A description of ancient mining - Antalya Museum, Turkey

Every kind of mining activity was practical and easy work except for foundry-work, occurred during the first age. Outcrops of copper bearing rock and raw copper ore (malachite) occurred on the surface of the ground and were easily worked after the ore was heated and hammered. Anatolian rock outcrops, were known for their mineral rich deposits of copper, lead, zinc and also rich iron deposits. Further there are in Anatolia some other metals which are deemed as important today, such as chrome, aluminum and boron. The most ancient metal working finds of copper ore were found during the excavation of Cayonu Tepesi tumulus by Diyarbakir - Ergani. As these finds record, copper was shaped by hammering and treatment by cooling and heating to refine the ore. The above mentioned finds are the first known products of Anatolian mining dated to 9000 years ago. These examples demonstrate that miners lived during the Neolithic age who worked in the copper mine and that copper was available to the inhabitants of Cayonu.

The first traces of foundry work and of ancient mining production were discovered in excavations at Catalhoyuk by Cumra in the Konya region. Accordingly, the start of mining in Anatolia is dated to about 6000 BC. It has been observed that devices made from worked stone diminished in importance and copper made items were increasingly in widespread use following the developments made in the treatment of copper during the Chalcolithic age in Anatolia between 5000-3000 BC. Copper, a mining product was treated by hammering to anneal it and it was used to manufacture axes, chisels, punches and arrowheads. Another example of this was found during excavations conducted at Mersin / Yumuktepe. It was observed that tin was used as alloy together with copper and this example may be the oldest primitive bronze to have been produced in Anatolia.

For a long period of time, the source of bronze with tin remained unidentified but which was first employed in the 3rd millennium BC. Bronze with tin was available in south western Asia, while other known important tin sources were explored after 2200 BC consequently, it is thought that the start of bronze foundries was in Anatolia and the Middle East before 2200 BC may have been another center. The Kultepe tablets indicate that there was an important trade in tin in Anatolia, brought from the east, during the Anatolian Colony age. It is thought the tin in the bronze cast during the Early Bronze Age was located to the east and that it was probably mined in Afghanistan.

The reason why the period between 3000-1200 BC is called the The Bronze Age is so-called because during this period the stone devices people used were replaced by items made of bronze, a metal made from combining copper and tin. According to finds, Anatolian miners produced in the metal foundries nuggets of a bronze-like alloy in about 3000 BC. A tin production and treatment site dating from the Bronze Age was excavated from 1958 at the Camardi township in Nigde at the Cellallar Village, in Kesteller district, which was an important tin deposit for Anatolia around 3000 BC. From the date provided by Carbon 14 dating, tin was worked and treated at the Goltepe workshop near the mine shafts and galleries between 2700 and 2200 BC and this was an important tin deposit worked in Anatolia during the Early Bronze Age. Works that were produced with the techniques developed by the foundry artisans in the Bronze Age have reached the present day and these techniques are employed today. The remarkable examples that have been made, largely using copper, lead, gold, silver, bronze (tin-copper), electrum (gold-silver) and employing very developed shape-forming techniques from the viewpoint of technical application, are displayed in museums. The best examples from this period exhibiting the mastery of mining and foundry work were found in places such as Alacahoyuk, Truva, Horoztepe, (Tokat-Erbaa), Eskiyapar (Corum), Mahmutlar (Amasya) and Elmah Semayuk. Copper and bronze were used widely during the old Hittite period between 1750 and 1450 BC. This mining industry was maintained and developed during the period around 1200 BC during the Great Hittite Empire. The Iron Age in Anatolian began in 1200 BC from the historian sources, but the production of iron was still only in small quantities in comparison to other metals.

The achievements of the state of Urartu between 900 and 600 BC were as marked as those made by the Etruscans of Northern Italy, in the Urartan development of the mining industry in eastern Anatolia and it is known that some products made from bronze were exported to Greece and Italy. The mining and particularly the foundry techniques employed in Anatolia during the Phrygian period, between 700 and 550 BC reached a very high level (the Phrygian examples of metal work found in the Elmali Tumulus, displayed in excavations hall of the museum belong to this period). Sardes (Manisa) the capital of the Lydia Kingdom in western Anatolia between 700 and 550 BC was also a center of the mining industry and of the art of metal working. Anatolia still maintains its important position in mining today.

Mining Techniques. If we examine the beginnings of the technique of casting, it is known that all the metals, such as lead, copper, bronze, silver and gold turn into a liquid form when heated, even if people encountered many difficulties in the realization of this process, given the conditions at that time and later, and in many areas they used these melted metals to produce various products by employing primitive casting techniques. A furnace was fuelled from charcoal in order to obtain the required temperature to melt such metals. A heated metal piece at that time could be treated to many procedures, after it was hammered it could be given the required shape, be cut or lengthened, be shortened or joined to another piece and these proceedings could each be repeated many times. But, in casting the works mentioned below, the requirements such as the establishment of organizations, the long preparations required, and the exercising of large and many tests in multiple directions, the making of a model, of moulds and the installation of forging furnaces providing a very high temperature needed to be completed before the casting of metals such as iron could occur. Moreover, there were the essential support and requirements in casting works such as the availability of skilled artisans to create the shape and forms of the items to be manufactured, having the technical proficiency required for casting in order to complete a metal casting of the required shape and quality. The methods of casting are briefly indicated with the development of casting techniques: