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Photo by Thomas E. Levy

Uncovering a four-room workhouse at Khirbat en-Nahas, excavators found more than 350 grinding and pounding tools, indicating that copper was processed here in large quantities as early as the ninth century B.C.E. Charcoal in the early levels below this building and from different slag mounds at the site was radiocarbon-dated to the 12th–11th century B.C.E., thus demonstrating that the Edomites conducted significant metallurgical activities in the lowlands for hundreds of years before they settled the highlands.