New contributions to mining the Bronze Age in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Copper mines prehistoric of Valley Jándula, Sierra Morena (Andujar-Marmolejo, Jaén)

Abstract

Bronze Age mining in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula has been traditionally scarcely researched, but this frame has changed recently thanks to the identification of a great number of mining evidence identified during the fieldwork campaigns in the Rumblar and Jándula Valleys between 2009-2014. Specifically, in this paper we will be presenting the mining exploitations discovered during the archaeo-mining surveys carried out during the summer of 2014. During this campaign we have been able to identify a large assembly of material culture, mainly stone tools and ceramics that prove that these mines were exploited in recent prehistory. The analysis of the archaeological remains and the archaeometric data prove the importance of the mining and metallurgical activity carried out in eastern Sierra Morena by the communities that lived there between 2200-900 BC, revealing this area as one of the main production centers for copper and silver in the southeast of the Peninsula.