The Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) has about 250 km long and up to 60 km wide, trending westward from near Seville in Spain to westnorthwest in south Portugal. The IPB is perhaps the largest and most important volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) metallogenic province in the world. Some of its mineral deposits have been mined since the Chalcolithic era. This large amount of sulfides is concentrated in about ninety known deposits and is originally estimated at more than 1.7 billion tons. This impressive amount of ore represents an exceptional geochemical anomaly of S, Fe, Zn, Cu, Pb, Sn, and several other metals.
São Domingos Mine, type locality for Claudetite, it is located in the Southeast part of Portugal in Mértola region, inside IPB and is one of those historical mining centres that date from pre- and roman times. Between, 1859 and 1966, the "Mason & Barry Lda" mined around 25 million tons of ore, by open-cast operations going down to a depth of 120m with additional underground work to a depth of 400 m. The main activity of the mine was copper concentrate production but 9.9 million tons of cupriferous pyrite were processed as an elementary source of sulphur. From the Industrial archaeology point of view this is one of the most interesting abandoned mines in Portugal.

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