Archaeomineralogy

The term archaeomineralogy is relatively new. It was used by Mitchell (1985) for a brief bibliography, by Rapp (2002, 2009) for books, and by Kostov et al., (2008) and Rapp (2008) as part of the first international meeting on archaeomineralogy. This subdiscipline is quite distinct from the history of mineralogy. Archaeomineralogy is a subdiscipline of archaeology or geoarchaeology. It is the study of the exploitation of rocks and minerals by humans since prehistoric times for implements, ornaments, building materials, paints, and as raw material for metals, ceramics, and other processed products. Archaeomineralogy attempts to date, source, and characterize artifacts made from earth materials as well as put this information into geographic and historical contexts.

Scholars who could be called archaeomineralogists go back to ancient times and were located around the globe. Among the most prominent were the Hellenistic Greek philosopher Theophrastus (ca. 372–287 BCE), the Greek physician...