Indigenous Mining and Metallurgy

Indigenous Mining and Metallurgy PDF Author: Shadreck Chirikure
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521740197
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The study of mining and metallurgy is essential to gain an understanding of Africa's rich history. Explore the secrets of Africa's forgotten technological past. From prospecting and mining to smelting and forging, discover the fascinating technologies used across the African continent over the last two and a half thousand years. Through visits to ancient mines and archaeological sites this book recaptures the ancient knowledge and technology used in indigenous mining and metallurgy. Experience the birth of African mining and the rise and fall of great African empires and societies, while uncovering the exciting discoveries of iron, copper and later tin, bronze and gold work across Africa. Trace the wealth and knowledge exchanged through trade, while investigating the the fascinating rituals, magic and taboos that played an important part in indigenous mining. And finally, learn how this rich history can be used today to generate income through tourism for local communities.

Indigenous Mining and Metallurgy

Indigenous Mining and Metallurgy PDF Author: Shadreck Chirikure
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521740197
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The study of mining and metallurgy is essential to gain an understanding of Africa's rich history. Explore the secrets of Africa's forgotten technological past. From prospecting and mining to smelting and forging, discover the fascinating technologies used across the African continent over the last two and a half thousand years. Through visits to ancient mines and archaeological sites this book recaptures the ancient knowledge and technology used in indigenous mining and metallurgy. Experience the birth of African mining and the rise and fall of great African empires and societies, while uncovering the exciting discoveries of iron, copper and later tin, bronze and gold work across Africa. Trace the wealth and knowledge exchanged through trade, while investigating the the fascinating rituals, magic and taboos that played an important part in indigenous mining. And finally, learn how this rich history can be used today to generate income through tourism for local communities.

Mining Language

Mining Language PDF Author: Allison Margaret Bigelow
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469654393
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Mineral wealth from the Americas underwrote and undergirded European colonization of the New World; American gold and silver enriched Spain, funded the slave trade, and spurred Spain's northern European competitors to become Atlantic powers. Building upon works that have narrated this global history of American mining in economic and labor terms, Mining Language is the first book-length study of the technical and scientific vocabularies that miners developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they engaged with metallic materials. This language-centric focus enables Allison Bigelow to document the crucial intellectual contributions Indigenous and African miners made to the very engine of European colonialism. By carefully parsing the writings of well-known figures such as Cristobal Colon and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes and lesser-known writers such Alvaro Alonso Barba, a Spanish priest who spent most of his life in the Andes, Bigelow uncovers the ways in which Indigenous and African metallurgists aided or resisted imperial mining endeavors, shaped critical scientific practices, and offered imaginative visions of metalwork. Her creative linguistic and visual analyses of archival fragments, images, and texts in languages as diverse as Spanish and Quechua also allow her to reconstruct the processes that led to the silencing of these voices in European print culture.

Metals in Past Societies

Metals in Past Societies PDF Author: Shadreck Chirikure
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331911641X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
This book seeks to communicate to both a global and local audience, the key attributes of pre-industrial African metallurgy such as technological variation across space and time, methods of mining and extractive metallurgy and the fabrication of metal objects. These processes were transformative in a physical and metaphoric sense, which made them total social facts. Because the production and use of metals was an accretion of various categories of practice, a chaine operatoire conceptual and theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the embedded technological and anthropological factors was used. The book focuses on Africa’s different regions as roughly defined by cultural geography. On the one hand there is North Africa, Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan, and the Horn of Africa which share cultural inheritances with the Middle East and on the other is Africa south of the Sahara and the Sudan which despite interacting with the former is remarkably different in terms of technological practice. For example, not only is the timing of metallurgy different but so is the infrastructure for working metals and the associated symbolic and sociological factors. The cultural valuation of metals and the social positions of metal workers were different too although there is evidence of some values transfer and multi-directional technological cross borrowing. The multitude of permutations associated with metals production and use amply demonstrates that metals participated in the production and reproduction of society. Despite huge temporal and spatial differences there are so many common factors between African metallurgy and that of other regions of the world. For example, the role of magic and ritual in metal working is almost universal be it in Bolivia, Nepal, Malawi, Timna, Togo or Zimbabwe. Similarly, techniques of mining were constrained by the underlying geology but this should not in any way suggest that Africa’s metallurgy was derivative or that the continent had no initiative. Rather it demonstrates that when confronted with similar challenges, humanity in different regions of the world responded to identical challenges in predictable ways mediated as mediated by the prevailing cultural context. The success of the use of historical and ethnographic data in understanding variation and improvisation in African metallurgical practices flags the potential utility of these sources in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Some nuance is however needed because it is simply naïve to assume that everything depicted in the history or ethnography has a parallel in the past and vice versa. Rather, the confluence of archaeology, history and ethnography becomes a pedestal for dialogue between different sources, subjects and ideas that is important for broadening our knowledge of global categories of metallurgical practice.

Mining and Indigenous Peoples

Mining and Indigenous Peoples PDF Author: Ron McLean
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description


Wealth from the Rocks

Wealth from the Rocks PDF Author: Mwelwa C. Musambachime
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1514449145
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This study focuses on the study of metallurgy in pre-colonial Zambia to 1890. A general review of the literature on metallurgy in pre-colonial Zambia reveals that during the period our study (up to 1890), three metals were mined. Iron production was a widespread, important and significant phenomenon, responsible for producing utility toolshoes, axe, knives, weapons, spears, arrow heads and broad knives, and regalia for the political and religious office holderscopper, which was confine to few areas; and gold to even fewer areas. Metallurgy was an important economic activity in which all ethnic groups participated in different levels of intensity. From iron ore which was smelted in elaborate and complicated processes imbued in magic, song, dance, incantations, medicines, and taboos by members of exclusively male guilds, blacksmiths were able to produce the following: (a) tools used in agriculture: hoes, axes used to clear forestays or areas to be cultivated to grow food for subsistence, non-edible crops such as tobacco and hemp which were smoked as part of relaxation, cotton used to make blankets sand shawls, needles for mending clothes, and knives for a variety of uses; (b) hunting using varieties of spears to hunt game, seek protection from dangerous animals, for defence of resources or offence to capture desired resources; (c) various sizes of hooks used in fishing different varieties of fish; and (d) making of regalia used in chieftaincies and priesthood as symbols of authority. Copper was also smelted and put in ingots of varying sizes and rods of varying sizes and lengths, which were (a) used to make copper wires as wires, rods, vessels and other utensils, copper smiths produced jewellery and ornaments and cast art pieces such as statues and necklaces worn by men and women as status symbols; (b) used in exchange of goods and services as currency; and (c) used to produce regalia for the for those in authority. Gold was mined directly and processed into making as variety of items such as buttons and regalia. In its various forms of development and sophistication, metallurgy was responsible for the economic, social and political advances among the pre-colonial societies. A variety of skills was required for building furnaces, producing charcoal, smelting and forging iron into goods. Metallurgy and production of various items that were needed and necessary for an improved life were generally not an enclave activity but a process that satisfied the totality of socioeconomic needs. It also promoted the gender division of labour within community. Wealth from the Rocks is therefore a detailed study of the place, role, and function of metallurgy in pre-colonial Zambian societies.

Ancient African Metallurgy

Ancient African Metallurgy PDF Author: Michael S. Bisson
Publisher: AltaMira Press
ISBN: 1461705924
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Gold. Copper. Iron. Metal working in Africa has been the subject of both public lore and extensive archaeological investigation. Here, four of the leading contemporary researchers on this topic attempt to provide a complete synthesis of current debates and understandings: Where, how, and when was metal first introduced to the continent? How were iron and copper tools, implements, and objects used in everyday life, in trade, in political and cultural contexts? What role did metal objects play in the ideological systems of precolonial African peoples? Substantive chapters address the origins of metal working and the technology and the various uses and meanings of copper and iron. An ethnoarchaeological account in the words of a contemporary iron worker enriches the archaeological explanations. This book provides a comprehensive, timely summary of our current knowledge.

Mining and the Environment

Mining and the Environment PDF Author: Karlheinz Spitz
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351183648
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 1203

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Book Description
The history of mining is replete with controversy of which much is related to environmental damage and consequent community outrage. Over recent decades, this has led to increased pressure to improve the environmental and social performance of mining operations, particularly in developing countries. The industry has responded by embracing the ideals of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Mining and the Environment identifies and discusses the wide range of social and environmental issues pertaining to mining, with particular reference to mining in developing countries, from where many of the project examples and case studies have been selected. Following an introductory overview of pressing issues, the book illustrates how environmental and social impact assessment, such as defined in "The Equator Principles", integrates with the mining lifecycle and how environmental and social management aims to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive mining impacts. Practical approaches are provided for managing issues ranging from land acquisition and resettlement of Indigenous peoples, to the technical aspects of acid rock drainage and mine waste management. Moreover, thorough analyses of ways and means of sharing non-transitory mining benefits with host communities are presented to allow mining to provide sustainable benefits for the affected communities. This second edition of Mining and the Environment includes new chapters on Health Impact Assessment, Biodiversity and Gender Issues, all of which have become more important since the first edition appeared a decade ago. The wide coverage of issues and the many real-life case studies make this practice-oriented book a reference and key reading. It is intended for environmental consultants, engineers, regulators and operators in the field and for students to use as a course textbook. As much of the matter applies to the extractive industries as a whole, it will also serve environmental professionals in the oil and gas industries. Karlheinz Spitz and John Trudinger both have multiple years of experience in the assessment of mining projects around the world. The combination of their expertise and knowledge about social, economic, and environmental performance of mining and mine waste management has resulted in this in-depth coverage of the requirements for responsible and sustainable mining.

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia PDF Author: Miljana Radivojević
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1803270438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the evolution of early metallurgy in the Balkans. It demonstrates that far from being a rare and elite practice, the earliest metallurgy in the world was a common and communal craft activity.

Mining and Indigenous Peoples

Mining and Indigenous Peoples PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indigenous peoples
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description


Mining and Indigenous Peoples Issues Review

Mining and Indigenous Peoples Issues Review PDF Author: Jo M. Render
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780954995416
Category : Community development
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description