The mine is the worked space where humans extract valuable minerals from the earth. It is one of civilization's oldest and most demanding systems, supplying the metals, fuels, and stones that made every material age possible — from bronze to iron to coal to the lithium of modern batteries. The mine has also long depended on some of the most dangerous and most coerced labor in economic history, and it has left lasting marks on the land, the water, and the communities built around it.
In the copper mines of the Rio Tinto district of southern Spain, archaeologists have found tools and tunnels that suggest extraction going back more than four thousand years. The Roman state worked these mines on a vast scale, using enslaved labor in shafts that descended far underground. The bodies found near the workings show bone damage from years of heavy lifting in tight spaces. The copper and silver that came out helped build the Roman economy. The men and women who dug it out left no names.