Hunt Ortiz, Mark A.Latorre-Ruiz, Juande Dios-Pérez, Miguel ÁngelVázquez-Paz, JacoboArtursson, MagnusGrueso-Montero, ManuelDíaz-Guardamino, MartaStos-Gale, ZofiaLing, Johan2025-07-012025-07-012025Hunt Ortiz, M.A., Latorre-Ruiz, J.,...,Ling, J. (2025). Late Bronze Age copper mining in southern Iberia: preliminary results of fieldwork at Las Minillas (Granja de Torrehermosa, Badajoz, Spain). En Presenting Counterpoints to the Dominant Terrestrial Narrative of European Prehistory (pp. 167-186). Oxforf: Oxbow Books.979-8-88857-184-2979-8-88857-212-2https://hdl.handle.net/11441/174840Evidence of Late Bronze Age copper mining in south-western Iberia is becoming relevant through archaeological investigations and compositional and lead isotopes results from objects from different areas of Northern Europe, although the mineral deposits of Iberia had been very poorly studied. The first results of the excavation campaigns carried out in the mine of Las Minillas (Granja de Torrehermosa, Badajoz, Spain) in 2020, 2022, and 2023 are presented and contextualized, providing key data on the dimension and characteristics of Late Bronze Age mining. During the interval 1300–1000 BC a large effort was made to extract the oxidized copper ore, resulting in a 200 m long trench-type mining work probably using fire-setting together with thousands of stone hammers, to gather an estimated copper quantity of between 0.26 and 0.78 tonnes per year. It is hypothesized that Las Minillas, alongside other similar documented prehistoric mines in the area, could have played a key role in the copper supply system of the European Late Bronze Age, replacing the Great Orme mine (North Wales) as the main supplier of copper in Atlantic Europe at the end of the Bronze Age.application/pdf20engAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPartinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess