Photo Credit: Philip LaPorta. Photo of PrePottery Neolithic B Flint Quarry in Southern Negev, Israel.

About CINAQ

What CINAQ Offers...

CINAQ offers a variety of activities, programs and resources to pursue its aims.

1. Publication of popular and peer-reviewed scientific readings.

2. Educational activities:

• certificate and non-certificate classes,

• workshops, short courses, field schools,

• mentorship and apprenticeship programs,

• symposia at global and nation scientific conferences.

3. CINAQ Quarry Library: Our library contains world-wide excavation reports and results of prehistoric and modern quarry scientific analyses.

4. CINAQ Lithiotech: Preservation of ancient quarries or quarry elements is accomplished through repository and archives. Interested researchers can examine quarry collections stored in the CINAQ repositories.

5. Funding Source: CINAQ funds global and national scientific research on ancient quarries. Funding sources are provided through grant writing, membership dues and the donations from benefactors.

6. Quarry Research: CINAQ research scientists conduct archaeological and geological laboratory and field research that serves to protect and preserve ancient quarries; or when preservation is not possible, be able to scientifically excavate prehistoric quarries and elements of them for preservation in the CINAQ repository.

7. Land Trust: CINAQ is interested in creating a land trust, where ancient quarries and mines can be donated to, or bought by, the non-profit for the purpose of protection and use for field-school instruction. These materials would provide excavated collections for analysis and publication by the non-profit.

Who CINAQ Benefits....

The beneficiaries of CINAQ’s mission are:

• the educated public,

• federally recognized indigenous groups,

• the scientific and professional communities.

The educated public has an interest in ancient quarries for reasons ranging from love of science, to protection of past-cultural remains on private or public community property. CINAQ also reaches out to federally recognized indigenous communities to share their resources with them and to elucidate the technological advancement of their ancestors. The professional community (consultants and regulators alike), as well as the scientific community, will benefit from the research on quarries that CINAQ will support financially through research grants; as well as through the development and possible employment of methodologies and protocols that reflect the unique resource prehistoric quarries represent.

CINAQ's Values are...

What are our core values and beliefs? CINAQ’s core values and beliefs center on outreach, education, research and dissemination of scientific thought. CINAQ’s founding members seek to inform the Center’s beneficiaries on the existence and importance of a resource that cannot speak for itself. In addition to education, CINAQ recognizes the need for continued research into this resource, in order to elucidate the complicated nature of the physical entity itself; as well as the societal, economic, and possibly religious integuments it presented. Finally, it is through education and research that CINAQ can promote understanding, not only of an oftentimes misinterpreted and misunderstood resource, but of endangered cultures whose very existence was umbilically attached to these entities, especially before European contact. In essence, chert was the fuel of an indigenous economy; much the way hydrocarbons are the fuel for the world today.

Why are we doing what we are doing? For more than three decades, CINAQ’s founding members have witnessed the endless destruction of ancient quarries and early mines. This destruction takes place due to the lack of education, research and understanding where ancient quarries are concerned. The unfortunate result is that lack of knowledge in the scientific, professional, and regulatory communities permits unguided modern-day development to consume these properties at accelerated rates. CINAQ serves as a voice for ancient quarries and early mines and provides education, fosters research and creates understanding in those charged with guiding modern-day development, so that such destruction does not continue in blind fashion.

The non-profit aids in defining the parameters of indigenous tribal groups, their road networks, navigation ways and allocation systems by micropaleontological and chemical analysis of chert tools recovered from archaeological sites throughout the tri-state. This is accomplished by applying our physical and chemical techniques towards provenancing stone tools back to the quarry where they were originally extracted and processed. This element of scientific objectivity aids considerably in defining the parameters of social and cultural groups, the fringe areas of social interaction, the specific loci of ideological practices and ultimately serves to enlighten the various communities as to the sophistication and integrated nature of past cultural lifeways. All this is accomplished through the quarry research and the scientific analysis and publication of the archived excavated collections.

What we also do is quantify the physical activities that took place at quarry and mine sites; thereby elucidating a keen sense of awareness, or cognitive skill, possessed by ancient groups undertaking the extraction of rock from the Earth’s surface. Extraction was accomplished through the application of levers and wedges, and even fire, for the production of economically viable stone tools. The vestiges of this ancient enterprise left behind physical evidence, architectural remains referred to as quarries and mines. CINAQ believes that the architectural surface of the quarry preserves the limits of both mathematical, chemical, and physical treatment of rock surfaces through time; presenting a chronology of quarry types spanning more than 12,000 years. The architectural surface of the quarry clearly illustrates the technological evolution of cultural groups through both practice, folklore, oral history, communication, trade, invention, innovation and ideas.

CINAQ's Overall Vision...

Our vision is for CINAQ to remain a leading institution of scholarly research and investigation of ancient quarries and early mines. CINAQ establishes this through local, state, national and international levels of interaction.

What we Need to Continue....

1. A large building, building complex, or farm facility to house CINAQ's lithiotech, museum, library, labs, and printing press.

2. Donations of land bearing prehistoric quarries, for the purpose of preservation and educational activities related to prehistoric quarries.

3. Funds to help cover operational costs.

4. Volunteers to help with all aspects of CINAQ's mission.