The Exploitation of Subsurface Resources in Ancient Greece
The Greek term metallon may refer to either a mine or a quarry, whether used for the extraction of rock, ore, or salt. In this sense, it does not denote the nature of the resources themselves, but rather their shared origin: the subsurface. This common provenance opens the door to a cross-disciplinary reflection on the exploitation and management of such resources in ancient Greece.
In recent decades, the study of the past has seen a growing interest in environmental questions. A key dimension of this research concerns the relationship between ancient societies and their environment: how did human groups interact with their surroundings to meet their needs, build infrastructure, or produce everyday objects? In this field, the rise of interdisciplinary approaches – at the intersection of archaeological sciences and historical inquiry – combined with recent methodological advances, has led to major developments in the field.
The METALLON workshop aims to present the current state of knowledge on the exploitation of subsurface resources in ancient Greece. Through a variety of approaches and case studies, it seeks to explore the technical, social, and environmental dimensions of these practices. How can we identify and characterize extracted materials – clay, metal, stone – and what can they reveal about the choices made by the societies that utilized them? What extraction methods were employed across different chronological and regional contexts? What can the circulation of these resources tell us about the economic, political, and territorial dynamics of the Aegean world? What impact did these activities have on the environment, and what transformations of the landscape did they generate? Ultimately, temporality is a central thread of this inquiry: how were extractive practices embedded within the longue durée, between continuity, rupture, and adaptation?
