Major investigations were undertaken of the Ecton Copper Mines, Staffordshire, following the discovery of hammerstones and a red deer antler tool dating to the Early Bronze Age during surface and underground exploration in the 1990s. Ecton Hill was surveyed, the distribution of hammerstone tools examined, and two identified sites of potential prehistoric mining close to the summit of the hill excavated in 2008 & 2009. Excavations at Stone Quarry Mine revealed no in situ prehistoric mining activity, but hammerstones and Early Bronze Age bone mining tools from upcast suggest that an historic mine shaft had intersected Bronze Age workings at around 10–25 m depth. On The Lumb one trench revealed evidence for medieval lead mining, while another examined the lowest of four primitive mines associated with cave-like mine entrances along the base of a small cliff. Evidence for prehistoric mining was recorded within a shallow opencut formed by during extraction of malachite from a layer of mineralised dolomite. Traces of the imprint of at least 18 bone and stone tools could be seen and seven different types of working were identified. Most prehistoric mining debris appears to have been cleared out during the course of later, medieval–post-medieval prospection; some bone and stone tools were recovered from this spoil. The tip of a worn and worked (cut) antler tine point was the only such mining tool found in situ at this site but nine tools were radiocarbon dated to c. 1880–1640 cal bc. Bayesian modelling of the dates from both sites probably indicates mining over a much briefer period (perhaps 20–50 years) at 1800–1700 cal bc, with mining at Stone Quarry possibly beginning earlier and lasting longer than on The Lumb. A single date from The Lumb suggests possible renewed mining activity (or prospection?) during the Middle Bronze Age. The dating of this mining activity is consistent with the idea that mining and prospection moved eastwards from Ireland to Wales, then to central England, at the beginning of the 2nd millennium bc. At Ecton the extraction of secondary ores may have produced only a very small tonnage of copper metal. The mine workers may have been Early Bronze Age farmers who occupied this part of the Peak District seasonally in a transhumant or sustained way