Mining and metallurgical labor in Islamic period Southwest Asia

ABSTRACT

As a richly-documented historical case study, Islamic period Southwest Asia provides useful insights into the archaeology of mining and metallurgy. Labor, however, is more difficult to reconstruct from available historical sources, and its study requires a more directly archaeological approach. This paper presents a series of approaches to mining and metallurgical labor, drawing primarily on case studies of copper, silver, and gold mines in Southwest Asia, to address issues of labor provisioning and organization, the social identities of laborers, and the ways in which laborers deployed and transmitted specialized knowledge of metallurgical practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Labor
• metallurgy
• mining
• Islamic period
• Southwest Asia

Acknowledgments

Portions of this research were supported by an ACOR-CAORC Predoctoral Fellowship at the American Center of Research in Amman and an Education and Cultural Affairs Junior Research Fellowship at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. I thank Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar, co-directors of the UC San Diego Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project, for facilitating my research on the sites in Jordan discussed in this paper and their ongoing support of my work. I also thank World Archaeology Editor Kim Bowes and the two anonymous peer-reviewers, whose comments significantly improved this paper. All errors are, of course, my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In Bilād al-Shām, or ‘Greater Syria’, this period begins with the Islamic conquests of the 630s AD, although arguments have been made for an ‘archaeological’ period beginning ca. 600 AD due to the difficulty of distinguishing the material culture of the early and mid-7^th centuries (e.g. Whitcomb 1992).

2. The ‘standard’ weight of a dirham was 2.97 g (Kovalev and Kaelin 2007, 561), although this varied regionally and over time.

3. A medieval sugar factory required several tons of copper in the form of large cauldrons (Ar. dusūt) used to boil the cane juice. This connection is explored in Jones, Levy, and Najjar (2012, 92–95).

4. Others have noted this similarity, e.g. Chaves’ argument that enslaved sugar plantation workers had better diets than 20^th century wage laborers in Brazil (cited in Scheper-Hughes 1992, 153).

5. There are, however, ambiguities. Cuvigny (2000, 25–29, 33–36) hypothesizes that the familia employed at Mons Claudianus included slaves and condemned convicts, in addition to well-attested free laborers, while Bülow-Jacobsen (1996, 726) argues the familia should not be interpreted as slaves, nor should those referred to as pais, which he prefers to translate as ‘apprentice’. Similar ambiguities can be found in the Islamic period, e.g. P. Ness. 56, a late 7^th century contract variously interpreted as documenting a father purchasing his son’s freedom from slavery, indentured servitude, or a labor contract for which advance wages had been paid (O’Sullivan 2015, 64).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs; Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

Notes on contributors

Ian W. N. Jones

Ian W. N. Jones is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Liberal Studies program at New York University. His research focuses on political economy and human-environment interactions in Islamic period southwest Asia, as well as Islamic period material culture and digital approaches to archaeology.