Ph. D. Thesis.Due to the extraordinary wealth of its ore deposits, Cyprus was the metal powerhouse of
antiquity. The importance of Cypriot ore-mineral deposits has led to a wealth of research on
prehistoric copper mining and production. However, this has overwhelmingly concentrated on
provenance and exchange studies (via the isotopic fingerprinting of ores and ingots) at the
expense of other research strands. In particular, important questions regarding Cypriot copper
technology including the role and identity of bronzesmiths still await full investigation.
Among the few cases of Early-Middle Bronze Age sites which show metallurgical evidence,
Pyrgos-Mavroraki (Limassol) an early 2nd millennium BC settlement site, excavated by the
Italian National Research Council (CNR) from 1998-2012, is certainly the richest known so
far.
The excavations unearthed a vast architectural complex, which hosted several workshops
including an olive press, but most importantly, the complex yielded a great deal of
metallurgical installations and residues.
This research, through a combination of archaeological, analytical and experimental work,
including SEM-EDX slag analysis and on-field copper smelting trials, allowed to reconstruct
the smelting process used at Pyrgos. The archeological evidence shows that Pyrgos’s
metallurgists used a rather primitive smelting technique, involving the use of simple bowlshaped furnaces, small crucibles and blowpipe equipped with simple clay nozzles. However,
despite the high viscosity of the slags obtained did not allow a complete separation of the
metallic copper, the slag-analysis proved that Pyrgos’s coppersmith were capable to smelt
sulfidic ores, which are known to require a multiphase smelting process.Newcastle University, Northern Bridge Consortiu
