If you are interested in mining history in Africa the place to start is
with Eugenia Herbert's survey "Red Gold of Africa" (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1985) which is an excellent source of references for
further reading. A particularly interesting monograph is Roger Summer's
"Ancient Mining in Rhodesia" (Bulawayo: National Muesums of Rhodesia,
1969) which is a fine survey of the extensive evidence for hard rock
mining, mostly of gold, in precolonial Zimbabwe. Be aware however that the
chronology that he gives is shaky - we now think that there is no good
evidence for the use or extraction of gold in southern Africa prior to
1000 AD.
The only other regional study of mines in Africa, if you can get hold of
it, is MIchael Bisson's PhD thesis "Ancient copper mining in Zambia"
(University of California at Santa Barbara, 1975). University Microfilms
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will sell you a copy reproduced from microfilm, or
else try interlibrary loan - it's wort the effort.
If you read German, there is also the work of the Klemm's on ancient
Egyptian gold mines - I don't have the references to hand, but if you are
interested contact me directly and I will hunt them down.
----------------------
David Killick
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology,
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0030.
Phones: office (520)621-8685; laboratory 621-7986; fax 621-2088
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