Main Page

Timna Valley Database

Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef on Site 34 at Timna Valley

Welcome to the main page of the Timna Valley Database! :-)

The Timna Valley is one of the oldest and best-preserved copper mining areas in the world. Since the late 1950s, it has served as a "field laboratory" for the study of ancient metallurgy and human activity in hyper-arid regions. Since 2012, a comprehensive archaeological study has been carried out by the Central Timna Valley (CTV) Project on behalf of Tel Aviv University and led by Prof. Erez Ben Yosef. This research, which includes extensive surveys and excavations, focuses on the application of new dating methods and analysis of technological and social processes from the genesis of human activity in the region during the Neolithic period until the modern era. The extensive data collected in the current study as well as from the previous archaeological missions, namely the “Arabah Expedition” led by Prof. Beno Rothenberg, includes thousands of digital files, photos, maps, field report tables, results of laboratory analyses, etc., most of which are associated with a specific site inside the valley. Currently, the CTV Project is working on producing a GIS of the valley and its archaeology as well as publishing the final reports of its excavations as a printed monography. Since the published material will be very limited, the Project wishes to develop a digital database that will contain all the archaeological data collected in Timna by the current and past expeditions, which will be available to other researchers and the public. Together with the TAD team [[1]], we have been examining various options for building such a database, including the use of Wiki platforms like Wikibase and Wikidata.

Where to start

Some suggested starting point to see the content of this wiki:

• Search (top right) for something or someone you expect to find
• Timna sites map
• List of all items
• List of all properties (if nothing shows, hit find on the landing page)
• Query service

CTV team

• The Central Timna Valley (CTV) team

• Honorary CTV volunteers

• One-time volunteers

Starter Queries

To get a sense of what sort of data we have collected, and the benefits of organizing data about Timna Valley sites as linked data, try one of our starter queries.

Suggested Citation

To cite an individual item in the Timna Valley Database please use the following format:

• Timna Valley Database (https://timna-database.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Item:QXXX, DATE ACCESSED), LABEL, IDENTIFIER.
  • For example: Timna-database Database (https://timna-database.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Item:Q507, 20 June 2024), Site 002, Q507.

To cite the project and web site as a whole please use the following format:

• Erez Ben-Yosef, Vered Silber-Varod, Guy Greenberg, Eschar Gichon, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, and Stav Klein, Digital Database for the Material and Cultural Heritage of the Timna Valley (https://timna-database.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Main_Page, 2024).

Subsequent citation might be shortened to:

• Timna Valley

Acknowledgements

We thank the Wikimedia movement, specifically the Wikidata & Wikibase communities, for developing, maintaining, and supporting this vital infrastructure.

Publisher Declaration

This wiki is published by the Timna Valley Database Project Team. We are legally responsible for its content.