Roman lime distillery Iversheim
 Modern protective structure. The lime kiln reconstructed for the firing test is located under the small roof. |
|
| Data | |
|---|---|
| place | Bad Münstereifel- Iversheim |
| Art |
Archaeological site
|
| operator |
DVI-Iversheim
|
| Website | |
| ISIL | DE-MUS-308918 |
The Roman lime distillery in Iversheim is the museum extension of a former ancient lime factory . It consisted of six adjacent lime kilns , which were operated by Roman legionaries of Legio XXX Ulpia Victrix and Legio I Minervia, presumably in the period from 150 AD to 300 AD.
Bad Münstereifel- Iversheim in the district of Euskirchen , North Rhine-Westphalia , lies on the northern edge of the Sötenicher Kalkmulde, the northernmost of the Eifelkalkmulden. In Iversheim, dolomite was mined and processed into quicklime until the 20th century .
The facility was discovered by chance in 1966 while a water pipe was being built and was excavated by the Rheinisches Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege by 1968 . Today there is a protective structure over part of the facility, in which three of the ovens can be viewed. The exhibition in the protective structure shows the excavation findings, the ovens were not restored. The furnace outside the protective structure, restored for the firing test, is freely accessible. The two other ovens were filled in again after the inventory.
The six kilns were originally located under a hall roof supported by pillars and about 30 meters long. A wall divided the hall into two work areas, each with three ovens. The hall stood on a slope on the edge of the Erft valley . The quarry was above the distillery, which simplified the workflow. The quick lime was transported to the construction site without being slaked. One of the kilns was found with a complete, not yet cleared lime filling, which suggests that the plant was abandoned in a hurry. In the course of the excavation, 17 of the 1,700-year-old lime filling that was solidified by soil moisture was removed. This clarified the functionality of the ovens. The design of the ovens has a number of unique features. The floor plan is pear-shaped with a length of about three meters. The total height is about four meters. The lighting and ventilation opening ("snout") is 40 cm wide and 80 cm high. It is not, as usual, at floor level of the combustion chamber, but at a height of two meters above the floor. Above the muzzle, the oven bench runs all around, a brick ledge that is structurally necessary for operation.
At the beginning of a new firing was barrel-shaped on the stove an upwardly domed falsework placed in wood, which tapered off toward the muzzle. Presumably, the falsework was additionally supported by tree trunks that stood on the floor of the fire chamber. On the falsework, the so-called “sky” was placed from individual rows of dolomite stones, which formed a self-supporting vault through the mutual pressure of the stones . Then the filling with raw rock came up to the upper edge. The stove was lit by the snout. The falsework burned or could be removed through the muzzle before burning if skilfully constructed. If the sky was set correctly, it would hold the load of about 25 tons of raw rock. Willow and poplar wood served as fuel. The firing process took a week, including the time to cool. The furnace was then emptied and reloaded.
The air sucked in through the muzzle during the burning was circulated in the combustion chamber and heated to over 1000 ° C. It then accelerated upward through the loading and heated the stones.
After the excavation, one of the ovens was repaired and reconstructed so that a burning test could be carried out. The burning test was successful and confirmed the theories about the type of furnace and charging.
literature
- Walter Sölter : Roman lime burners in the Rhineland. (= Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Landschaftsschutz [Hrsg.]: Rheinische Kunststätten. Issue 490). 1st edition. Neusser Druckerei und Verlag GmbH, Neuss 2005, ISBN 3-88094-885-2 .
- Walter Sölter: Iversheim - Roman Lime Manufactory. In: Walter Sölter (Ed.): The Roman Germania from the air. 2nd Edition. Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1983, ISBN 3-7857-0298-1 . P. 231 ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Oliver Stoll : "Ordinatus Architectus" - Roman military architects and their significance for technology transfer. In: Oliver Stoll: Roman Army and Society. Collected articles 1991–1999 (= Mavors. Vol. 13). Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07817-7 , pp. 300–368, here p. 315.
- ↑ Die Eifeler Kalkmulden ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 50 ° 35 '17.3 " N , 6 ° 46' 26.4" E