Description
Book SynopsisEast Macedonia in northern Greece has rich deposits of gold and silver as well as copper and iron ores. The gold and silver were important to Classical Athens and even more so to Alexander the Great's Hellenistic world. Copper was extracted as early as the Late Neolithic, and iron was worked from the Iron Age to Ottoman times. Bringing to life the essential background to this wealth derived from metals, this book looks at the archaeological and archaeometallurgical evidence, some of it very new, for the mining and processing of the ores and the extraction of the metal. The book is written with the visitor to the region very much in mind, taking the reader closer to the landscapes where these practices took place to make sense of silent landscapes' where so much happened at one time but where nature has now taken over the remains of buildings, installations and heaps of waste rendering them mute' and meaningless for all but the expert historian of technology. Written by a native of the
Table of Contents1. Rhesos, king of the Thracians and his gold; 2. The Region, its environment and geology; 3. The archaeology and history of the mining and metalworking tradition in NE Greece; 4. The making of iron, silver and gold: some technological principles; 5. Social aspects of metals technology in NE Greece: a holistic interpretation
