“…A long-term research programme by the BochumJordanian Archaeometallurgical Research Group (Hauptmann, 1989(Hauptmann, , 1997(Hauptmann, , 1990(Hauptmann, , 1992(Hauptmann, , 2000Weisgerber, 1987, 1992;Najjar et al, 1990Najjar et al, , 1995Nikliewski and van Zeist, 1970) detected a w9000 year history of the exploitation of copper ores at and around the Khirbet Faynan. A programme of research by the University of California, San Diego and the Jordanian Department of Antiquities addressed the social archaeology in a deep-time study of the role of mining and metallurgy on the evolution of societies in the southern Levant, with detailed archaeological surveys and large-scale excavations (Higham et al, 2005;Levy, 2004Levy, , 2006Levy et al, 2003Levy et al, , 2004aLevy et al, ,b,c, 2002Levy et al, , 1999aLevy et al, ,b, 2001aLevy et al, ,b, 2005aLevy and Higham, 2005a,b;Levy and Najjar, 2005a,b;Muniz, 2006;Weisgerber, 2006). After relatively small-scale and local gathering of copper and copper ores in the Neolithic, and ''household pyrotechnology'' in the Early Bronze Age, copper production became intense in the Wadi Faynan area and down-Wadi in the vicinity of Wadi Fidan (Adams, 2002;Lewin et al, 1977Lewin et al, , 1995Grattan et al, 2007).…”