The Albert Silver mine is situated on the farm Roodepoortjie, 32 kilometres north of Brorikhorstspruit in the Transvaal. The deposit forms the largest of a number of sub-parallel quartzhematite lodes accompanied by sulphide mineralization and is accompanied by an extensive alteration zone along its northern flank. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1970.

The mining of silver, although not as significant as the mining of gold, has a history of money being made and lost, as well as instances of fraud and theft. In the late 1880s, when silver and lead deposits were discovered 100 km south-east of Pretoria, the Barnato family was quick to invest and float a company to exploit the deposit. To the north of Pretoria, Alois Nellmapius, later famous as the founder of the Hatherly distillery, established a company to mine a silver and copper rich deposit. The Strubens, pioneers of the Witwatersrand gold fields, discovered a silver rich copper deposit on their farm ‘The Willows’ east of Pretoria. The successful silver mining companies listed on the Stock Exchange in Johannesburg soon attracted the attention of the Randlords of Johannesburg and specifically that of H Eckstein & Co. The development of the company’s activities in silver mining in the 1880s and 1890s forms a significant part of this study. The relationship between the mine owners and their managers during the nineteenth century is explored, along with local and international events in politics and economics that had an impact on the mining of silver in South Africa over the period from 1885 to 1999. Silver mining in South Africa has had a ‘rise and fall’ life from the 1880s with three significant periods of investment, mining activity and decline. As with most commodities, prices vary over time. The international metals market has been a dominant factor in the life of the silver mines of greater Pretoria. The relationship between rising and falling international metal prices, and the operating lives of the mines, form a theme throughout this dissertation as it will be shown that the operating periods all coincided with periods of strong metal prices. In the one hundred and fourteen years, coupled with large tonnages of base metals – lead, copper and zinc - the mines produced over ninety-three tons of silver. Over thirty silver mines and ventures were revealed during the research, but discussing all of them in this dissertation was not feasible. It is therefore limited to the history of the seven mines that produced the greatest amounts of silver and other metals such as lead, copper and zinc and how their individual and interrelated histories together form the dominant part of the history of silver mining in the greater Pretoria region. / History / MA (History)

The mining of silver, although not as significant as the mining of gold, has a history of money being made and lost, as well as instances of fraud and theft. In the late 1880s, when silver and lead deposits were discovered 100 km south-east of Pretoria, the Barnato family was quick to invest and float a company to exploit the deposit. To the north of Pretoria, Alois Nellmapius, later famous as the founder of the Hatherly distillery, established a company to mine a silver and copper rich deposit. The Strubens, pioneers of the Witwatersrand gold fields, discovered a silver rich copper deposit on their farm ‘The Willows’ east of Pretoria. The successful silver mining companies listed on the Stock Exchange in Johannesburg soon attracted the attention of the Randlords of Johannesburg and specifically that of H Eckstein & Co. The development of the company’s activities in silver mining in the 1880s and 1890s forms a significant part of this study. The relationship between the mine owners and their managers during the nineteenth century is explored, along with local and international events in politics and economics that had an impact on the mining of silver in South Africa over the period from 1885 to 1999. Silver mining in South Africa has had a ‘rise and fall’ life from the 1880s with three significant periods of investment, mining activity and decline. As with most commodities, prices vary over time. The international metals market has been a dominant factor in the life of the silver mines of greater Pretoria. The relationship between rising and falling international metal prices, and the operating lives of the mines, form a theme throughout this dissertation as it will be shown that the operating periods all coincided with periods of strong metal prices. In the one hundred and fourteen years, coupled with large tonnages of base metals – lead, copper and zinc - the mines produced over ninety-three tons of silver. Over thirty silver mines and ventures were revealed during the research, but discussing all of them in this dissertation was not feasible. It is therefore limited to the history of the seven mines that produced the greatest amounts of silver and other metals such as lead, copper and zinc and how their individual and interrelated histories together form the dominant part of the history of silver mining in the greater Pretoria region. / History / M.A. (History)

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2019 / South Africa is a land in which mining has played a pivotal role over the last one hundred and fifty years. Silver was one of the metals prospected for and mined during the 1885-1895 period. There were a few silver mines that developed into very successful operations and produced large tonnages of argentiferous lead or copper and the largest of these, and the primary focus of this thesis, was the mine now referred to as the Argent silver mine. This thesis is about the development of mineral beneficiation technology, coupled with excavations and the analysis of the lifeways of the black mine workers at the Argent mine. I intend to follow the trend taken by some archaeologists over the last ten years for such sites in both the UK and the USA and combine an industrial archaeological study with the social or historical archaeological study. This holistic multi-disciplinary approach to industrial or mining sites and their communities helps to provide a more integrated analysis of humans and technology at a particular site (Norris 2009; Ford 2011; Tumberg 2012; Cowie 2015). The Argent Silver Mine appears to have been at the forefront of new and developing mining beneficiation technologies, both in the 1890s and the 1920s. This thesis will show how many of the new beneficiation technologies were apparently employed at the Argent mine before being brought into more general use in other mining industries, such as gold, in South Africa. The social development of South Africa’s black people, from the late nineteenth century, has been one of repression and enforced living conditions. From a formerly agrarian and rural lifestyle they became cogs in the wheels of industrialisation and foremost in this industrial jump, was the mining industry. Mining began in the 1870s with diamonds at Kimberley and gold at Pilgrim’s Rest in eastern Mpumalanga. It was, however, the finding of gold on the Witwatersrand that opened up so many mining industries, of which silver mining was but one, coupled with ancillary engineering support industries. It was this industrialisation that was to change black lives forever and to create the urban black populations of South Africa today. The results of this thesis provide evidence of their lifeways and potential employment positions on a silver mine. / TL (2020)