Mining for Ancient Copper. Essays in Memory of Beno Rothenberg, edited by Erez Ben-Yosef. Monograph Series of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology 37. University Park, PA/Tel Aviv: Eisenbrauns & Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 2018. xviii 1 566 pp. Hardcover $149.95.

Abstract

Beno Rothenberg, famed archaeologist who explored and excavated in the ancient copper-mining region of Timna Valley in southern Israel since the 1950s, and one of the founders of archaeometallurgy as a scientific discipline, died on March 13, 2012 at the age of 98. The international conference on “Copper in Antiquity” held at Timna Park in 2013 was organized in his memory and these are the contributions presented there, while others were written especially for this book. Erez Ben-Yosef, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University and current director of the Central Timna Valley Project, edited this thick volume with 37 chapters organized in five sections, where 66 interdisciplinary researchers paid tribute to Rothenberg’s life and work. It would be impossible to discuss here all contributions with detail, so I will rather concentrate on the core topics that extend throughout the book...