![]() The extraction of mineral ores and its associated metal production has been a persistent element of the economy on Thassos Island since prehistoric times. Analyses of samples from all finds by employing indicated methods, verifies early copper production there, with the raw cupriferous ore originating from the local kytnian resources. At a distance less than 1000 m north of the two sites, a large quartzitic lens emerges, traversing the local chloritic-sericitic chists and hosts malachites and azurites in foliated arrangement. The backed-clay furnace walls fragments bear one intense vitrification exhibited in their inner, concave, surface and, occasionally, green Cu-containing stains. These individual furnaces -of truncated cone shape- exist at two smelting sites of the NW steeply part of the island, along with some tons of metallurgical slags and few fragments with traces of secondary cupriferous minerals embedded in quartzites and/in schists. Kythnos Island, belonging in the so-called Western Cyclades, was the first Aegean island where curved fragments of clay “perforated metallurgical furnaces”, dated in Early Cycladic II, were discovered and studied. The purpose of this paper is an overview of the subject and especially of mining and metallurgy practices in the early Archaic period, and the emergence of certain research objectives for the immediate and far-reaching future. However, also in this case, the institutional and practical framework, the relations with the local populations, which certainly were not always peaceful, and especially the possible cohabitation of the two elements, as well as the relations of Thasos with his distant mother city Paros. The Parian colonists in Thasos developed this activity on the island and in the opposite Thasian Epirus. It is certain, however, that in Thasos the metal ore processing took place from the Final Neolithic, and this should apply to Lekani Mountains and the Pangaion, although it has not yet been archaeologically demonstrated. The conditions and the date of the expansion of Parians and then of Thasians in this extended geographical area are not entirely clear, since neither the ancient literature nor the archaeological data allow us to have a complete image at the moment. Their interest towards the region of Thasos and the opposite Thracian coastline and hinterland, mainly between the rivers Nestos and Strymon, is certainly associated, among other things, with the rich mineralization of the area (Thasos, Lekani, etc) and the production of metals by the local Thracian populations during the Early Iron Age. The Parians knew the value of metals and their processing. The island of Paros is not particularly rich in metal ores, but it is located in the heart of the Cyclades, where metal technology developed in the beginnings of the Final Neolithic - Early Bronze Age.
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