Table of Contents

Prologue. On tradesmen, bath-attendants and men-in-business; 1. Why earths, and why earths now?; 2. Nature's own material culture on Melos; 3. Earths, the name commonly given by all Greeks...; 4. 'A cluster of niches exploited with tenacity and ingenuity...'; 5. On earths and rock-cut features: the SE Melos Survey (SEMS) methodology; 6. Mining, farming and honouring the dead in SE Melos; 7. A tale of two sites; 8. The archaeology of minerals in SE Melos: facts and hypotheses; 9. From mineralogy to microbiology ...via phenomenology, a return journey

About the Author

Effie Photos-Jones is an archaeological scientist and director of SASAA, a company based in Glasgow specializing in the scientific analysis of archaeological materials. She has co-directed archaeological research projects in the Aegean and carried out many archaeometallurgical studies in Greece including at Lavrion. She has published extensively on the topic of ancient technologies. Her current interests focus on early mineral pharmacological agents and the industries that made them available in antiquity. Alan J Hall recently retired as Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow where he taught geoarchaeology. His specialist research interests are in mineralogy and geochemistry. He co-directed the research project on Melos.