ABSTRACT
Starting an examination of metalware circulation with the raw materials, one notes that Michael McCormick recently stated that a decrease in environmental pollution detected from during late antiquity suggests a decrease then in mining, at least in the West.1 Recent contrary evidence comes from the eastern Empire. Geochemical analysis undertaken in 1998 by the Wadi Faynan Project in south Jordan discovered the opposite: that copper mining caused ‘enormous’ pollution in the area of ancient Phainan in Palaestina Tertia during the Roman/Byzantine period.2 Other work to the south at Wadi Amran published in 1999 found evidence that early Byzantine copper-mining continued using Roman technology.3 A late Roman [copper?] smelting area at Lyliatos Maurovouni in the Lagoudhera valley, Cyprus, was published in 2002.4 For recent work on sources of gold and tin, see the papers by C. Salter and S.E. Sidebotham in the present volume. Regarding silver, Byzantine numismatists long considered that it was continuously recycled without new supplies added by mining, and Jones states that nothing is known about the organization of silver mines in late antiquity.5 However, evidence from finds of clay lamps in shafts suggests that the ancient Laurion mines in Greece were exploited
1 McCormick, Origins, 42-53, esp. 52-3. 2 G.W. Barker et al., ‘Environmental and land use in the Wadi Faynan, southern
Jordan: the third season of geoarchaeology and landscape archaeology (1998)’, Levant 31 (1999), 255-92.
