Copper mining and the transformation of environmental knowledge in Bronze Age Britain

Abstract

The argument presented in this article is that copper mining during the Bronze Age in north Wales transformed the cultural landscape, specifically people's understandings of underground spaces — the mines themselves and nearby caves. The basis for the argument is a correlation between mining and a hiatus in the depositional history in the region's caves. The interpretation offered for this evidence is that through the creation and appropriation of underground spaces during mining people developed a different knowledge of how caves were formed. This new environmental knowledge denied the caves a status as mediatory or liminal places where rituals associated with other spheres of social life might be undertaken. Such knowledge was constituted by and served to structure the use and perception of the landscape by the communities who worked the mines.