A collection of new studies dedicated to Professor Beno Rothenberg, focused on copper in antiquity in the Near East, the eastern Mediterranean, and the British Isles.

Isle Royale and the counties that line the northwest coast of Michigan's Upper Peninsula are called Copper Country because of the rich deposits of native copper there. In the nineteenth century, explorers and miners discovered evidence of prehistoric copper mining in this region. They used those "ancient diggings" as a guide to establishing their own, much larger mines, and in the process, destroyed the archaeological record left by the prehistoric miners. Using mining reports, newspaper accounts, personal letters, and other sources, this book reconstructs what these nineteenth-century discoverers found, how they interpreted the material remains of prehistoric activity, and what they did with the stone, wood, and copper tools they found at the prehistoric sites. "This volume represents an exhaustive compilation of the early written and published accounts of mines and mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It will prove a valuable resource to current and future scholars. Through these early historic accounts of prospectors and miners, Halsey provides a vivid picture of what once could be seen." —John M. O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology

This work examines the archaeological record of copper mining in the Lake Superior area.

Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1863. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

This volume describes the geography and environments of Oman, its rich copper ore deposits and the ancient mining and smelting techniques, and it also includes an overview of the physical properties of the different metals exploited in antiquity and of the analytical techniques used in archaeometallurgy.

Throughout world history, copper has been a significant metal for a vast number of cultures, from the oldest civilizations on record to the Bronze Age and Greek and Roman antiquity. Though replaced by iron as the primary metal for tools and weapons in ancient civilizations, copper found new resurgence in the nineteenth century when it was discovered to have particularly high thermal and electrical conductivity. Copper mining quickly escalated into a large-scale industry, and because of its vast reserves and innovative mining techniques, the United States seized the reins of global production with the opening of significant copper mines in Tennessee and Michigan in the 1840s and Montana in the 1870s. Copper-mining prosperity and America’s dominance of the industry came with a heavy environmental price, however. As rich copper deposits declined with increased mining efforts, large deposits of leaner ores—oftentimes less than one percent pure—had to be mined to keep pace with America’s technological thirst for copper. Processing such ore left an inordinate amount of industrial waste, such as tailings and slag deposits from the refining process and toxic materials from the ores themselves, and copper mining regions around the United States began to see firsthand the landscape degradation wrought by the industry. In The Legacy of American Copper Smelting, Bode J. Morin examines America’s three premier copper sites: Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, Tennessee’s Copper Basin, and Butte- Anaconda, Montana. Morin focuses on what the copper industry meant to the townspeople working in and around these three major sites while also exploring the smelters’ environmental effects. Each site dealt with pollution management differently, and each site had to balance an EPA-mandated cleanup effort alongside the preservation of a once-proud industry. Morin’s work sheds new light on the EPA’s efforts to utilize Superfund dollars and/or protocols to erase the environmental consequences of copper-smelting while locals and preservationists tried to keep memories of the copper industry alive in what were dying or declining post-industrial towns. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the American history of copper or heritage preservation studies, as well as historians of modern America, industrial technology, and the environment.

For the last 500 years, since Columbus "discovered" the New World, controversy has raged. Was he the first? Was there sustained travel and trade between Europe and North America, back at the dawn of America's history, 4500 years ago? How did the peopling of the Americas really happen? In this controversy, the ancient copper mines of Lake Superior (Kitchi-Gummi) have become an undeniable piece of hard evidence. There have been several books written about the tremendous amounts of pure copper that was set free by the glaciers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Isle Royal. There is undeniable proof of the mining and gathering of that copper in the distant past. Some researchers have flatly stated that whatever the amount mined, some of it had to have gone elsewhere. There simply seems to be no end (destination) of a copper trade on this continent. Many of you, local history buffs, students of ancient American history, anthropology, archaeology, and Native American studies, may have never heard of the ancient copper mines on Lake Superior. But for those who do know of them, the question was always there. Who dug approximately 5,000 copper mines 4500 years ago on Lake Superior's Isle Royale and adjoining areas? Why did they do it, and where is the copper now? How could 20 to 50 million pounds of copper be removed from this area in such a fashion, that it literally seems to have vanished. Who did the work and where did the copper go? It is significant that in the solving of this ancient puzzle, if Mediterranean area traders were involved, the accepted paradigm of the peopling of America must be changed. This book weighs in on this controversy. It does this in a straight-forward fashion. A simple case study of how these ancient mines came into existence, and the repercussions of the answer. The question of Diffusionism or Parallel Invention must at last be dealt with. This book, is part of your Ancient North American History, a subject that is as yet, in my opinion, not being taught.