that mined, treated and made copper objects such as weapons.
The investigation of Wadi Fidan suggests that the smelting process was the familiar one whereby a crucible containing copper ore was covered by charcoal and fired to start the smelting of the high grade ore. The slag that has been found at Wadi Fidan suggests that copper metal in this ancient process did not, as would become the case in later eras, become fully molten.
It is also worth noting that at Feinan the mines were not in close proximity to the smelting settlements and ore would have been transported some miles to be treated. This probably occurred in order to get economies of scale at the smelting end; in due course mine output would have expanded and it would then have been worthwhile having smelting capability close to the actual mines.
These mines were clearly operational for centuries and were worked again by the Romans when they applied their advanced mining technology in the 1st century BC.
Greece
One of the most famous mines of the Iron Age was the great silver and lead operation at Laurion, a few miles south of Athens, developed in the 5th century BC. Greece was a major area for silver mining and its coinage and regional wealth was based on the metal. In this it was different from Egypt and indeed also from rival Persia, both of whose wealth was built on gold. Gold was also the financial key to Rome’s wealth and power later. Laurion was originally worked in the 2nd millennium BC but really came into its own under the Greeks, whose main sources of silver in northern Greece had been cut off by the Persians in 512 BC.
The Laurion mines were first worked as shallow pits going down no more than a few feet. In due course the Greeks started sinking shafts and as many as 2000 have been identified at the ancient site. The shafts were sunk in pairs and with multiple crosscuts, which also aided ventilation. As the shaft system deepened it was joined together by drifts and the shafts themselves went down as much as 300 feet; it has been calculated that progress could have been at a rate of 5 feet a month. However, it is important to remember that both shaft sinking and mining was spread over several centuries so the relatively slow shaft-sinking rate was not really a handicap in economic terms.
At 300 feet the ancient miners, many of them slaves, would have reached the water table inhibiting further shaft deepening. The shafts themselves were well-constructed, often perpendicular and around 6 feet by 3 feet in diameter. The mining method was fairly rudimentary but since this was now the Iron Age the mining tools were often picks and chisels of wrought iron, which were more effective than the old stone implements used previously. Underground the drifts followed the veins of ore and galleries supported by un-mined rock pillars provided the miners with enough room to prise the ore from the rock.
Once the ore had been mined it was carried to the surface where it was crushed and then washed on grooved tables allowing the metal grains to be caught in the grooves and the waste crushed rock to be washed away. Since the mine was in a dry region, water was precious and the Greeks stored their water for washing the ore in tanks built into the hillside. They also recycled used water back into the tanks after the treatment sludge had been removed in settling basins. The remaining concentrate was treated in small furnaces to free the silver and then fired again in clay crucibles, which allowed the lead to oxidise forming a disposable slag and leaving behind pure silver. The Greeks may have been cruel taskmasters when it came to the conditions under which their slave miners worked, but these mining techniques nonetheless displayed technically advanced knowledge.
The Laurion silver mines eventually closed in the 2nd century AD, partly due to exhaustion and partly due to new, richer silver mines being found in Macedonia and Thrace to the north. It is interesting that over the seven or so centuries silver was mined at Laurion political and military struggles between the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta often had silver at their centre, as one of the main targets of the conflicts. Laurion was also central to the ability of Athens to see off Xerxes and the Persian army when they invaded in 480 BC, for it was the wealth from Laurion that enabled Athens to build a navy that effectively cut off the Persians after they had sacked Athens and it was also the wealth produced by Laurion that enabled Athens to be rebuilt.
Asia Minor
The area historically known as Asia Minor includes Anatolia (modern Turkey) and in terms of ancient trading relations it also touches on Syria, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), Persia (modern Iran) and Armenia. Assyria (the ancient empire that covered parts of the region, expanding and contracting over the centuries) was one of the ancient world’s most advanced civilisations and was an important factor in the emergence of the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. At its height in the 1st century BC, the Assyrian Empire was also a highly developed society which had embraced technological change and had pioneered a number of advances including a basic electric battery which may have been used in the process of treating silver. Some historians even call Asia Minor the Cradle of Civilisation.
It is therefore not surprising that this region was the centre of a vigorous trading system where Anatolia was the great mining and metal working nation and exported finished metal to its near neighbours. For example, the ancient tin mine at Kestel and the associated smelting site at Goltepe in central Turkey reach back as far as the 3rd millennium BC.
Copper artefacts have been found all over the broad Asia Minor region; the oldest is thought to be a pendant from the 9th millennium BC found at Shanidar in the Zagros Mountains of north eastern Iraq. Archaeologists have also found copper objects at Cayonu Tepesi in Turkey that have been dated to the 7th millennium BC. Further finds of copper artefacts from the 6th and the 5th millennia BC in Iran and Turkey have also been uncovered. Much of this early copper would have been native, released from rock by weathering over thousands of years. As we have observed in other ancient mining areas, the very earliest use of metals was based on a supply of pure material simply picked up off the ground, a phenomenon that we will come across later in the tale of diamonds in Namibia’s deserts in the 19th century AD.
A relatively sophisticated trade in copper and copper objects developed over the millennia in the extended area of Asia Minor and the Middle East, and it is quite likely that the growth in this trade put pressure on the supply that was being obtained from native copper findings. Since we are talking about the cradle of technology as well as of civilisation, the response to possible copper supply problems would have been to examine how the pure copper metal had got where it had. Here we are just guessing, but it is likely that very early fossickers saw copper streaks in rock and worked out that these were similar to the native copper that they had been picking up off the ground.
From here it would have been a matter of developing the processes to extract the copper from the rock. The secret would have been the ability to generate sufficient heat in a rock furnace to melt the copper out of the ore and then separate the two – metal and slag – leaving a relatively pure copper residue. It is believed this smelting technique was developed around the 4th millennium BC.
One of the most interesting metal mining, smelting and manufacturing sites found in Asia Minor is the Medzamor complex immediately to the east of Turkey in Armenia, which is thought to date back as much as 5000 years. Medzamor was uncovered in the 1960s by Soviet scientists and archaeologists and some western opinion at the time was a little sniffy about its significance. Dozens of smelting furnaces were found and evidence of multiple working of metals covering both copper and other base metals as well as gold. All sorts of metal products were uncovered – including vases, bracelets, rings, spearheads and knives. This suggests a settlement specialising in industrial activities emanating from mining, contrasting with the traditional farming settlements more associated with simple ancient lifestyles.
Persia, the Empire and Iran
In the 7th century BC Persia emerged as a major power in the Middle and Near East and in due course its influence extended both east towards India and also further into the Mediterranean, where it often clashed with Greece. Gold was an important factor in Persia’s expansion as it provided the Empire with a legitimate monetary system which supported its political ambitions. Persia’s gold came from both wealth acquired as a result of conquest and from mines which came under its control. This wealth