Since the 1990s, archaeological investigations of prehistoric copper mines have been conducted in the famous mining district of Schwaz/Brixlegg in the Lower Inn Valley, North Tyrol (Austria). A large number of sites (mainly from the Late Bronze Age and up to the Early Iron Age) have been investigated so far with the aim to record and to analyse this extraordinary prehistoric mining landscape. A focal point of research is the reconstruction of the process chain connected to the prehistoric copper production comprising ore mining, beneficiation, and smelting processes. This paper discusses the final step of metal production, the smelting of copper ores. Whereas dozens of prehistoric mines and several sites with traces of mechanical ore treatment have been examined in the last years, only two smelting sites from the period under consideration are known so far. One of these sites, the smelting site Rotholz (municipality of Buch in Tyrol), could be prospected by geophysical methods (geomagnetic) and partly excavated during several campaigns in 2010 and 2015-2017. A detailed documentation of the archaeological remains could be performed in the frame of the DACH-project “Prehistoric copper production in the eastern and central Alps - technical, social and economic dynamics in space and time” (supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the German research foundation DFG and the Swiss National Research Foundation SNF, 2015-2018). The Rotholz smelting site dates into the 12th/11th cent. BC (Late Bronze Age, Urnfield culture, dated by 14C-analysis). The basic raw material used for the local copper production were fahlores which occur in considerable quantities in the Devonian dolomitic hostrock (Schwazer Dolomit). As a result of the excavations a multiphase roasting bed, a battery of four furnaces, a slag heap (crushed slag, slag sand) and many other informative structures could be uncovered and documented. The findings (ceramic, slags, ores, stone tools, animal bones,…) have been furnished to archaeological and archaeometrical analysis.