This volume examines the earliest production and exchange of copper and its alloys in the Persian Gulf, a major metal supply route for the Bronze Age societies of Western Asia. Weeks addresses the geological and technological background to copper production in southeastern Arabia and contextualizes evidence for major fluctuations in prehistoric copper production. The core of the volume contists of compositional and isotopic analyses. The relationship between specialized copper production, exchange, and the development of social complexity in early Arabia is examined, and the author addresses the broader archaeological issue of the Bronze Age tin trade, which linked vast areas of Western Asia, from the Indo-Iranian borderlands to the Aegean, in the third millennium BC.

The papers in this volume are dedicated to Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. G. Christian Amstutz by his colleagues, friends, and students on the occasion of his 60th anniversary. The authors of this book - the theme was restricted to syngenesis and epigenesis in the formation of mineral deposits - wish to honour with their articles a scientist who has contributed to, and substantially promoted the understanding of the genesis of mineral deposits in the last decades. The majority of the articles deal with strata-bound depos its, thus reflecting one of his main scientific interests. In the tradition of his professors, Paul Niggli and Paul Ramdohr, G.C. Amstutz has maintained an open and active interest in many fields of earth science. His numerous papers have triggered a remarkable number of new ideas and investigations in a variety of fields, and the "happy marriage" of economic geology with sedimentology is cer tainly one of his main successes, starting with the first Symposium on Sedimentology and Ore Genesis at the Sixth International Sedimentological Congress at Delft in 1963.

Results of selected projects on Exploration R & D, one of the major research areas implemented by the Commission of European Communities in Brussels on the subject of mineral raw materials, are presented on an international basis. All aspects of the geology and geochemistry of ore deposits and their host rocks are covered. Main headings are according to commodity, i.e. tungsten, chromite, and base metals, rather than by scientific criteria. The scope and subject matter varies from the metallogenic province to the individual deposit. The question of possible application to exploration methodology is explored in several papers. Particularly structural and geochemical techniques are discussed.