Prehistoric miners extracted red ochre in Greece at least 28,000 years ago, according to a study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. Researchers dated underground workings on Thasos island to the Gravettian period of the Upper Paleolithic, placing activity in one mine at about 28,400 to 27,800 years ago.
The site is on the Hill of Tzines near Limenaria. The ore, hematite, turns blood red when finely ground. The date comes from a bone found near the entrance of mine T2, about 110 centimeters (43 inches) below the surface and inside a layer of mining debris. It lay with percussion tools and seven flakes of gneiss-schist and quartz.
Researchers said the tools and flakes show stone was struck at the site, consistent with direct ore extraction. The bone retained 1.3% collagen, enough for the team to consider its date reliable.
How prehistoric miners extracted red ochre in Greece
The hill has four excavated or partly excavated extraction areas, but the study focused on T1 and T2. T1 is an 11-meter (36-foot) horizontal cavity with two galleries. T2 is a 3-by-4-meter (10-by-13-foot) chamber with two short passages. Researchers say T2 was worked mainly with large stone tools used to strike ore.
Finds from T1 included 312 red deer antlers, likely used as wedges, as well as stone hammers and bone tools that may have scraped or collected hematite. T2 yielded 163 large stone tools, mostly gneiss or gneiss-schist, marked by repeated blows. The differences may point to separate phases of activity. In T1, separate layers in the galleries suggest miners returned after breaks.
Most of the 19 bone and antler samples selected for testing could not be dated because they had lost collagen, which radiocarbon analysis requires. Only two samples from T2 produced dates.
The new date makes Tzines Europe’s oldest dated underground hematite mining site
One T2 sample, dated to between 6,398 and 6,302 years ago, contained only 0.4% collagen and was judged unreliable. An earlier, much younger date from T1 also remains uncertain.
The reliable T2 date is more than 3,000 years older than T1’s earlier result, which placed mining between about 25,000 and 24,000 years ago. Researchers say the Tzines evidence is the oldest European radiocarbon dating for underground hematite mining.
The study adds to rare evidence of miners extracting red ochre in Greece during the Upper Paleolithic. Researchers could not establish where the ore was taken or in what form it was transported. A Holocene mining phase remains possible but unconfirmed.
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