Hauptmann - The Archaeometallurgy of Copper ~ Evidence from Faydan, inne, Książki historyczne
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Natural Science in Archaeology
Series editors: B. Herrmann, G. A. Wagner
Andreas Hauptmann
The Archaeometallurgy
of Copper
Evidence from Faynan, Jordan
With 170 Figures and 40 Tables
Volume editor
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hauptmann
Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum
Forschungsstelle für Archäologie und Materialwissenschaften
Hernerstraße 45, 44787 Bochum, Germany
E-mail: andreas.hauptmann@bergbaumuseum.de
Series editors
Prof. Dr. Bernd Herrmann
Universität Göttingen
Institut für Anthropologie
Bürgerstraße 40
37073 Göttingen, Germany
E-mail: bherrmann@gwdg.de
Prof. Dr. Günther A. Wagner
Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik
Forschungsstelle Archäometrie
Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften
Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
E-mail: g.wagner@mpi-hd.mpg.de
Inner frontispiece
Satellite view (Ikonos satellite data) of the ancient mining district of Faynan, Jordan, and its surroundings.
Red dots in the image show mining and smelting sites. These are located mainly in the area of Wadi Jariye
in the north, at Khirbet en-Nahas, at and near the Byzantine ruins of Faynan and at Umm el-Amad in the
south. Clearly visible are the “Roman-Byzantine” terraces which might have been constructed as early as
in the 4
th
millennium BCE.
All satellite images are shown in this volume by courtesy of European Space Imaging / © European Space
Imaging GmbH.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2007925905
ISSN
978-3-540-72237-3
Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
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Springer is a part of Springer Science+Business Media
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German edition © Andreas Hauptmann Bochum 2000
Publication of the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum no. 155
English edition © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
All rights reserved
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does
not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the rel-
evant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Cover design: deblik, Berlin
Typesetting: Stasch · Bayreuth (stasch@stasch.com)
Production: Christine Adolph
Printing: Krips bv, Meppel
Binding: Stürtz AG, Würzburg
Printed on acid-free paper 32/2132/CA – 5 4 3 2 1 0
ISBN
1613-9712
Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
Preface
The results presented in this book originate from field research carried out by the
Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (hereafter called DBM) on the remains of early
copper metallurgy in the area of Faynan, southern Jordan, between 1983 and 1993. It
also contains results of later laboratory studies and fieldwork. This volume is a revised
version of the German volume “Zur frühen Metallurgie des Kupfers in Faynan,
Jordanien,” which appeared in 2000 as supplement 11 of the journal “Der Anschnitt.”
The translation into English honors the wishes of many colleagues from the Near East
and from English-speaking countries who have expressed the desire that a larger audi-
ence should have access to the research carried out on the ancient mining district and
mining techniques. The translation was made possible by a generous grant from the
foundation of the “Institute for Aegean Prehistory” (Philadelphia, USA). Prof. Dr.
Susanne Kerner, Mr. Hughe Barnes, and, in parts, Dr. Hans-Dieter Kind translated the
book into the English version. Much of the editorial work was done by MA Kerstin
Batzel and Mr. Guillaume Ewandé.
The original research in the Faynan area was initiated within the framework of a
larger project “Research into the archaeometallurgy and archaeology of mining in Faynan
and the southern Arabah-valley, Jordan” funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (Hanover,
Germany). The original planning and groundbreaking work was carried out by the author.
Since 1997, research was continued by and in close cooperation with Prof. Dr. Thomas
Levy, University of California, San Diego (USA).
Research into early metal extraction covers a number of different problems, requir-
ing a broad, interdisciplinary approach and calling for the cooperation of various dis-
ciplines. Metal extraction from mining of the ore deposits to the metal’s production,
using differing smelting techniques, required craft specialization throughout the differ-
ently organized social structures of different periods of time, while the distribution of
metal objects via trade was dependent on the social, cultural and political frameworks
of the time.
Close cooperation with archaeologists, mainly mining archaeologists, is the indis-
pensable precondition for the understanding of material evidence. Archaeometallurgy
uses field methods (e.g., geology of ore deposits), various physical dating methods, as
well as procedures for mineralogical, chemical and isotopic analyses to process a broad
variety of finds. These methods and the connected problems are discussed in the first
part of this volume, before the results of our own research are presented.
The initial idea for the study of early copper mining in the mining region of Faynan
came from Prof. Dr. Hans-Gert Bachmann. He had worked intensively on the archaeo-
VI
Preface
metallurgical remains in Timna (Israel) and Sinai (Egypt), at a time when the political
conditions made it impossible to investigate Timna and Faynan together. Bachmann
recognized that a cultural and social interpretation of the early copper production in the
Southern Levant would have been incomplete without the knowledge of the processes
of metal production in Faynan (Bachmann and Hauptmann 1984). Bachmann visited
Faynan for the first time in 1982, and his impression of the dimensions of the smelting
activities there resulted in a declaration by Rothenberg with the significant title
“Ancient Jordan City May Rival Timna’s Place in Copper History” (Rothenberg 1983).
It was the activities of Bachmann that led to this research project, and he continued his
interest in it as far as his workload allowed him.
The first brief survey in preparation for the fieldwork was conducted in September
of 1983. The first larger field season was carried out during the autumn of 1984. The
next campaign took place in the spring of 1986, making it possible for Prof. Dr. Wolf-
gang Frey and his team (Institute for Systematic Biology and Geobotany of the Free
University of Berlin) to participate. They pursued in a parallel research project, also
funded by the VolkswagenStiftung, the important question of how sufficient firing
material for the smelting of such huge quantities of slag had been obtained. Faynan, on
the eastern side of Wa di Arabah, lies in a semi-arid region. This question became even
more pressing when even the initial fieldwork showed 150 000 to 200 000 t of slag in
the area of Faynan.
The third campaign was conducted in the spring of 1988, together with three Jorda-
nian colleagues from the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, after the signing of an
official cooperation agreement. Dr. Mohammed Najjar, Emsaytif Suleiman and Abd
es-Samir started with excavations at an Early Bronze Age smelting site as well as the
Late Neolithic settlement mound (Tell Wa di Faynan). Dr. Mohammed Najjar has been
the co-director of the project since the beginning of the official cooperation agreement.
The fourth field season took place in the spring of 1990, again with the Jordanian
colleagues and the botanists from Berlin. In addition, a group of archaeologists under
Prof. Dr. Volkmar Fritz (then from the University of Mainz) participated. They carried
out excavations in the Early Bronze Age settlement area of Barqa el-Hetiye and in
Khirbet en-Nahas. A group of archaeologists from the University of Sheffield under Dr.
Russell Adams started at the same time, then still independent of the Faynan-project,
excavations on some Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlements.
The fifth and last field season in the framework of this project had been planned for
the spring of 1991, but had to be postponed due to the Gulf Wa r t hat had started in
January of that year, and finally took place in the spring of 1993. The aim of this last
campaign had been to finish various field projects. That was possible for purely archaeo-
metallurgical research, where analysis in the laboratory was the main bulk of the work.
The mining archaeology project as well as the excavation of two pre-pottery settle-
ments (Wadi Ghwair 1 and Wadi Fidan A) and the Late Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age
settlement (Wadi Fidan 4) had to be suspended.
Due to the complexity of the research design, many different scientists have been
involved in this project. Firstly, my colleague Prof. Dr. Gerd Weisgerber of the DBM
was the scientist who worked on the mining archaeology and with whom I carried out
the entire fieldwork. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Frey, Dr. Uli Baierle, Dr. Thomas Engel,
Dr. Harald Kürschner and Christian Jagiella of the Freie Universität Berlin dealt with
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