- Title Information
- Title
- Mining Matters: Rural Communities and Industrial Landscapes in Roman Iberia (3rd c. BCE-2nd c. CE)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Gosner, Linda R.
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2016
- Physical Description
- Extent
- xx, 497 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2016)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- van Dommelen, Peter
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Bodel, John
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Edmondson, Jonathan
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Alcock, Susan
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Rojas, Felipe
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Archaeology and the Ancient World
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines the social and economic impacts of Roman conquest on the mining industry in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), the Roman province of Hispania. I take a diachronic perspective, beginning with the earliest moments of conquest in the late 3rd century BCE and following the development of the mining industry through the 2nd century CE. Although indigenous traditions of mining in Iberia dated back to at least 3,000 BCE, and the scale of production rose in response to previous colonial encounters with the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians in the 1st millennium BCE, the scale of metal extraction increased dramatically following Roman conquest. Under Roman rule, mining in the Iberia and the wider Mediterranean contributed to an unprecedented scale of global atmospheric pollution, one not matched again until the Industrial Revolution. Metals from Iberia were used to produce Roman coinage, lead pipes and other elements of urban infrastructure, tools and utilitarian objects, jewelry, pigments, and other products that were distributed and used throughout the Roman Empire. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the local impacts of these large-scale changes in the mining industry on the communities who lived and labored in industrial landscapes. Drawing primarily from archaeological and epigraphic evidence, I investigate four major mining areas, including Las Médulas (northwest Spain), Cartagena/Mazarrón (southeast Spain), the Sierra Morena (central Spain), and the Iberian Pyrite Belt (southwest Iberia). Using extant evidence from each of these industrial landscapes in comparative, thematic perspective, I investigate changes and continuities in landscape use, daily life in settlements and households, technology and labor organization, and economic interactions in mining communities. Through this analysis, I illustrate the impacts of empire in the everyday lives of those living mining communities: diverse groups of men, women, and children, including indigenous people, immigrants from Iberia and Italy, slaves, the Roman army, and Roman imperial officials. This project highlights the complex relationship between imperialism, resource extraction, and local communities in the Roman Empire. Further, it presents a framework for studying mining, community, and empire in other times and places in world history.
- Subject
- Topic
- Roman archaeology; ancient history; archaeology of communities; Iberian Peninsula; mining; technology; production; empire
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20160629
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z0251GK6
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations