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From Timna Valley Database

Timna Valley Database

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

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

Important Notice: This database is a work in progress. Its structure and content are continuously evolving and should be regarded as a preliminary draft, to be used with appropriate caution.

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 from the Neolithic period to the modern era. The extensive data collected in the current study as well as from the previous archaeological missions, primarily 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.

Geographic boundaries

Timna Project Boundaries


View the Timna Map

The area covered in this database is 90 km2; it is bounded by:

  • To the east: Israel Highway 90
  • To the south: Latitude 404000 in the New Israel Transverse Mercator grid (Y_ITM)
  • To the west: Timna Valley cliffs
  • To the north: Latitude 415000 in the New Israel Transverse Mercator grid (Y_ITM)

Where to start

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

CTV team

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.

If you'd like to dig further into our data, you might wish to try one of our Advanced queries.

If you want to export data to other GIS tools use these GIS_Queries.

Suggested Citation

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

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

  • Erez Ben-Yosef, Mark Cavanagh, Shani Evenstein-Sigalov, Eshchar Gichon, Guy Greenberg, Assaf Holzer, Stav Klein, Willie Ondricek, Sarah Richardson, Vered Silber-Varod, and Omri Yagel, 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 Database

Configuration

Sorted properties

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies and Archaeology at Tel Aviv Univeristy for partially supporting the initial stage of this project.

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.

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