754
perspectives 2012/3, ed. M. Harbeck, K.v. Heyking, and archaeology, prehistory, and classical archaeol-
H. Schwarzberg, 91–111. http://www.environmen
tandsociety.org/perspectives/2012/3/sickness-hunger-
war-and-religion-multidisciplinary-perspectives. Acces-
sed 22 Jan 2019.
Moosbauer, G. 2009. Die Varusschlacht. München: C.H.
Beck.
Rost, A., and S. Wilbers-Rost. 2010. Weapons at the bat-
tlefield of Kalkriese. Gladius 30: 117–135.
Rost, A., and S. Wilbers-Rost. 2016. The extensive battle-
field at Kalkriese (Varus Battle 9 AD): A challenge for
archaeological research and monument preservation. In
Preserving fields of conflict: Papers from the 2014
Fields of Conflict Conference and Preservation Work-
shop (Columbia, SC), ed. St. D. Smith, 25–30. Colum-
bia: University of South Carolina.
Wiegels, R., ed. 2007. Die Varusschlacht. Wendepunkt der
Geschichte? Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss.
Archaeology of Mining
Linda R. Gosner
Department of Classical Studies, Society of
Fellows, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Introduction
The extraction and processing of metals and other
minerals have played a significant role in eco-
nomic, political, and social developments across
the globe from early in prehistory to the present
day. Processes of mining and metallurgy have left
a number of material traces in the archaeological
record, from mines themselves, to metallurgical
slag and other waste, to finished metal objects, and
to traces of environmental pollution. Likewise,
mining landscapes often preserve other features
related to mining labor and the economy, includ-
ing settlements for housing laborers as well as
roads and railroads for shipping. As such, mining
has been examined from a variety of different
archaeological perspectives and methods. The
archaeology of mining, while in no way a cohe-
sive subdiscipline, plays an important role in
industrial archaeology and archaeometallurgy;
in period-specific subfields including historical
Archaeology of Mining
ogy; as well as in various area studies fields.
It shares much in common with studies of other
extractive industries such as quarrying stone or
drilling for oil. Studies of mining technologies,
landscapes, and communities have also contrib-
uted to wider conversations in archaeology about
labor history, the history of technology, human-
environment interaction, economic history, impe-
rialism and colonialism, and conservation and
preservation, among other varied topics. This
entry provides a broad overview of the archaeol-
ogy of mining. It begins by outlining the historical
trajectory of studies of mining and metallurgy
in archaeology from the pre-modern period to
the present. It then discusses current trends and
debates in the archaeology of mining relating to
scientific methods, social approaches, as well as
the conservation and preservation of mining her-
itage. Finally, it discusses international trends and
future directions in research on mining. Given the
disparate and diverse scholarship that intersects
with and contributes to the archaeology of mining,
selected examples provided are intended to be
illustrative rather than comprehensive.
Definition
The archaeology of mining is a diverse topic
studied from a number of different theoretical
and methodological perspectives within archaeol-
ogy. It involves the study of the material remains
of mining from prehistory to the present,
both before and after the Industrial Revolution.
Such material remains include a wide variety of
landscape features, artifacts, buildings, and infra-
structure associated with mining. Most archaeo-
logical studies of mining in both ancient and
contemporary contexts until relatively recently
focused on uncovering evidence for the technolo-
gies surrounding the extraction and processing of
ores: mines, tools, and equipment. The structure
of mines themselves varies by period, geography,
geology, type of ores extracted, and techniques
used to extract them. Mines generally fall into
two basic categories: underground mines and
Archaeology of Mining
Archaeology of Mining, Fig. 1 Remains of stairs lead-
ing between two galleries in Três Minas (Vila Pouca de
Aguiar), Portugal, a large Roman gold mining complex.
Red paint indicates places where modern prospecting has
been carried out. (Photo by author)
opencast mines. Underground or deep-vein mines
consist of subterranean tunnels including vertical
shafts, horizontal galleries, and horizontal adits
(horizontal passages that can be used for accessing
an ore body or for drainage) that penetrate below
the surface of the ground (Fig. 1). Underground
mines are normally opened to either extract hard
minerals containing metal ores or to extract soft
minerals such as coal or salt. Opencast, open-pit, or
opencut mines are created when large a quantity of
material is extracted from the surface, thereby cre-
ating a pit, depression, or large hole. Contemporary
open-pit mines can be recognized for their distinc-
tive benches or stepped platforms that are cut to
create access to lower levels (Fig. 2), while ancient
examples are typically less regular and smaller in
size. Opencast mines are used when ores are found
relatively close to the surface and/or when the earth
is not stable enough for underground mining.
These methods have sometimes been used
755
simultaneously, or one after another in different
phases of mining in the same area. The develop-
ment of contemporary opencast mining, which A
involves the removal of all the material inside the
pit and more efficient processing techniques, has
allowed the extraction of low-grade ores to become
profitable. It is for this reason that ancient under-
ground mines are sometimes reopened to exploit
low-grade ores using opencast mining techniques.
Aside from evidence for these various techniques
of extraction, mining landscapes often contain evi-
dence of sorting, processing, and refining ores.
These include crushing platforms and stones,
smelting furnaces, and slag heaps. A wide range
of tools and other materials are often found in
association with mines, especially in abandoned
underground mines where anaerobic environments
favor the preservation of organic materials such as
clothing, baskets, and wooden equipment. The
preservation of many components of mining land-
scapes varies widely across time and space.
Because mining is an inherently destructive activ-
ity, older evidence of exploitation is often obliter-
ated in the process of later mining activity. The
conservation of mining heritage has received
increasing attention with the spread of amateur
and academic interest in industrial archaeology
and as topics such as rural landscapes and labor
history have become more prominent in
archaeology.
As research questions in the archaeology of
mining have expanded to address more than the
technologies of mining, the range of material evi-
dence employed for study has also expanded.
Mines are now more often contextualized in
their wider landscapes through the study of infra-
structure such as railroads, roads, and ports.
A desire to understand the organization of labor,
the lived experience of miners, and topics such as
community formation and identity at mining sites
has also led archaeologists to study mining settle-
ments, including houses, cemeteries, churches,
stores, and other common spaces. Finally,
increased interest in pollution and human health
has also incited archaeologists to employ scien-
tific techniques to study the environmental
impacts of mining in the past and present.
756
Archaeology of Mining, Fig. 2 Corta Atalaya mine in
Riotinto, Spain. The mine shows the distinctive benches
of opencast mining, which was carried out at the site to
Historical Background
Pre-modern Interest in Mining
There has long been an interest in exploring
human engagement with metal-rich landscapes
and a range of material and written sources from
across the ancient world document mining tech-
nologies, mining landscapes, and labor practices.
In ancient Egypt, for instance, a map of an ancient
mining landscape in the Eastern Desert is depicted
on a papyrus dating to the mid-twelfth century
BCE (Fig. 3). This topographical map was pro-
duced during the reign of Ramesses IV in the 20th
dynasty, apparently to map the locations of gold
mines and sandstone quarries in Wadi Hammamat
for royal mining expeditions (Shaw 1994: 111).
Depictions of metallurgy are also known
from Egypt, for instance, in the 18th dynasty
(c. 1550–1292 BCE) tomb of vizier Rekhmire
in Thebes (TT100) (Ogden 2000: 150).
Archaeology of Mining
extract copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver beginning in
1907. (Photo by author)
Observations about mining and metallurgy
also abound in Greek and Roman written sources
(for a compilation, see Humphrey et al. 1998:
173–233). Of particular significance is Pliny the
Elder’s first century CE encyclopedic compen-
dium, Historia Naturalis, which includes two
full books about the history of metals, where the
author details the state of Roman knowledge
about gold, silver, copper, mercury, lead, tin,
iron, and a number of alloys (Natural History
33–34). Pliny’s elaborate description of gold min-
ing in northwest Spain (Natural History
33.66–78) closely matches archaeological evi-
dence for gold mining at the UNESCO World
Heritage Site of Las Médulas (El Bierzo, León,
Spain) (Fig. 4). Both Greek and Roman authors
described the difficulties of laboring in mines
(e.g., Diodorus, History 3.12-13.1, 5.36–38;
Xenophon, Ways and Means 4.14–17), but
archaeological investigations relating to mining
Archaeology of Mining 757

Archaeology of Mining, Fig. 3 Photograph of the Turin district in Wadi Hammamat in the Eastern Desert.
Papyrus, the earliest known topographical map, which (Photograph at the Turin Museum courtesy of J. Harrell)
depicts an ancient Egyptian gold mining and quarrying

Archaeology of Mining, Fig. 4 View of the remains of hydraulic gold mining at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of
Las Médulas (Bierzo, León, Spain). (Photo by author)
758
labor have not become widespread until more
recently. While visual and textual evidence cer-
tainly appear in other ancient cultural traditions,
classical texts are emphasized here for the role
they came to play in later mining history.
Mining is also recorded in maps and hand-
books from more recent history, many of which
were used by mining engineers and distributed
widely thanks to the invention of printing.
Perhaps most significant to the history of mining
is Georgius Agricola’s De Re Metallica, published
in 1556 (Fig. 5). This is a twelve-book treatise
illustrated with woodcuts that outlines in great
detail the methods for mining, refining, and
smelting metals. Printed in Latin as well as in
German and Italian translations, the book was
influential throughout Europe as a source for
understanding mining technologies of the era.
It also served to keep the memory of ancient
mining alive with frequent references to classical
authors and their descriptions of mining. In 1912,
former US president Herbert Hoover and his wife
Lou Henry Hoover produced an English transla-
tion with annotations that has been reprinted
Archaeology of Mining,
Fig. 5 Woodcut from
Georgius Agricola’s De Re
Metallica (1556) depicting
miners at work. (Public
Domain, https://commons.
wikimedia.org/w/index.
php?curid¼400140)
Archaeology of Mining
multiple times and is still well-regarded today
(Hoover and Hoover 1950).
While these are but a few examples of extant
visual and written sources from before 1600,
they attest to the long-standing human interest
in mining landscapes and technologies across
various pre-modern cultures and time periods.
While these sources certainly predate a contem-
porary “archaeology of mining,” they are useful in
interpreting the archaeological evidence for min-
ing that has survived from the ancient and more
recent past as well as in understanding engage-
ments of people with mining landscapes over the
longue durée.
Mining Scholarship in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries
Modern scholarship on the archaeology of mining
has, until recent decades, focused primarily on the
technologies surrounding the processes of extra-
cting, refining, and smelting metals. Many of the
earliest scholars writing on what might be classi-
fied anachronistically as the “archaeology of min-
ing” were themselves mining engineers rather
Archaeology of Mining
than trained archaeologists. Through their occu-
pations, they had access to mining sites with deep
histories of exploitation. Mining landscapes were
rarely of major interest to archaeologists in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who instead
were focused primarily on urban places and elite
spaces. Significantly, mining engineers also had
the technical expertise necessary to undertake
rigorous analysis of the ancient archaeological
evidence that they encountered in the course of
contemporary mining operations. Often, these
were people educated in the classical tradition
according to the standards of their day (Dietler
2010: 27–42), so they could read the work of
Agricola and Pliny the Elder. Herbert Hoover,
for instance, was trained as a mining engineer,
while his wife was a geologist and scholar of
Latin. They had the ideal combined skillsets to
produce a clear translation of De Re Metallica
from the Latin, complete with footnotes
referencing and describing relevant Latin and
Greek authors to whom Agricola frequently
referred.
Anglophone scholarship on mining from the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries often focused
on the history of the development of mining
technology in specific locales or on the place of
mining in world history. In the former category,
for instance, is Nash’s history of the Riotinto
mines in southwest Spain (1904). In the latter is
the work of Thomas Arthur Rickard
(1864–1953). Born in Italy, Rickard came from
a family of English mining engineers and worked
in the industry for most of his career in the United
States. Although he was a prolific scholar, he is
most famous for his seminal two-volume work,
Man: and Metals: A History of Mining in Rela-
tion to the Development of Civilization (1932).
The book focused on the deep history of mining
in the Old World and its relationship with the
development of human culture. In this and other
publications, his attention to both classical writ-
ten sources and archaeological findings from
mines is notable. Scholarship from the nine-
teenth and the early twentieth centuries, as well
as the history of amateur collection in and around
modern mines, ensured the survival of material
evidence for mining at a time when there was not
759
a great deal of interest in the subject on the part of
archaeologists.
Archaeological interest in ancient mining, at A
least in Europe, began to arise after Rickard’s
initial work. The first major synthesis of mining
sites in the Roman Empire was Englishman Oliver
Davies’ Roman Mines in Europe (1935). He
produced maps and wrote descriptions of mines
based on personal visits to mining sites. He
lamented: “the evidence for ancient mines is in
all cases poor, and archaeologists must not
demand so strict a standard as in other branches”
(1935: preface), a quote which aptly demonstrates
the negative archaeological perspective on mining
sites at the time. Later volumes contributed to
deeper understanding of mines in antiquity, espe-
cially during the classical period. John F. Healy’s
Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman
World (1978), for instance, has remained an
important resource on mining itself as well as
issues surrounding the administration and
labor of mining in the classical Mediterranean.
Likewise, Robert Shepherd’s Ancient Mining
(1993) traces developments in mining from pre-
history to the later Roman Empire and includes
information about labor and administration.
Studies of the archaeology of mining in prehis-
tory also began to proliferate in the mid-twentieth
century, many of which maintained a focus on the
technologies surrounding mining and metallurgy.
Significant volumes with a primarily technologi-
cal focus include R.F. Tylecote’s A History of
Metallurgy (1976) and The Early History of
Metallurgy in Europe (1987) as well as Paul
T. Craddock’s Early Metal Mining and Produc-
tion (1995). Writing more specifically about the
United Kingdom, Tylecote also published Metal-
lurgy in Archaeology: A Prehistory of Metallurgy
in the British Isles (1962) and, later, The Prehis-
tory of Metallurgy in the British Isles (1986).
Aside from these studies focused primarily on
European mining history, other archaeological
investigations have also been heavily focused
on the technologies of mining and metallurgy.
Beginning around the 1970s, a strong tradition
of scholarship emerged that made use of
scientific methods and techniques to study mining
technologies. This was influenced both by the
760
predominant processual paradigm as well as
advancements in the application and use of
archaeometric techniques.
In addition to work on the archaeology of
mining in ancient times, the field of industrial
archaeology began to take shape from the 1950s
as interest increased in preserving industrial
heritage, inventorying industrial sites, and study-
ing industrial technologies from an academic per-
spective. This field, which traces its origin to the
United Kingdom, includes the study of mines
dating to after the Industrial Revolution, as well
as a variety of other sites with industrial buildings
and structures such as mills and factories (Palmer
and Neaverson 1998). Because industrialization
took place earlier in some places than others,
material remains considered industrial heritage
can be as early as the sixteenth century but are
often much more recent. Early work in industrial
archaeology has been criticized for its focus on
technology and conservation at the expense of
other relevant topics, but more recent work has
begun to contextualize industrial heritage in the
wider discipline of historical archaeology. Mining
heritage is not considered alone and solely for its
technological value but as part of the wider indus-
trial landscape, including towns, settlements, and
supporting infrastructure (e.g., trains, railroad
tracks, roads, and power plants).
Key Issues/Current Debates
The scope of the archaeology of mining began
to change and grow from the early 1980s in
step with theoretical shifts in archaeology –
especially the post-processual turn. While previ-
ous investigation had been primarily concerned
with understanding the technologies and pro-
cesses surrounding mining itself, archaeologists
began to realize increasingly that mining could
be used to study a number of social and economic
topics. Further, evidence from mining sites could
be used to address questions of larger interest in
the archaeology about gender, indigenous
archaeology, and postcolonial archaeology,
among others. Historical archaeologists, perhaps
because of the wider range of material and written
Archaeology of Mining
evidence available to them, were among the
first to publish more interpretive, analytical, and
holistic investigations of mining landscapes and
communities (see especially Hardesty 1988). The
conference and subsequent publication of Social
Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeol-
ogy and Anthropology of Mining (1998) can be
seen as an important turning point for research in
the archaeology of mining. The volume brought
together archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and
anthropologists working in disparate geographical
locations and from varied disciplinary back-
grounds to discuss the social context of mining
from prehistory to the recent past. Significantly,
while mining sites from before and after the
Industrial Revolution had traditionally been stud-
ied separately, the editors made a case for the
broad comparison of mining landscapes across
time periods and locations. While the “archaeol-
ogy of mining” will never be a cohesive sub-
discipline, the volume has prompted increased
interdisciplinary work and cross-regional discus-
sion over the past two decades.
Today, the archaeology of mining is studied
under the purview of many divergent disciplines
and subdisciplines in the humanities, social sci-
ences, and hard sciences. Mining is also studied
unevenly and from varied perspectives in different
regions of the world. As in previous centuries, the
study of mining as a part of the history of tech-
nology continues to play an important role in new
research, but discussions about technology are
increasingly being enhanced by new methods of
inquiry as well as through their incorporation into
wider questions about the social and economic
significance of mining. Much of the most innova-
tive and/or debated work of the past several
decades can be grouped into the following
three categories: methodological advancements
in archaeometallurgy and geospatial technologies,
social approaches, and conservation and
preservation.
Methodological Advancements
Advances in archaeometry, geospatial, and digital
technologies have enhanced the archaeology of
mining and led to new discoveries as well as to
changing methods for mapping, documenting,
Archaeology of Mining
and conserving mining landscapes and metal arti-
facts. The increase in the use of scientific tech-
niques in archaeology from the 1970s onward has
catalyzed a number of advances in metal prove-
nience studies, in documenting the impacts of
mining pollution on a variety of scales, and in
better understanding the origins and development
of technologies in mining and metallurgy.
Geospatial and other digital technologies have,
on the other hand, helped with the mapping and
recording of mining landscapes, buildings, and
other features.
Archaeometallurgy
Archaeometallurgy, the study of the use and pro-
duction of metals in both prehistoric and historic
periods, is a subdiscipline of archaeometry or
archaeological science. Key areas of research in
archaeometallurgy include the origins and dis-
persal of metallurgical technology, the reconstruc-
tion of metallurgical technologies that have fallen
out of use, and the identification of the prove-
nience of objects and ores to their geological
origins through chemical and isotopic fingerprint-
ing (Killick and Fenn 2012: 560–561). Some of
the commonly used methods for the analysis of
ores, metals, and slag include optical microscopy,
electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD),
Raman microscopy, portable X-ray fluorescence
(p-XRF), energy-dispersive X-ray analysis
(EDX), wavelength-dispersive X-ray analysis
(WDX), and inductively coupled plasma spectros-
copy/spectrometry, among a variety of others
(Roberts and Thornton 2014). A multitude of
archaeometric and archaeometallurgical studies
related to mining technology can be found in the
Journal of Archaeological Science, the Journal
of Archaeological Science: Reports, and
Archaeometry, among others.
For prehistorians, there has been long-standing
debate concerning when and where the mining
and extractive metallurgy of different ores origi-
nated. There have long been questions about the
origins and spread of smelting technologies in
the Old World and whether smelting was invented
on multiple occasions in disparate locales or just
once. In the 1960s, for instance, Colin Renfrew
argued – against V. Gordon Childe’s previous
761
arguments for a single invention of metallurgy –
that copper metallurgy was invented on multiple
occasions in the ancient Near East, in the Balkans, A
and in Iberia. The past decades have seen a great
deal of local research and global debate on these
issues as new archaeological evidence has been
found and archaeometric techniques have become
more widely used. For instance, in 2009, the
Journal of World Prehistory produced two special
issues on the topic “Modelling Early Metallurgy”
(Vols. 3 and 4). These volumes provide outlines of
the state of this debate in various places including
West, East, and Southern Africa, Thailand, South
India, Western Europe, the Eurasian Steppe,
Eastern Asia, Iran, the Southern Levant, the
Indus Valley, the Eastern Woodlands of North
America, and West Mexico. Concerning copper,
most scholars now contend that copper metallurgy
in Europe spread from east to west, beginning in
Southeast Europe in the late 6th millennium BCE
and culminating in Britain and Ireland by the
mid-3rd millennium BCE. Further, the “virtually
synchronous appearance of copper smelting
throughout Southwest Asia and Southeast
Europe, [shows that] a single central region of
invention is far more probable than many parallel
independent discoveries” (Roberts et al. 2009:
1012–1014).
Chemical and isotopic fingerprinting –
including isotopic analysis of lead, copper, and
copper-based alloys – are also major areas of
research in archaeometallurgy. In particular, the
application of lead isotope analysis to metal
objects and ores has increasingly been carried
out as a way to pinpoint the provenience of objects
and characterize isotopic signatures for various
mining districts. Identification of the origin of
objects can help not only in the reconstruction of
trade networks but also in better understanding
the organization of production and its connection
to economic systems in past societies. These
methods can also be used to reconstruct processes
of recycling, mixture, and reuse of metals of
diverse origins. In the past decades, lead isotope
analysis has shed light on topics such as the pro-
duction of copper oxhide ingots in Late Bronze
Age Cyprus, the origins and distribution of
Roman lead ingots in the Mediterranean, and the
762
mixing of metals in coins, pipes, and archaeolog-
ical objects from many times and places. Isotopic
analyses have allowed researchers to trace the
impacts of mining pollution and environmental
degradation on local, regional, and even global
scales. Most famously, Sungmin Hong and col-
leagues traced hemispheric lead pollution on
a global scale by conducting lead isotope analysis
on ice cores from Greenland. In doing so,
they showed how mining in the classical
Mediterranean contributed to levels of hemi-
spheric pollution not observed again until after
the Industrial Revolution (Hong et al. 1994).
This research inspired a number of subsequent
studies that helped pinpoint the geographic ori-
gins of pollution, the impacts of pollution on local
plants and animals in mining districts, and the
consequences of pollution for human health past
and present. It has recently been reproduced with
greater accuracy, allowing scholars to pinpoint
fluctuations in pollution levels to specific eco-
nomic and historical events (McConnell
et al. 2018).
Geospatial and Digital Technologies
Advances in geospatial technologies have also
expanded the ways in which mining landscapes
can be documented and studied. Increasingly,
archaeologists are using laser scanning, digital
photogrammetry, geographic information systems
(GIS), and other digital tools to map mining
landscapes and features within them. These
technologies have applications for making and
documenting new discoveries. In addition, they
are useful in monitoring changes in landscapes or
the deterioration of archaeological sites for the
purposes of environmental and heritage conserva-
tion and preservation. In one recent study of the
Eria Valley in northwest Spain, archaeologists
employed airborne LiDAR and aerial photogra-
phy to create high-resolution digital terrain
models of a Roman-era gold mining landscape.
LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, is
remote sensing method that produces high-
resolution digital surface models and topographic
maps. Because of dense vegetation across the
region, it had previously been difficult to deter-
mine the extent of hydraulic gold mining features
Archaeology of Mining
such as trenches, canals, and mining deposits.
The application of these technologies, and espe-
cially of LiDAR, brought to light these features
and helped to document the extent of ancient
gold mining in the region using GIS (Fig. 6;
Fernández-Lozano et al. 2015). This technique
is increasingly used to study ancient mining
landscapes elsewhere. New technology is also
employed for recording buildings and features of
particular mining sites. A recent study of the
nineteenth and twentieth century Our Lady of
Montserrat mine in Cartagena-La Unión,
Andalucía (Spain) employed laser scanning on a
smaller scale. Using terrestrial laser scanning and
airborne LiDAR textured with photographs,
archaeologists created a textured digital model of
the boiler room and chimney associated with the
mine (García-León et al. 2017). The images pro-
duced serve to record the state of preservation
of the building for the purposes of monitoring
heritage preservation, and they can be used as
accurate and realistic models of the site for both
specialized and public uses. Outside of archaeol-
ogy, LiDAR and other technologies are also
sometimes employed in active mining projects
for recording changes to landscapes and coast-
lines in order to monitor environmental impact
and legal compliance, among other things (e.g.,
Kerfoot et al. 2014).
Social Approaches
While most archaeological studies of mining and
metallurgy before the 1980s focused primarily on
the locations of mines and the technologies used
to extract and process metals, the rise of post-
processual approaches in archaeology has led
archaeologists to expand the range of research in
the archaeology of mining to address debates
about a broad range of social, economic, and
ideological questions. Some of this has been the
result of the increased integration of the archaeol-
ogy of mining into other subdisciplines within
archaeology such as historical archaeology and
classical archaeology. Questions have also
evolved with the increased integration of archae-
ological approaches to mining and ethnographic
or ethnoarchaeological studies of contemporary
mining landscapes and communities. It is
Archaeology of Mining 763

Archaeology of Mining,
Fig. 6 (a) Digital elevation
model of gold mining
features, including canals A
and reservoirs, in the Eria
Valley obtained from
LiDAR data and
(b) archaeologists,
interpretation of the same
landscape from aerial
orthoimage and LiDAR
data. (Fernández-Lozano
et al. 2015, used with
permission from Elsevier)

impossible to cover the breadth of this research,
but I will highlight several interesting directions
that mining research has taken both in and outside
of archaeology.
Importantly, scholarship about mining technol-
ogy itself has taken a more social turn, as
archaeologists have increasingly recognized the
social aspects of technological practice. Bryan
Pfaffenberger, for instance, has advocated using
the concept of the chaı̂ne operatoire to study
mining. This concept emphasizes the role of
learned practices and social interactions in the
764
execution of technical processes and has often
been applied to case studies in the production
of lithics and ceramics (Pfaffenberger 1998).
Thus, even when studies of mining remain tech-
nologically focused, there is increased discussion
about the transmission of knowledge and the
organization of labor in technical processes.
The broad topics of mining labor, work,
and community have also become more promi-
nent in recent decades. In 1985, Ricardo Godoy
commented, “Despite his antiquity, the miner, like
Geertz’s peasant, was recently discovered by
anthropologists. . .If interest in mining came late,
systematic studies of mining have yet to arrive”
(1985: 199). Since the publication of this article in
the Annual Review of Anthropology, which was
one of the first articles to present the potential
contributions of mining to studies about labor
history to a wide audience of anthropologists,
studies about the social and economic organiza-
tion of mining labor have proliferated in anthro-
pological archaeology and cultural anthropology.
Overlapping with research in the archaeology of
women and gender, archaeologists have examined
the roles that women and children have played in
mining labor, household production, and subsidi-
ary industries in mining communities. Research
has also examined the role of other overlooked
groups in mining, including slave laborers, corvée
laborers, immigrants, itinerant laborers, and indig-
enous groups. Increasingly, archaeologists are
interested not just in the organization of labor
and the identification of laborers but in the lived
experiences of those who formed mining
communities.
This diverse research on labor has taken a
wide variety of theoretical and methodological
approaches in different regions and periods, espe-
cially because of disparities in the kinds of mate-
rial available to study these topics. In historical
archaeology in the United States, for instance,
scholars have often adopted Marxist approaches
to conceptualize mining labor practices. Historical
archaeology has also benefitted from the existence
of company records (financial, administrative,
and medical), newspapers, personal journals, as
well as photographs and oral histories that record
details about life in mining communities not
Archaeology of Mining
available for earlier periods. At the twentieth-
century American coal mine of Ludlow, Colo-
rado, for instance, a labor strike in 1914 resulted
in the brutal massacre of miners and their families
as well as the destruction of the town by the
Colorado National Guard (Fig. 7). The “Archae-
ology of the Colorado Coalfield War Project,”
directed by Randall McGuire, Dean Saitta,
and Phillip Duke, has been able to study the
vivid photographs and other documentary records
alongside the burned remains of the town, reveal-
ing more about life at the mine and how the
massacre unfolded (McGuire 2004).
The role of the extractive industries, and espe-
cially mining, in imperial and colonial encounters
has also become a topic of increasing interest to
archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians.
As Killick and Fenn note, “Because rich deposits
of the scarcer metals are rare, and rarely coincide
in space and time with the regions of greatest
demand for them, the quest for metals has been
a major driver of exploration, long-distance
trade, colonization, and imperialism” (2012:
560). Research on the relationship between
mining and colonialism has been carried out in
various Mediterranean regions that were once
provinces of the Roman Empire (especially
Spain and Romania) as well as in more contem-
porary colonial mining landscapes including
Australia and New Zealand. Archaeologists
working in colonial Latin America have produced
some of the most notable scholarship in this vein.
Nicholas Robins, for instance, examined the rela-
tionship between Spanish colonialism and mining
in the Andes in his book, Mercury, Mining, and
Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of
Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes (2011).
In his interdisciplinary study, Robins combined
historical archival research with environmental
data to study the use of mercury in the amalgam-
ation process for silver after it was introduced
by the Spanish in the late 1500s, revealing the
adverse impacts that mercury pollution had on
human health and the environment.
Drawing on phenomenological approaches
to landscapes and materials, scholars have also
become increasingly interested in the ritual and
symbolic significance of mines, minerals, and
Archaeology of Mining
Archaeology of Mining, Fig. 7 Historic photograph of
the aftermath of the Ludlow massacre showing the burned
ruins of the mining houses at Ludlow Colony in 1914.
mining landscapes. Notable studies that comment
on these topics include a recent edited volume
on mining and quarrying in the ancient Andes
(Tripcevich and Vaughn 2013), Knapp’s discus-
sion of ideational mining landscapes in prehistoric
Cyprus (Knapp 1999), and Boivin and Owoc’s
edited volume on cultural perceptions of the
mineral world (2004).
Finally, modern global debates concerning
the economics and politics of mining, local envi-
ronments, and indigenous communities can also
be seen reflected back in studies of mining and in
the profile of mining in scholarly publications
both in and outside of archaeology. Following
on Godoy’s influential work, Chris Ballard and
Glenn Banks wrote an article about the role of the
anthropologist in engaging with local communi-
ties and large corporations in post-1980s large-
scale hard-rock mining in the Asia-Pacific region
(2003). Their work showed the critical role
that anthropology and ethnography can play in
understanding conflicts over natural resources.
It also outlined practices for ethical engagement
765
(George Grantham Bain Collection of the Library of Con-
gress, Public Domain)
with the various stakeholders in contemporary
mining ventures. More recently, Routledge initi-
ated a publication series called “Routledge
Studies in the Extractive Industries and Sustain-
able Development” in 2016, which already
has eight volumes related to mining. A new jour-
nal, The Extractive Industries and Society,
was formed in 2014 for the dissemination
of “in depth analysis of the socio-economic
and environmental impacts of mining and oil
and gas production on societies, both past and
present” (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-
extractive-industries-and-society). The presence
of such publications demonstrates that mining
studies are no longer confined only to specialized
engineering journals but have become more inte-
grated into other research in anthropology and
sustainability, among other disciplines.
Conservation and Preservation of Mining
Heritage
The conservation and preservation of metal arti-
facts – including coins, jewelry, and vessels –
766
have long been important activities on archaeo-
logical excavations and in museums around
the world. The conservation and preservation
of mining heritage sites across the world, on
the other hand, are more recent developments
in archaeological practice and ones that are
implemented in a variety of different ways by
region and by country. Some places still have
few or no legal protections in place for mining
heritage. Nevertheless, worldwide attention to
the preservation of mining sites has grown as a
result of two primary factors. The first are the
changing research foci of archaeologists within
academia. Increasingly, archaeologists are study-
ing the everyday lives of non-elites, as well as
nonurban landscapes, recognizing the signifi-
cance of people and places outside of upper-
class, urban environments. The archaeology of
mines – including research on industrial land-
scapes, mining labor, and mining settlements –
has gained momentum with these shifting
research agendas. Efforts to preserve mining her-
itage have increased with the elevated scholarly
interest in mining. Secondly, the preservation of
mining sites can also be attributed to changing
societal attitudes toward industrial heritage in
many countries: mines and mining towns are
now often considered places of historical inter-
est, deserving of legal protections and preserva-
tion. This can be observed in recent legislation in
many countries that has given mining landscapes
additional legal protections as well as the emer-
gence of national and international societies and
interest groups dedicated to the study and con-
servation of industrial heritage. Mines and their
settlements, further, are more often being pre-
served, conserved, and repurposed for tourism
or other secondary, adaptive reuses.
The International Committee for the
Conservation of the Industrial Heritage
(TICCIH) is the worldwide organization for the
promotion, conservation, documentation, and
investigation of industrial heritage. While both
individuals and institutions can become members
of TICCIH, its activities are primarily carried out
through national organizations in 40 member
countries. These include, for instance, the Society
for Industrial Archaeology (United States),
Archaeology of Mining
the Association for Industrial Archaeology
(United Kingdom), Associazione Italiana per
il Patrimonio Archeologico Industriale (Italy),
and the Associação Portuguesa para o Património
Industrial (Portugal). TICCIH is the consultant to
the International Council on Monuments and Sites
(ICOMOS), which in turn advises UNESCO on
industrial heritage sites to be added to the World
Heritage List (TICCIH 2017). Many industrial
mining sites or complexes have indeed been des-
ignated as World Heritage such as Sewell Mining
Town (Chile), the Cornwall and West Devon
Mining Landscape (United Kingdom) (Fig. 8),
Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in
Essen (Germany), Nord-Pas de Calais Mining
Basin (France), and Sites of Japan’s Meiji Indus-
trial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and
Coal Mining, among others (UNESCO 2017a).
TICCIH has a specific focus on heritage
dating to periods during and after the Industrial
Revolution. There is no similar international orga-
nization centered around ancient or preindustrial
mining heritage sites, though interest groups and
societies do exist in some countries. In the United
States, for instance, the Prehistoric Quarries and
Early Mines Interest Group is a subgroup of the
Society for American Archaeology. In the United
Kingdom, the Historical Metallurgical Society
Ltd. advocates the study of metals and conserva-
tion of metallurgical sites from prehistory to the
present. Various ancient mining sites do have des-
ignations as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such
as Las Médulas in northwest Spain (Fig. 4) and
the Neolithic flint mines at Spiennes in Belgium.
Other preindustrial sites from later periods include
the Spanish colonial mining towns in South
America, including the city of Potosí in Bolivia
and the historic town of Ouro Preto in Brazil.
Certainly, many World Heritage mining sites
have evidence of exploitation from ancient to
more recent times, spanning the pre-/post-
Industrial Revolution divide. The Mining
Area of the Great Copper Mountain in Falun
(Sweden), Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine and
its Cultural Landscape (Japan), Heritage of
Mercury: Almadén (Spain) and Idrija (Slovenia),
and the city of Potosí are just a few examples
(UNESCO 2017a).
Archaeology of Mining
Archaeology of Mining,
Fig. 8 The remains of a
Cornish engine house at the
tin mines in the St. Just
Mining District, part of the
“Cornwall and West Devon
Mining Landscape,” a
UNESCO World Heritage
Site. (Photo by Will Wallis,
Public Domain)
The issues of modern exploitation of earlier
mining landscapes are also one with which law-
makers and cultural heritage specialists must con-
tend. Beginning in 1998, UNESCO has reiterated
on a number of occasions that mineral, oil, and gas
exploration and exploitation should not be under-
taken at World Heritage Sites (UNESCO 2017b).
This serves as an additional protection for both
ancient and contemporary World Heritage mining
sites where mining could be reinitiated. Its impact
on contemporary mining can be observed in the
ongoing debate about whether to reinitiate mining
at the site of Roşia Montană (Romania), the site of
well-preserved subterranean Roman gold mines
of the second and third centuries CE. A Canadian
company, Gabriel Enterprises, together with the
Romanian state-owned company Minvest Deva
hoped to open Europe’s largest gold mines in the
area using cyanide-based open-pit mining. After
years of protests by environmentalists and heri-
tage specialists both locally and internationally,
Roşia Montană was placed on the tentative list
for consideration for World Heritage in February
2016 (Fig. 9). This will effectively halt plans to
reopen mines in the area if and when the proposal
is accepted (Rosia Montana 2016).
While it is impossible to cover issues and
policies surrounding mining heritage from all
767
A
national perspectives, I will provide a few exam-
ples that illustrate shifting attitudes toward mining
heritage and the variety of solutions for its preser-
vation at the national level. In the United States,
the number of mining sites being recorded as
cultural heritage sites increased as a result of
the inventories produced following the Historic
Preservation Act of 1966 and its subsequent
amendment in 1980, enacted to preserve historical
and archaeological sites broadly defined. This law
provides a legal mandate to preserve mining areas
classified as archaeological sites. However, the
application of the law has historically been com-
plicated by the General Mining Law of 1872,
which allows all US citizens over 18 years old to
locate and make claim to valuable minerals on
public lands. Nevertheless, this legislation has
provided legal protection for both mines and
their associated settlements in many parts of the
United States, as well as incentive for local com-
munities to develop tourism dedicated to these
places (Bakken 2008; Hardesty 1988: 105–107).
Bisbee, Arizona, a mining town that grew up to
support the Copper Queen Mine in southern
Arizona’s Cochise County, illustrates these phe-
nomena well. There, copper, gold, silver, and
turquoise were mined beginning in 1880. Mining
activity began to wane across southern Arizona by
768
Archaeology of Mining,
Fig. 9 Protests against the
reopening of gold mines at
Roşia Montană in
Timisoara, Romania, on
September 22, 2013. The
banner bears the logo of the
grassroots Save Roşia
Montană campaign and
reads “Now or Never” in
Romanian. (Photo by
Ady777, CC-BY-SA-3.0)
the 1950s, and mining operations in Bisbee itself
were officially halted in 1975. At that time, the
city began its transformation into both a center for
tourism related to its mining heritage and a quirky
refuge for artists. Guided tours of the abandoned
Copper Queen Mine began in 1976, with support
of Mayor Chuck Eads and a federal grant from the
Economic Development Administration. Multiple
sites in the town have been classified on the
National Register of Historic Places beginning
with the Bisbee Historic District in 1980. Some
of these are used for mining tourism, such as the
Phelps Dodge General Office Building (classified
in 1983), which was formerly the headquarters
of the Phelps Dodge mining company and
now serves as the Bisbee Mining & Historical
Museum. The exodus of mining labor from the
town also provided affordable real estate, which
has been slowly purchased by artists and hippies,
who have likewise contributed to the gentrifica-
tion of Bisbee’s historic districts and the preser-
vation of the town in general (Fig. 10; Copper
Queen Mine 2017).
Similar phenomena can be observed in Europe,
where industrial heritage has been increasingly
recognized as an economic resource in the devel-
opment of tourism and to promote economic
growth in towns where industrial centers have
been abandoned. In Spain, for instance, the Plan
Nacional de Patrimonio Industrial (PNPI) of
2001, took inspiration from legislative trends in
Archaeology of Mining
Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and
elsewhere in Europe (Álvarez Areces 2010).
Significantly, the law’s definition of industrial
heritage is inextricably linked to the Industrial
Revolution and the mechanization of industrial
technologies, and, as a result, the only mining
sites that are included for protection date to the
mid-eighteenth century and later. This definition
has created a conceptual, and indeed practical,
separation between ancient and contemporary
mining sites. When preindustrial mining sites are
protected, it is under a different designation: they
are categorized as “Bienes de Interés Cultural”
(goods of cultural interest).
While situations such as this complicate the
business of protecting and presenting multilay-
ered, diachronic landscapes with long histories
of mining, some specific sites have come up
with local solutions. For instance, the Riotinto
mines in the Iberian Pyrite Belt (Huelva,
Andalucía, Spain) have a history of mining dating
back at least 5000 years. As a result, the area is
replete with both ancient archaeological traces of
mining as well as large-scale opencast contempo-
rary mines. The area is categorized as both a Bien
de Interés Cultural (since 2012) and is on the
PNPI list of industrial heritage. It has been mobi-
lized for tourism as the Parque Minero de
Riotinto, where tourists can visit various parts of
the nineteenth century British mining town, its
historic railroad, and the opencast copper mines.
Archaeology of Mining
Archaeology of Mining, Fig. 10 Historic mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, in February 2010. (Photo by Alan Stark)
Many of the early archaeological traces of mining
were destroyed in the processes of later mining
operations and cannot be visited. However,
the long history of mining is presented in the
museum, which is located in the building that
formerly served as the hospital for the Río Tinto
Company Limited in the early 1900s. There, vis-
itors can view prehistoric and Roman artifacts
recovered both by archaeologists in recent exca-
vations and by miners in the course of contempo-
rary opencast mining operations.
International Perspectives
As the previous section on mining heritage
suggests, attention to the study and preservation
of mining heritage varies widely from region to
region and period to period. Industrial archaeol-
ogy, including the archaeology of mining from
after the Industrial Revolution as a subset of this
subdiscipline, is a more cohesive and prominent
field of study on an international scale than the
archaeology of mining from earlier periods. While
industrial archaeology originated in Britain in
the 1950s, it has since become a robust field in
769
many parts of the world, especially in Western
Europe and the United States. The journal World
Archaeology devoted an issue to the topic in 1983
(Vol. 15, No. 2), indicating that it was growing in
significance enough to be the focus of a major
journal with international scope. The participation
of local societies from across the globe in the
International Committee for the Conservation of
Industrial Heritage is a further attestation of the
international significance of industrial archaeol-
ogy and attention to the preservation of mining
heritage. Excellent regional analyses of historical
mining archaeology exist for varied regions
(e.g., White 2017 on the United States), and
there appears to be healthy communication across
regions among scholars engaging with mining in
contemporary periods.
The study of mining in earlier periods is not
nearly as unified, owing to the broad geographic
and chronological scope of ancient mining and the
distribution of scholars interested in such evi-
dence across various disciplines and academic
departments. Some significant centers include
the Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies at
University College London and the Deutsches
Bergbau-Museum in Bochum, Germany. Studies
770
of preindustrial mining are often buried in the
pages of local or regional journals that are not
distributed widely on an international level.
Aside from the limited distribution of such
publications, language barriers also restrict inter-
national readership, communication, and collabo-
ration. This entry has focused more heavily on the
Mediterranean, Middle East, United States, and
Spanish-speaking regions than it has on Central or
East Asia or Africa because of my own language
training, American nationality, and research expe-
rience. While it is not possible to review the liter-
ature on ancient mining from all regions, many
parts of the world have benefitted from prolonged
studies of mining at the local, reginal, or national
level. Regions for which scholarship is more
widely available in Europe and the Middle East
include the Iberian Peninsula (especially Spain),
the Eastern Desert in Egypt and Sudan, and
Wadi Faynan in Jordan, among others. In Latin
America, mining has often been studied as a part
of wider research about Spanish and Portuguese
colonialism, including in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia,
and Brazil (Brown 2012). I direct the reader to
scholarship in the bibliography and further read-
ing sections for more international perspectives.
Future Directions
The archaeology of mining will continue to
expand and evolve in the twenty-first century.
This can be attributed to increased interest in the
topic from a variety of academic perspectives
(both theoretical and methodological) and to the
growing involvement of archaeologists in cultural
heritage preservation and environmental advo-
cacy. Ever-evolving scientific methods for study-
ing topics ranging from pollution, to metal object
provenience, to human health will continue to
aid in new research in the archaeology of mining.
Further, research into the aspects of past mining
beyond technology will continue to expand,
increasing intersections between the archaeology
of mining and broad areas of interest in archaeol-
ogy such as religion, migration, empire, and
gender, among others. Finally, conflicts between
Archaeology of Mining
modern mining projects, cultural heritage, and
environmental sustainability interests, such as
that described at Roşia Montană, will continue
to arise as nations and corporations expand into
new territories in search of mineral resources or
seek to use more destructive methods of mining.
Archaeologists knowledgeable about mining
are well poised to play a central role in the study
and preservation of ancient and industrial mining
landscapes as well as of archaeological sites
located in areas of interest for contemporary
mining prospection. Increasing archaeological
collaboration with indigenous groups and envi-
ronmental advocates will also pave the way for
future work in these areas.
These trends indicate that the archaeology
of mining will continue to be a topic studied
from a diverse range of theoretical, geographical,
chronological, and methodological perspectives.
Books such as Social Approaches to an Industrial
Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of
Mining (1998) paved the way for more interdisci-
plinary collaboration in the archaeology and
anthropology of mining and research on shared
thematic interests. There has indeed been more of
this type of research in the past 20 years, as indi-
cated, for instance, by the founding of the journal
The Extractive Industries and Society in 2014 and
the inclusion of several sessions dedicated to min-
ing in the 2018 International Congress of Classi-
cal Archaeology. Nevertheless, the archaeology of
mining is not likely to become a more coherent
field as a result of the vast differences in the scale,
organization, and technologies employed in vari-
ous times and places across the globe. Instead,
it will continue to be a topic studied under the
purview of a multitude of other topics and
specialties in archaeology.
Cross-References
▶ Aerial and Satellite Remote Sensing in
Archaeology
▶ Anthropogenic Environments, Archaeology of
▶ Archaeometry: Definition
▶ Arqueologia Industrial
Archaeology of Mining
▶ Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA)
▶ Cultural Heritage Management: International
Practice and Regional Applications
▶ Economy, Roman
▶ Historical Archaeology
▶ Historical Metallurgy Society Ltd.
▶ Industrial Archaeology
▶ Industrial Heritage in Archaeology
▶ Labor Archaeology
▶ Landscape Archaeology
▶ Technological Studies in Archaeological
Science
▶ World Heritage Objectives and Outcomes
References
Álvarez Areces, Miguel Ángel. 2010. Patrimonio
Industrial, Paisaje y Desarrollo. AREAS. Revista
Internacional de Ciencias Sociales 29: 21–29.
Bakken, Gordon Morris. 2008. The Mining Law of 1872:
Past, politics, prospects. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press.
Ballard, Chris, and Glenn Banks. 2003. Resource
wars: The anthropology of mining. Annual Review of
Anthropology 32: 287–313.
Boivin, Nicole, and Mary Ann Owoc. 2004. Soils, stones
and symbols: Cultural perceptions of the mineral
world. London/New York: Routledge.
Brown, Kendall W. 2012. A history of mining in
Latin America: From the colonial era to the present.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Copper Queen Mine. n.d. History. http://www.queenmin
etour.com/History. Accessed 1 Oct 2017.
Craddock, Paul T. 1995. Early metal mining and produc-
tion. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Davies, Oliver. 1935. Roman mines in Europe. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Dietler, Michael. 2010. Archaeologies of colonialism:
Consumption, entanglement, and violence in ancient
Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Fernández-Lozano, Javier, Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso,
and Miguel Fernández-Morán. 2015. Using airborne
LiDAR sensing technology and aerial orthoimages
to unravel Roman water supply systems and gold
works in NW Spain (Eria Valley, León). Journal of
Archaeological Science 53: 356–373.
García-León, J., A. García Martín, M. Torres Picazo, and
J. Fernández. 2017. 3D recording and modelling
of mining heritage: The Monserrat Mine, Sierra
Minera of Cartagena-La Unión, Southeast of Spain.
International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote
Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences 42: 325–330.
771
Godoy, Ricardo. 1985. Mining: Anthropological perspec-
tives. Annual Review of Anthropology 14: 199–217.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1988. The archaeology of mining
and miners: A view from the Silver State. Ann Arbor: A
The Society for Historical Archaeology.
Healy, John F. 1978. Mining and metallurgy in the Greek
and Roman world. London: Thames and Hudson.
Hong, Sungmin, Jean-Pierre Candelone, Clair
C. Patterson, and Claude F. Boutron. 1994. Greenland
ice evidence of hemispheric lead pollution two
millennia ago by Greek and Roman civilizations.
Science 265 (5180): 1841–1843.
Hoover, Herbert Clark, and Lou Henry Hoover. 1950.
Translation and Annotation of De Re Metallica
(Georgius Agricola). New York: Dover Publications.
Humphrey, John W., John P. Oleson, and Andrew
N. Sherwood. 1998. Greek and Roman technology:
A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.
Kerfoot, W., Martin Hobmeier, Foad Yousef, Sarah Green,
Robert Regis, Colin Brooks, Robert Shuchman,
Jamey Anderson, and Molly Reif. 2014. Light
detection and ranging (LiDAR) and multispectral
scanner (MSS) studies examine coastal environments
influenced by mining. ISPRS International Journal of
Geo-Information 3 (1): 66–95.
Killick, David, and Thomas Fenn. 2012. Archaeome-
tallurgy: The study of preindustrial mining and metal-
lurgy. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 559–575.
Knapp, A. Bernard. 1999. Ideational and industrial
landscape on prehistoric Cyprus. In Archaeologies of
landscape, ed. Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp,
229–252. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Knapp, A. Bernard, Vincent C. Piggott, and Eugenia
W. Herbert, eds. 1998. Social approaches to an
industrial past: The archaeology and anthropology of
mining. London: Routledge.
McConnell, Joseph R., Andrew I. Wilson, Andreas Stohl,
Monica M. Arienzo, Nathan J. Chellman,
Sabine Eckhardt, Elisabeth M. Thompson,
A. Mark Pollard, and Jørgen Peder Steffensen. 2018.
Lead pollution recorded in Greenland Ice indicates
European emissions tracked plagues, wars, and impe-
rial expansion during antiquity. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 115 (22): 5726–5731.
McGuire, Randall. 2004. Colorado coalfield massacre.
Archaeology 57 (6): 62–70.
Nash, William Giles. 1904. The Rio Tinto Mine: Its history
and romance. London: Simpkin Marshall Hamilton
Kent and Co., Ltd.
Ogden, Jack. 2000. Metals. In Ancient Egyptian materials
and technology, ed. Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw,
148–176. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Palmer, Marilyn, and Peter Neaverson. 1998.
Industrial archaeology: Principles and practice.
London/New York: Routledge.
Pfaffenberger, Bryan. 1998. Mining communities, Chaînes
Opératoires and sociotechnical systems. In Social
approaches to an industrial past: The archaeology
772
and anthropology of mining, ed. A. Bernard Knapp,
Vincent C. Piggott, and Eugenia W. Herbert, 291–300.
London/New York: Routledge.
Rickard, T.A. 1932. Man and metals: A history of mining
in relation to the development of civilization.
New York/London: McGraw Hill.
Roberts, Benjamin W., and Christopher P. Thornton,
eds. 2014. Archaeometallurgy in global perspective:
Methods and syntheses. London: Springer.
Roberts, Benjamin W., Christopher P. Thornton, and
Vincent C. Pigott. 2009. Development of metallurgy
in Eurasia. Antiquity 83: 1012–1022.
Robins, Nicholas A. 2011. Mercury, mining, and empire:
The human and ecological cost of colonial silver min-
ing in the Andes. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Rosia Montana. 2016. Roşia Montană listed as UNESCO
World Heritage candidate. https://www.rosiamontana.
org/content/ro-ia-montan-listed-unesco-world-heritage
-candidate?language¼en. Accessed 1 Oct 2017.
Shaw, Ian. 1994. Pharaonic quarrying and mining:
Settlement and procurement in Egypt’s marginal
regions. Antiquity 68: 108–119.
Shepherd, Robert. 1993. Ancient mining.
London/New York: Institution of Mining and
Metallurgy.
The International Committee for the Conservation of
Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). n.d. http://www.ticcih.
org/. Accessed 1 Oct 2017.
Tripcevich, Nicholas, and Kevin J. Vaughn. 2013. Mining
and quarrying in the ancient Andes: Sociopolitical,
economic, and symbolic dimensions. New York:
Springer.
Tylecote, R.F. 1962. Metallurgy in archaeology:
A prehistory of metallurgy in the British Isles.
London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.
Tylecote, R.F. 1976. A history of metallurgy. London:
Metals Society.
Tylecote, R.F. 1986. The prehistory of metallurgy in the
British Isles. London: The Institute of Metals.
Tylecote, R.F. 1987. The early history of metallurgy in
Europe. London/New York: Longman.
UNESCO. n.d., 2017a. World heritage list. http://whc.
unesco.org/en/list/. Accessed 1 Oct 2017.
UNESCO. n.d., 2017b. World heritage and extractive indus-
tries. http://whc.unesco.org/en/extractive-industries.
Accessed 1 Oct 2017.
White, Paul J. 2017. The archaeology of American mining.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Further Reading
Conlin Casella, Eleanor, and James Sumonds, eds. 2005.
Industrial archaeology: Future directions. New York:
Springer.
Knapp, A. Bernard, Vincent C. Piggott, and Eugenia
W. Herbert, eds. 1998. Social approaches to an indus-
trial past: The archaeology and anthropology of
mining. London: Routledge.
Archaeology of Northwestern Argentinean Puna
Roberts, Benjamin W., and Christopher P. Thornton,
eds. 2014. Archaeometallurgy in global perspective:
Methods and syntheses. London: Springer.
White, Paul J. 2016. The archaeology of underground
mining landscapes. Historical Archaeology 50 (1):
154–168.
White, Paul J. 2017. The archaeology of American mining.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Archaeology of Northwestern
Argentinean Puna
María Josefina Pérez Pieroni1 and
María Florencia Becerra2
1
CONICET, Instituto de Arqueología y Museo,
Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel
Lillo, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán,
San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina
2
CONICET, Instituto de Arqueología, Facultad de
Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires,
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
State of Knowledge and Current Debates
Introduction
This essay addresses the archaeology of a section
of the South American highlands, known in
Spanish as Puna or Altiplano, which extends
from Peru to Northwest Argentina. Here we will
focus in the portion that encompasses part of
Northwestern Argentina (see Fig. 1). This section-
ing is partly based on the history of ethnohistorical
and archaeological research, as well as on tradi-
tional geographical divisions. Although the
northern part of the Argentine Puna had deep
connections with the Bolivian Altiplano and the
limits that now divide the national territories
were only established in the nineteenth century,
there are differences in the periodification and
chronological frameworks currently used in both
sides of the border. Nonetheless, there is always a
subjective judgment in making a geographic cut
of such a vast area.
Although it is impossible to be exhaustive in
the synthesis of the archaeology developed and