The Role of Gold Mines in Socio-Economic Life of Nearby Satellite Villages

Village is rather a geographical than a social or economic unit and this geographical unit is a container that contains community and economy. Therefore, the village should be the core of any rural research. Humans and their related socio-economic affairs should not be separated from their geographical environment which affects them. More than 50% of rural people’s income is earned from agricultural activities. In addition, other types of activities are also carried out to provide for the livelihood of rural people such as mining, exploition of mineral water, services and handicrafts. The main argument in this paper is to examine the connection between village formation and mine establishment from two perspectives: a) the time of village and mine establishment, b) socio-economic prosperity. Besides this, delicate points will be addressed such as similarity between village and mine names. This paper is the result of an interdisciplinary work between social science and mine engineering fields.