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Bronze Age tin mine found in Turkey.


Excavation excavation

In archaeology, the exposure, recording, and recovery of buried material remains. The techniques employed vary by the type of site, but all forms of archaeological excavation require great skill and careful preparation.
 of a nearly 5,000-year-old tin mine tin mine nmina de estaño

tin mine nmine f d'étain

tin mine tin nZinnbergwerk nt 
 in Turkey provides the first evidence o! intensive local production of the metal in the Middle East during the Bronze Age Bronze Age, period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the , a University o[ Chicago archaeologist announced last week.

Although tin is crucial to bronze production, many scholars argue that Bronze Age residents of the Middle East generally imported tin from Afghanistan and more distant regions, according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 Aslihan Yener, who directed work at the Turkish mine. It now appears that local tin industries complemented importecl sources, she asserts.

The Bronze Age, which extended from around 3000 B.C. to 1100 B.C., witnessed the expansion o! major city-states in Turkey, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Underground mining shafts at the new site, known as Kestel, run for more than two miles, Yener holds. Shafts measure about two feet wide, offering adults a tight squeeze, she notes.

In fact, children apparently served as miners. Yener's research team found a grave inside the mine containing several skeletons of 12- to 15-year-old youngsters.

Analysis of these remains will address whether the children died of mining-related illness or injury, the Chicago scientist says.

Other evidence indicates that miners at Kestel lit fires next to veins of ore to soften them and then battered bat·ter 1  
v. bat·tered, bat·ter·ing, bat·ters

v.tr.
1. To hit heavily and repeatedly with violent blows.

2. To subject to repeated beatings or physical abuse.

3.
 away at the ore with stone tools, Yener contends.

She and her colleagues have also found indications of highgrade tin production at the nearby Bronze Age village of Goltepe. Workers at the site ground up tin ore, heated it in covered crucibles, and removed tin globules that formed during this process. The residue residue n. in a will, the assets of the estate of a person who has died with a will (died testate) which are left after all specific gifts have been made. Typical language: "I leave the rest, residue and remainder [or just residue] of my estate to my grandchildren.  was reheated, and any further tin was extracted, Yener asserts. More than 50,000 stone tools found at Goltepe reflect the massive use of these implements to crush ore and its residue, she remarks.
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Title Annotation:mine dating to 3,000 BC provides evidence of Bronze Age tin production in Middle East
Publication:Science News
Article Type:Brief Article
Date:Jan 15, 1994
Words:297
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