ABSTRACT

This book draws together international contributors to analyse a wide range of aspects of mining history across the globe including mining archaeology, technologies of mining, migration and mining, the everyday life of the miner, the state and mining, industrial relations in mining, gender and mining, environment and mining, mining accidents, the visual history of mining, and mining heritage. The result is a counter balance to more common national and regional case study perspectives.

chapter 1|24 pages

Mining history

Sub-fields and agendas

chapter 2|40 pages

Archaeology of mining in the pre-industrial age

The recognition and interpretation of ancient mines

chapter 3|23 pages

Engineering changes

The cause and consequence of modern mining methods at Butte, Montana; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Broken Hill, New South Wales

chapter 4|19 pages

A comparative account of deep-level gold mining in India and South Africa

Implications for workers’ lives

chapter 5|22 pages

Local moments in mining history

Some ideas on the relationship between foreign and native in Mexican silver mining

chapter 6|22 pages

Coal mining, migration and ethnicity

A global history 1

chapter 8|20 pages

Feminising an ancient human endeavour

Gendered spaces in mining

chapter 9|19 pages

Accidents and mining

The problem of the risk of explosion in industrial coal mining in global perspective

chapter 10|22 pages

On fatalities, accidents and accident prevention in coalmines

Colliers’ safety discourse in oral testimony from the Ruhr in Germany and the Witbank collieries in South Africa

chapter 12|15 pages

This land is my land

Global indigenous struggles and the Adivasi resistance in Muthanga (Kerala, India)

chapter 13|17 pages

Black gold and environmental enemy no. 1

Towards a visual history of coal

chapter 14|19 pages

Environmental history and global mining

Towards a neo-materialist approach

chapter 15|19 pages

Mining heritage

Comparative perspectives