Ancient Mining.

Craddock, Paul T.

This is a thoroughly confused and confusing book that cannot be recommended. Strong words, but justified by the contents which consist of a vast quantity of ill selected, poorly digested and often misquoted data, from a variety of often very obscure, unreliable and out of date sources.

The book claims to cover ancient mining as exemplified by the world of Classical antiquity, thereby following on from the author's previous Prehistoric mining and allied industries (1980). The book commences with a general overview of mining geology, practice and administration and continues with specific sections on the Greek world and the Roman Empire, province by province, finishing up in Roman Britain. It is immediately obvious that the author is no expert on the ancient world, or even on early mining technology. At the beginning the author gives the most important works for the subject overall as Ardaillon's Les mines de Laurion (1897), and Ramin's La technique miniere et metallurgie des anciens (1977). These are strange choices, but some 90 pages further on interpolated deep in the section on Greek mining there is an appreciation of the importance of Oliver Davies' Roman mines of Europe (1935) and Healy's Mining and metallurgy in the Greek and Roman world (1978), and by this stage it is already obvious that this work relies very heavily on them for information. However Davies and Healy respectively were and are good classical scholars who were familiar with both ancient sites and literature in a way that Shepherd all too obviously is not. This is especially noticeable because the author chooses to give a great deal of quasi political-socio-economic background that abounds with oft-repeated platitudes, mistakes and trivialities. The archaeological data is similarly confused and error-ridden. Thus in the section on Italy we learn that the Etruscans were already mining copper from 2700 BC; however on p. 136 they had only conquered Italy between 600-524 BC, but the Romans expelled them in 510 BC; and then again on p. 143 they reached their zenith between the 11th and 6th centuries BC. Mining in Tuscany for iron, lead and copper reached its peak around 1100 BC, but the Romans were still treating 10 million tons of iron per annum from Elba in the Republican period. What is one to make of this? carelessness? ignorance? indifference? Sometimes it is difficult to tell; is the statement that 'the wheel was probably invented as early as the 4th century BC' a misprint for 4th millennium, or does the author really believe that the wheel was invented that late, as the supporting evidence given are the wheeled chariots of the ancient Britons? In the preamble to the British section we learn that amongst the pre-Roman rulers of Iron Age Britain was Cogidumnus of the Regnenses, and an inscription carved on a purbeck marble panel mentioning one Cogidubnos has been found in Colchester. Needless to say it is Queen Bodicea who revolts against the Romans (for getting her name wrong?), and the archaeologists at the Museum of London will be surprised to hear that their city was rounded shortly after Caesar left in 54 BC.

The confusion often extends to the actual comprehension of the quoted or misquoted passages. Thus in the section on the evidence of lead poisoning at Cirencester (which occurs naturally enough in the section on Gaul) it is stated that 'more than 450 Roman skeletons have been found on an ancient cemetery site. Tests made on the bones ... showed evidence of spina bifida and arthritic conditions. The cemetery dated from the late 4th to the 15th century AD.' It is not generally recognized that lead caused spina bifida but it obviously kept the Romans healthy if they were still going strong a thousand years after the end of the Roman period.

The mistakes and lack of understanding that are to be found in the more technical sections are still more disquieting, given the author's scientific training and profession. On p. 125 there is a discussion on the provenance of some artefacts of lead including the use of composition where trace elements and stable isotope ratios are totally confused. Thus the provenante of the well-known model Cycladic lead boats from Naxos has been determined 'based on the isotope analyses of high antimony content'. Elsewhere there seems to be a failure to appreciate that many ancient metallurgical processes such as the smelting of iron and brass making were very different from their modern counterparts. Even more worrying, one gets the general feeling that the author is not sure of his geology and mining practice. On p. 89 it states that 'pillars of inferior ore, ie that containing less than 8% of silver were left'. In reality an ore containing 8% of silver would be one of the richest ever found. Elsewhere it states that 'keeping the roof apart from the floor is basic to mining'. As a statement this only makes any sense when applied to the relatively soft continuous strata of the coal measures, where given half a chance the floor really will rise up and meet the roof, but this was not a problem in ancient hard rock mines. It comes as no surprise to find out that the author's experience is in coal mining, and throughout the book there are incongruous comparisons of ancient mining with 20th-century coal mines regulations (on p. 33 for example, we learn that ancient mines contravened the British Coal Ming Acts of 1911), and the section on Romano-British coal production occupies no less than 23 pages with the serious suggestion that coal barges came down the Car Dyke from Newcastle to supply the villas of East Anglia.

The author's lack of familiarity with the subject means that many essential works have been overlooked, including major studies such as Conophagos' Le Laurium Antique (1980) and John Ellis-Jones' work on Laurion (1984 etc.), Domerque's massive study of Roman mines in the Iberian peninsula (1990), Cleere & Crossley's The iron industry of the Weald (1985), and the work of the Wealden Iron Research Group. Other major works such as Penhallurick's Tin in antiquity (1986) which do make it to the bibliography have clearly not been properly studied (Penhallurick might, incidentally have been able to advise the author that the Greek word for tin is not zinn, and that the mysterious EIC stamped on a tin ingot found off the south coast might just possibly stand for the East India Company). Overall there is a very incomplete coverage of works published within the last 15 years or so, and the general impression is of a work that was substantially complete by the late 1970s. Thus Timna, in southern Israel (not occupied Sinai!) is reported as a major Roman copper mine which it certainly never was, but the real major Roman copper mines over the border in Jordan at the Wadi Feinan (including Umm el Amad, which is perhaps the finest surviving Roman mine system anywhere) are not mentioned, one suspects because their publication only started in the 1980s.

There are a few seemingly random insertions of later references which often contradict the existing text. Thus in the British section the copper mines at Llandudno (Great Orme) are described as being Roman, but on p. 280 a radiocarbon date of 2700 BC is reported which becomes 2700 BP on p. 328 (in fact the date referred to was published as 2940|+ or -~80 BP HAR 4845); if the Etruscans can mine copper in Italy in 2700 BC why shouldn't the Romans mine copper in Wales at the same time?

An especially unfortunate result of this lamentable confusion is that the excellent and innovative work done over the last 15 years by various groups establishing the true age and technology of early British mining (see Crew & Crew 1990 for example) has been completely misrepresented in this book, and largely set at nought. British researchers are in fact at the forefront of research into early metallurgy world wide, but the publication of this book by a prestigious institution such as the IMM will do nothing to enhance this hard-won reputation.

References

ARDAILLON, E. 1897. Les mines de Laurion dans l'antiquite. Paris: Bibliotheque des Ecoles Francaises d'Athenes et de Rome.

CLEERE, H. & D. CROSSLEY. 1985. The iron industry of the Weald. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

CONOPHAGOS, C.E. 1980. Le Laurium antique. Athens: Ekdotike Hellados.

CREW, P. & S. CREW (ed.). 1990. Early mining in the British Isles. Tan y Bwlch, Wales: Plas Tan y Bwlch & Gwynedd County Council.

DAVIES, O. 1935. The Roman mines of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOMERQUE, C. 1990. Les mines de la peninsula iberique dans l'antiquite romain. Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome.

ELLIS-JONES, J. 1984. Ancient Athenian silver mines, JHMS 18(2): 65-81.

HEALY, J.F. 1978. Mining and metallurgy in the Greek and Roman world. London: Thames & Hudson.

PENHALLURICK, R.D. 1986. Tin in antiquity. London: Institute of Metals.

RAMIN, J. 1977. La technique miniere et metallurgique des anciens. Brussels: Latomus.

SHEPHERD, R., 1980. Prehistoric mining and allied industries. London: Academic Press.