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The article analyses the review of mining contracts and concessions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, signed by illegitimate governments during the country's period of political instability and civil war. The article demonstrates that the discourse and activities around this revisitation were more style than substance, and reveals little increase in awareness by political decision-makers in the DRC. In the international arena, in spite of the new forms of regulation, the notion of 'free mining' dominates and continues to dictate asymmetrical power relations within the DRC's mining sector. As a result, certain actors continue to dominate negotiations within mining's complex industrial structure, to the detriment of other key actors, including the Congolese state, and especially the population of the DRC who bear the burden of mining's heavy economic and environmental impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon the payroll and personnel files from two mining companies in Kirkland Take, the Take Shore Gold Mines and the Wright-Hargreaves Mines, this paper examines the significance of absences from work during the years 1927 to 1943. Miners, the best paid industrial workers in Canada, were able to take advantage of the organization of work that included overtime and bonus. Taking in extra money while enjoying high salaries, miners could indulge in the practice of occasional absenteeism in the form of unpaid vacations and extended Sunday that amounted to creating the "weekend." The pattern of absenteeism differed according to the mine, the occupation and the nature of the work, whether it was surface or underground. The practice, however, was in place well before the adoption of the two weeks' paid vacation in Ontario in 1944 and the 40-hour workweek at the beginning of the 1950s. Absenteeism was not only a by-product of accidents, industrial disease or lay-offs. Miners could stay home simply because they wanted free time and freedom from owners and bosses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire-setting to open up mines has been used on hard rock since prehistoric times. In the copper-mining district of Cabrie`res, the existence of metre-sized spherical or sub-spherical cavities, sometimes spaced along the same vertical in an ore seam, has usually been ascribed to this method . Two AMS 14C dating of micro-charcoal found in dolomite and of burnt ore breccias related to extraction in these cavities give the ages 3830 ± 40 BP, cal BC 2340–2130 and 3900 ± 40 BP, cal BC 2480–2280, which is the first evidence in France of the use of fire-setting in prehistoric mines. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The settlement of Chalcolithic metalworkers of La Capitelle du Broum is a truly outstanding site. The first AMS 14C dating (3rd millennium BC) reveals it as the oldest site in the mining and metallurgy district of Cabrie`res. It is of the same age as the oldest metallurgy site discovered in continental France (Roquemengarde). It includes, near the prehistoric copper mines already discovered, double-facing dry-stone walls of the Fontbouisse type and a variety of metallurgy structures. Metalworking tools, including one of the very rare ingot crucibles known from this period in Western Europe, are found alongside ceramics typical of the Late Neolithic (Broum type?). To cite this article: P. Ambert et al., C. R. Palevol 1 (2002) 67–74. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]