A OPEN PIT MINING AÇIK OCAK MADENCİLİĞİ

M. Coli, M. Baldi
rediscover an ancient world, its social
context, organization, and land use as
developed through time by the numerous
Ancient Egyptian Kingdoms and the Roman
and Byzantine Empires.
The Authors thank Prof. Gloria Rosati
(Archaeologist, University of Firenze, Italy), for her
contribute and Prof. Daniele Castrizio (University of
Messina, Italy) for the evaluation of the present day
value of the ancient Dracma.
Figure 10. One of the best preserved signal
towers: it is squared and built with slabs of
the local schists (reconstructions from
Sidebotham et al. 2008).
Towers were built with stones collected in
the neighbourhood, therefore, according to
the local stone resources, they were built in
granites, schists, metabasites). Stones were
carefully stacked without mortar and with
the inner filled by debris; they were roughly
squared about 3,0-3,5m a side and a few
meters high (Sidebotham et al., 2008).
7 FINAL REMARKS
The results of the research outline a strict
relationship between geological setting,
quarry and mine sites, and excavation
techniques, which in turn attest and confirm,
once again, the good knowledge of the
territory and its setting that both the
Egyptians and the Romans/Byzantines had.
A follow-up of this study could be done to
define criteria and develop methods of
conservation for the great cultural heritage in
the Wadi Hammamat area: mines, quarries,
settlements, inscriptions, and the whole
know-how of ancient extraction activity. In
our opinion that goal can be reached by:
- creating a museum in the degraded
hydreuma of El-Fawakhir in which the
history, the technology and the life related
to the extraction activity in the area could
be displayed,
- organizing guided visits to quarry and mine
sites.
Indeed, existing local knowledge and
written history provide the elements to
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