Timeframe
Near East
See also: Ancient Near East § Chalcolithic, and Levantine Chalcolithic
Levant Chalcolithic male figurine, 4500–3500 BC
The emergence of metallurgy may have occurred first in the Fertile Crescent.
Lead may have been the first ore that humans smelted, since it can be easily obtained by heating galena.[8]
Possible early examples of lead smelting, supported by the extreme rarity of native lead,[9] include: lead beads, found on Level IX of Chatal/Çatal Hüyük in central Anatolia, though they might be made of galena, cerussite, or metallic lead, and accordingly might or might not be evidence of early smelting;[10][9] a lead bead, found in a GK59 group test square in the 4th level of Jarmo, dated to the 7th millennium BCE, though it is small enough that its human usage is doubtful;[11] a lead bracelet, found in level XII of Yarim Tepe I, dated to the 6th millennium BC;[12][13] a small cone-shaped piece of lead, found in the "Burnt House" in TT6 at Arpachiyah, dated to the Halaf period or slightly later than the Yarim Tepe bracelet;[13] and more.[8]
Copper smelting is also documented at this site at about the same time period (soon after 6000 BC). However, the use of lead seems to precede copper smelting.[13] Early metallurgy is also documented at the nearby site of Tell Maghzaliyah, which seems to be dated even earlier, and completely lacks pottery.
The Timna Valley contains evidence of copper mining in 7000–5000 BC. The process of transition from Neolithic to Chalcolithic in the Middle East is characterized in archaeological stone tool assemblages by a decline in high quality raw material procurement and use. This dramatic shift is seen throughout the region, including the Tehran Plain, Iran. Here, analysis of six archaeological sites determined a marked downward trend in not only material quality, but also in aesthetic variation in the lithic artefacts. Fazeli & Coningham[14] use these results as evidence of the loss of craft specialisation caused by increased use of copper tools.[14]
The Tehran Plain findings illustrate the effects of the introduction of copper working technologies on the in-place systems of lithic craft specialists and raw materials. Networks of exchange and specialized processing and production that had evolved during the Neolithic seem to have collapsed by the Middle Chalcolithic (c. 4500–3500 BC) and been replaced by the use of local materials by a primarily household-based production of stone tools.[14]
Archaeological evidence from the village of Una in the eastern Caucasus indicates copper mining activities during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages.[15]
Arsenical copper or bronze was produced at two ancient sites in eastern Turkey, Norşuntepe in Elazığ Province and Değirmentepe in Malatya Province, around 4200 BC. According to Boscher (2016), hearths or natural draft furnaces, slag, ore, and pigment had been recovered throughout these sites. This was in the context of Ubaid period architectural complexes typical of southern Mesopotamian architecture. Norşuntepe site demonstrates that some form of arsenic alloying was indeed taking place by the 4th millennium BC. Since the slag identified at Norşuntepe contains no arsenic, this means that arsenic in some form was added separately.[16]