Spiennes, Belgium
– Chert mine
– Operated 4400 BC
to 2000 BC
– Covers ~100 ha
– Shafts 8-16 m
– Drifts 2-5 m
– Large flint pieces
(~2 m) extracted
using foudroyage
method
CHALCOLITHIC
• Extracted native copper, copper
carbonates, and copper sulphides
• Mining method- firesetting
• Smelting
FIRESETTING • Described by ancient authors, including
Agatharchides, Diodorus Siculus, and
Pliny the Younger
• Diodorus: – “The earth which is hardest and full of gold they soften by putting
fire under it, and then work it out with their hands. The rocks thus
softened and made more pliant and yielding, several thousands
of profligate wretches break in pieces with hammers and
pickaxes.”
• Pliny: – “Occasionally a kind of silex [quartz-rich rock] is met with, which
must be broken with fire and vinegar.”
– He also noted this could fill the mine tunnels with “suffocating
fumes and smoke.”
FIRESETTING
CHALCOLITHIC SMELTING
• Example from Hacinebi
Tepe, Turkey
• Blowpipes, not bellows
provided air to furnace
• Four furnaces in one
building- indicates
industry, not a household
activity
– 3 people on blowpipes
– 1 tending charcoal
– 1 tending ore and slag
CHALCOLITHIC EUROPE
• Ötzi the iceman
• 5300 years ago
• Carried flint dagger
and flint-tipped
arrows, but a
copper axe
• Stood ~5’4”-
basically my
dimesions
• ~45 years old at
time of death
• Hair contained high
levels of Cu and As
BRONZE AGE
• Great Orme, Wales
– Mining began ~2000 BC
– Cu-carbonates and
sulphides in dolomite
– 6 km passages
– 70 m depth
– ~1800 tonnes mined
– Bone, rock, and bronze
tools with fire setting
– Trade routes with
Cornwall indicated
IRON AGE
• Iron harder to smelt
than other metals
• Hittites- earliest
documented use of
iron tools and
weaponry
ROMAN MINING
• Opencast, underground, and hydraulic mining
• Underground mines accessed through shafts
and adits
• Firesetting, iron gad bar, iron picks, iron
battering rams
• Timbering, room and pillar
• Baskets or buckets to raise ore to surface
ROMAN MINING • Lighting
– Oil lamps
• Ventilation
– Lamps for checking air
– Ventilation shafts
• Dewatering
– French drains
– Bailing buckets
– Screw pumps
– Waterwheels
ROMAN MINING
ROMAN MINING- LAS MÉDULAS
• Hydraulic mining
ROMAN MINING-RIO TINTO
ROMAN MINING-RIO TINTO
• Name comes from
colourful water due to
AMD
ROMAN MINING-RIO TINTO
• Earliest mining ~5000 years ago (Chalcolithic)
• ~1100 BC Phoenicians took over mining from
Tartessians
– Ag and Cu mined
– Introduced bellows → makes smelting more
effective
• ~535 BC Carthaginians control area
• ~206 BC Romans arrive
– Largest Ag and Cu mine in the empire
SO WHAT WAS HAPPENING
IN NORTH AMERICA? • Copper Culture
– ~5000 BC to protohistoric
– Until ~1500 BC, copper
used for tools
– After ~1500 BC copper
mostly used for
ornamental objects
COPPER CULTURE MINING
• First exploited float
• Later quarried using
hammerstones and
firesetting
COPPER CULTURE
PROCESSING
• No evidence of smelting or casting
• Copper shaped with hot and cold
hammering
– Annealing must have been known, meaning copper was heated to at least 405°C
• Possibly used molds and swaging
• Mining in North America would not change
much until the arrival of Europeans
• Mining in Europe after the fall of the
Roman Empire?
• Mining in North America would not change
much until the arrival of Europeans
• Mining in Europe after the fall of the
Roman Empire?
– That is a story for another day
THANK YOU!
Any questions?
