This book provides a comprehensive history of the early development of extractive metallurgy, and has become the standard textbook for many students of ancient metallurgy. The author draws on historic documentary sources, laboratory investigation, archaeological discoveries and experimental replication from across the world to provide a comprehensive description of the mining and smelting of metals. For millennia, technical advancement has been intimately linked with the production of metals and this work brings together evidence for the very inception of mining and smelting, showing that early techniques were often different from what had previously been believed. Interpretations and insights are given into many aspects from the very earliest metal production right through to the blast furnaces and high temperature distillation units which heralded the Industrial Revolution. There has been a considerable advance in archaeometallurgical research since this book was first published but the main statements remain valid and most of the more speculative judgements made at that time have been shown to be correct. This paperback edition is an unchanged reprint of the original edition, published in 1995.