The Tsumeb mine, located in the town of Tsumeb in the Otavi Mountainland of northern Namibia was, and remains, one of the most spectacular mineralogical occurrences on Earth.
The Tsumeb deposit was a modest-sized but rich producer of copper, lead and zinc, together with a host of byproduct metals including arsenic, cadmium, gallium, germanium and silver.
The outcrop was worked for copper by native Africans in pre-colonial times and then on a commercial scale by European settlers commencing in the early 1900s. The mine has been closed, to all intents and purposes, since 1996 but there is a rich legacy of diverse and informative mineralogical material, much of it in the form of highly aesthetic display-quality specimens. Indeed, Tsumeb can be said to set the benchmark, for aesthetics, for a large number of species, including inter alia azurite, cerussite, dioptase, mimetite and smithsonite – minerals that can be regarded as fundamentals of many fine public and private collections worldwide. Tsumeb is also the type locality for no less than 72 mineral species.
The concept of a website focusing primarily on the mineralogy of Tsumeb is not a new one. The late mineral dealer John Veevaert (1957-2018), of Trinity Minerals, registered the domain name www.tsumeb.com and developed an on-line photographic archive of the Tsumeb specimens that he handled. In 2014 he sold the domain name to Ian Bruce of Crystal Classics Fine Minerals, and tsumeb.com was re-developed as an information resource for collectors and students of Tsumeb minerals.
Tsumeb.com went offline in 2021, mainly for technical reasons. This website, Tsumeb Mine Notebook (TMN) – www.tsumeb.fas.harvard.edu – picks up where tsumeb.com left off, and we are deeply grateful to Ian Bruce for allowing us to develop the new site using similar concepts and imagery to tsumeb.com.
Our thanks are also due to Harvard University for hosting and the Deapartment of Arts & Humanities Research Computing, Harvard University Information Technology for their support.
In developing this website, our aim is to develop a comprehensive resource on the mineralogy of Tsumeb, with associated information on the history of the mine, the geology, the science and the people who have contributed to the Tsumeb story.
In doing so, we hope to educate, elucidate and entertain.
Thank-you for visiting and please feel free to provide us with feedback. If you have information or images that would enhance the Tsumeb Archive please get in touch.
— Malcolm Southwood, Raquel Alonso-Perez, Frank Keutsch