Flint mine

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Flint fields on Rügen

A flint mine is a shaft sunk into the ground, but usually a series of shafts and tunnels in which flint was extracted.

Flint mines are documented as early as the Paleolithic . The oldest form of mining is the occasional use of mines . Small work teams go to flint mines to extract raw material for the manufacture of equipment. The occasional use of flint mines was still common in large parts of North America in historical times; it is still found in New Guinea today . In the Neolithic , especially since the Michelsberg culture , flint mining evidently took on greater proportions.

chronology

The oldest mining moderate degradation of flint may be approximately two meters deep pits on the reference Nazlet Khater 4 ( Upper Egypt ) are occupied. According to radiocarbon data, he found around 35,000–30,000 BC. Instead of. The oldest flint quarrying in Europe is from around 13,000 BC. In Poland, where a layer leading to the flint was dug in pits. Not far from Askola in southern Finland it was discovered around 7500 BC. Flint quarried in a quarry. The oldest mining in Germany was determined by excavation from 1984 to 1987 in Arnhofen (Abensberg) on the Franconian Alb , which is also the largest area in Central Europe. A total of at least 8000 shafts were dug in Arnhofen and around 90 tons of flint were extracted. The typical Arnhofer flint, gray-banded with reddish stripes, appears in settlements from the 5th millennium. The Rijckholt mine near Maastricht in Limburg (3000 BC) has around 5000 shafts. The number and size of the tunnels show that around 41,250 m³ of flint lumps have been extracted here over time.

In the late Mesolithic , flint mining increased, but the majority of the mines were established in the Neolithic. The Neolithic farmers used significantly more flint tools.

Procedure

Mining is understood to mean all scheduled work for exploration, extraction, extraction and processing of the flint found in deposits . It was possible wherever layers containing flint came close to the surface. The need for large quantities could only be satisfied by mining methods, a distinction being made between opencast mining and civil engineering . Mining techniques were used where the geological conditions were appropriate. Mines were found e.g. B. at Hov in North Jutland , where archaeological excavations have revealed a number of pits. The Stone Age miners dug holes underground to find flint. When they found what they were looking for, they widened the holes. In the upper layers, where the risk of collapse was greatest, they dug pits with sloping walls. Further down, the chalk became more stable and shafts were dug until a layer of flint was found, often at depths of 5–6 meters. Horizontal passages were dug there to collect as much flint as possible. In one of the largest mines, the Stone Age people followed the flint layers over an area of ​​more than 60 m².

Open pit

A preliminary stage of opencast mining is simply picking up flint lumps or slabs on the surface.

Graves are the quarrying of flint that lies just below the surface. The dismantling took place after covering the top layer. In this way, the beach ridges in Denmark were mainly used.

When Kuhlenbau round or square, about man deep holes were up to the flint deposit drilled . The area of ​​the excavation was around four square meters. In the case of layers with poor stability, the pit could have been sloped into a funnel shape. A shaft twelve meters deep could have a diameter of twelve meters at the surface and three meters at the bottom.

The pingen construction (funnel-shaped recess) is led to the leading layer of flint, but after the bottom has been exploited, the day opening is widened in order to be able to continue the extraction of the flint. The original cross-section of around four square meters could develop into a trench-like pinge ten meters or more in length and took on the character of a quarry.

Underground mining

When deep reduction , a distinction the Duckelbau and Weitungsbau .

Duckelbau

The simpler and more common method is to sink a shaft down to the flint layer and expand it radially at the bottom . These widenings are often irregular and very small, but can also be several meters long. Abandoned voids were filled with excavation material. This saved removal and reduced the risk of collapse.

Expansion construction

The expansion construction is a further developed civil engineering process with several shafts and a complicated cave system, which allows an expansion of the mine field. From the shaft, stretches (from which mining was carried out) with a width of 0.60-1.0 m and an average height of 80 cm at the level of the layer were driven and widened in all directions. There is no evidence of a shaft extension using formwork.

Well-known flint mines

See also

literature

  • Julius Andree : Mining in the past. Volume 1: Mining on flint, copper, tin and salt in Europe. In addition to an appendix: Mining extraction of calcite, ocher and rock crystal (= prehistoric times. Evidence and summaries from the field of prehistory research. 2, ZDB -ID 570756-0 ). Kabitzsch, Leipzig 1922.
  • Alexander Binsteiner : The deposits and the mining of Bavarian Jura chimneys as well as their distribution in the Neolithic of Central and Eastern Europe. In: Yearbook Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz. Vol. 52, No. 1, 2005, ISSN  0076-2741 , pp. 43-155, doi : 10.11588 / jrgzm.2005.1.18860 .
  • Sabine Gayck: Prehistoric Silex Mining in Europe. A critical analysis of the current state of research (= contributions to the prehistory and early history of Central Europe. 15). Beier & Beran, Langenweißbach-Weissbach 2000, ISBN 3-930036-22-3 (also: Cologne, University, Master's thesis, 1993).
  • Heinrich Quiring: The shafts, tunnels and mining areas of the Stone Age and antiquity. In: Journal for the mining, metallurgy and saltworks in the Prussian state. Vol. 80, 1932, ISSN  0372-8072 , pp. B 274 - B 297.
  • Gerd Weisgerber , Rainer Slotta , Jürgen Weiner: 5000 years of flint mining. The search for the steel of the Stone Age. Exhibition in the German Mining Museum Bochum from October 24, 1980 to January 31, 1981 (= publications from the German Mining Museum Bochum. 77). 3rd, improved, enlarged and updated edition. German Mining Museum, Bochum 1999, ISBN 3-921 533-66-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archaeologists examine flint mining near Olten