In its initial five years of activity the Central Timna Valley Project has dedicated its efforts to the excavation of several Late Bronze and Iron Age sites (13th-9th centuries BC) in the southern Arabah Valley of Israel (fig. 1).1 The project, headed by Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University, explores the ancient exploitation of copper ores at Timna; these were utilised for the production of copper ingots that were traded throughout the southern Levant and possibly the greater Mediterranean region. It is within the strata of several newly excavated sites that a few hundred individual textile, cordage and rope fragments were uncovered.