Kestel

Kestel is an archaeological site of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, with important findings related to the study of tin sources and trade in Antiquity.

Archaeology

Kestel is a probable Bronze Age tin mining site in the Bolkar range of the Taurus Mountains in Anatolia (near the present village of Celaller, in the district of Çamardı, Niğde Province, Turkey). In the Bronze Age, tin was as scarce and valuable as oil is today. It was a vital ingredient of bronze, used together with copper to make this alloy.

K. Aslihan Yener spent years conducting archaeometallurgical prospecting together with the Turkish Geological Survey (MTA) and found cassiterite crystals (tin mineral) in a stream on the foothills of the Taurus Mountains. This mineral is purple; earlier searches had been looking for black mineral because most tin minerals are black. Near the site there was a barren valley with a hill called Kestel that turned out to contain a tin mine. In addition, Bronze Age pottery fragments were found in the mine and its surroundings. Inside there were veins of bright purple tin mineral.

The Kestel mine has two miles (3 km) of tunnels, many of which are only about two feet wide, just enough to allow children to perform the mining work. In an abandoned shaft the burial of between twelve and fifteen children was found, presumably killed while working in the mine.

In 1989, on the summit of a large natural hill called Göltepe, located 2 km opposite the Kestel mine (37.801, 34.934), its collaborators found heaps of Bronze Age pottery, about 50,000 carved stone tools and evidence that this place had been continuously occupied between 3290 and 1840 BC. The hill measures about 60 hectares and is fortified at the summit, with cultural deposits across its entire surface. The size of the settlement is estimated at 8–10 hectares, and combined with the occupation of the Kestel slope probably adds up to a total of 60 hectares in an integrated settlement‑and‑mine system. Much of the city was semi‑subterranean.

The Göltepe pottery provided the definitive proof of tin industry in the Bronze Age. Many thick crucibles coated with slag were found at the site, and analyses revealed that the slag had very high concentrations of tin (from 30 % to almost 100 %). It is likely that, once the ore nuggets were washed, stone tools were used to grind them into powder, and then that powder was heated to melt and extract the tin. All this could be carried out with Bronze Age tools and methods. The Kestel mine ceased production at the end of the 3rd millennium BC.

J. D. Muhly has criticized the reconstruction proposed by Yener. He noted that minerals with high tin content were not found; that the minerals discovered could be more useful for iron mining; that the radiocarbon dating provided places the expansion of the mine in a much later period; that no significant bronze artifacts from southeastern Anatolia are known in the Early Bronze Age; that tin extraction with the Kestel crucibles would require handling microscopic particles of slag; that the Assyrian records of the Middle Bronze point to a tin trade—originating in the east—that extended to Anatolia; and that there is no textual evidence from any period referring to tin extraction in Anatolia.