Hi,
I am booked to give a PowerPoint presentation in May to the Epsom and Ewell
Literary Society,
my topic being "Copper through the Ages".
This is almost complete, but I am currently editing a few slides. In an
earlier version I used in a talk
I gave some years ago to the local Science Group of the University of the
Third Age, I had an illustration
(not sure where I got it from) which was an "Artist's Impression" of what a
Bronze Age copper mine
would have been like - men digging in a trench, men and women sorting copper
minerals from waste
on the surface nearby, which I seem to recall was a vision of what it would
have been like at Alderley Edge.
I would like to use that illustration again, but sadly I seem to have
deleted it from my system. Anyone
any idea where I could get a copy again (book, internet???).
As it happens, I think the artist had the right idea - when I went visiting
mines in India for Mining
Magazine in 1983, the "ore dressing" at Balaghat Managanese mine near Nagpur
was exactly like
that - about 50 women sitting on the ground, hitting rocks with hammers,
sorting ore from waste.
That was one mine I didn't write up.
Later on that tour I did go to Lapso kyanite quarry, where the "mineral
processing " was somewhat
similar. Lumps of quarried rock were piled to one side of a shed, under the
roof of which was
a line of old oil drums filled with water, one drum per woman operator. Each
woman would pick up
a lump of rock from the west of the shed, clean it with a scrubbing brush,
dipped when necessary in
the water in the oil drum, and place the clean lump on a pile to the east of
the shed. From there it
would be taken by truck to the railway station and so on its way to be
shipped to England to be turned
into the porcelain for car engine sparking plugs. I did write that one up
(Mining Magazine, November 1983).
As I recall, my caption for the photo of the dressing shed pointed out that
the "flowsheet" was "from
left to right".
Any ideas on an artist's coloured illustration of Bronze Age mining at
Alderley Edge"?
Tony Brewis
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