Sardinian ore deposits and metals in the Bronze Age

A wide range of mineral deposits, which bear marks of exploitation tracing back to the earliest times of the local human settlement, occur in Sardinia. The obsidian industry, whose products are found in many sites of the Mediterranean area, is worth mentioning. Copper and silver appear in the late Neolithic (Ozieri culture), probably of external origin at first, and soon afterwards obtained from local minerals after the processing methods were acquired. Local ore sources can be identified by ideally restoring the outcrops of known mineral deposits, because only surface occurrences were available to primeval miners. A complete panel is therefore proposed mainly for copper, iron, lead and silver, while tin and gold are to be excluded from the locally available metals in the Bronze Age. The lead isotope ratios from the analised lead scraps of Nuragic culture collected all over the island mainly point to place the origin of the ores in the Cambrian mineral deposits of SW Sardinia, and this district is suggested as the leading center of production and trade of Sardinian ancient mining history.