Glossary Metals, materials and technology
Ore
Rock containing enough metal to be worth mining and smelting; Cypriot copper ore is mostly chalcopyrite, a copper-iron sulphide.
The copper ores of Cyprus lie in the Troodos mountains, in sulphide bodies formed around volcanic hot-water vents on an ancient sea floor some ninety million years ago. They cluster in districts such as Skouriotissa, Mitsero, Tamassos, Kalavasos and Limni. Grades are modest, from under one to about five per cent copper, with richer pockets where the ore has been naturally enriched near the surface.
Ancient prospectors found ore by the rust-coloured gossans that cap the deposits. Lead isotope analysis, which fingerprints ore sources, links essentially all oxhide ingots dated after about 1400 BCE to the Apliki deposit in the Solea valley. The whole story is told under copper metallurgy.
Full entry: Copper Metallurgy in Ancient Cyprus
Related terms
- Gossan
The rust-red and yellow crust of iron oxides that forms where a buried sulphide ore body weathers at the surface.
- Pillow lava
Rounded, pillow-shaped masses of lava formed when molten rock erupts under the sea; in the Troodos they host the copper ores.
- Smelting
Heating ore with a fuel such as charcoal until the metal separates from the rock, leaving a waste called slag behind.
- Oxhide ingot
A flat copper slab with four projecting handles, weighing about 24–30 kg: the standard form in which Late Bronze Age Cyprus exported copper.
Where it appears
- Gold, Silver, Tin, Arsenic and Iron in Ancient Cyprus
- Chalcolithic Cyprus
- Tools and Technologies of Ancient Cyprus
- Village Life in Late Bronze Age Cyprus
- Black-on-Red Ware
- Cyprus Before Humans: Dwarf Hippos, Dwarf Elephants and the First Visitors
- Subsistence, Craft, and Community in Prehistoric and Archaic Cyprus
- The Minoans
- Village Life in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus
- Weapons of Bronze Age Cyprus
- Bichrome Ware
- Cypro-Geometric Cyprus
and 5 more compendium pages