Social approaches to the archaeology and anthropology of mining

Abstract

The mining and manufacture of metals have formed a major aspect of production and social reproduction over the past six thousand years, and have employed millions of people throughout the Old and New Worlds. All industrial societies were erected on foundations of metal, and still require vast quantities of metals for their existence. Substantial areas of the earth’s surface have been transformed by mines or by the pollution that forms a common adjunct to mining and metallurgy. Mining may be regarded as an extension of people’s search for natural materials used in the production of tools, weapons and ornaments (Weisgerber and Pernicka 1995:159). The exploitation of resources, the selection of tools, the organization of labour and the sequence of acts that make up a technological process are in fact key components of social behaviour and human choice (Childs and Killick 1993:325). Once metal is obtained from ores, it is invested with multiple and changing social, economic and politico-ideological roles. Metals and metal artefacts often take on material and symbolic expressions of wealth/status, ethnicity, fertility and other ‘life changes’, as well as religious or ideological affiliation (Childs and Killick 1993: 330-332). In the preindustrial world, moreover, metals were valuable commodities, and Bronson (1992:65) argues that their value was enhanced when transported by sea.

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