Sulfur mining in Sicily

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Sulfur from a mine near Enna

Entrance to an abandoned sulfur mine near Cianciana

Sulfur mining existed in Sicily until the end of the twentieth century.

history

In ancient times , sulfur was extracted north and east of Agrigento in the triangle Sciacca - Enna - Gela . While in the Middle Ages sulfur was mainly needed for the production of gunpowder , the production of sulfuric acid gained in importance in the industrialized countries since the 19th century .

Around 1900 there were 730 sulfur mines in operation in Sicily, most of which were open-cast mining . 38,000 miners ( zolfatari ) worked here and extracted 3.4 million tons of material, from which 0.54 million tons of pure sulfur were extracted. That was 90% of the total world production. The working conditions remained practically unchanged from antiquity until the 19th century and were characterized by extreme harshness. In a report by Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino from 1876 it can be read that the picconieri (pickaxe workers) who were dependent on the large landowners employed children , so-called carusi between the ages of 7 and 16, who were responsible for transporting the rocks and had to haul up to 80 kilos. The outdated methods and poor equipment often led to firedamp explosions and other fatal accidents. As the oldest railway line in Sicily, the Agrigento – Palermo line was built around 1870 to connect the capital Palermo with the mining areas and the port city of Porto Empedocle . Due to the inhumane working conditions, the zolfatari were the first to form trade unions and to join the Fasci Siciliani movement en masse in the 1890s . At the beginning of the 20th century, however, a decline in production set in, mainly because of the increasing, cheaper competition from the USA .

In 1917 Italy's share of world production had fallen to 14%, in 1965 180 mines were still in operation, in 1983 there were only 13 mines left. Today there is no longer a single operating sulfur mine in Sicily.

geology

The sulfur deposits around Agrigento are of sedimentary origin. As a result of strong subsidence, the Central Sicilian Basin, about 140 km long and 80 km wide , was formed from the Miocene onwards , in which an 8,000 m thick sediment sequence was deposited until the Pleistocene . The most important part of the basin filling is the sulfur-gypsum series, which was created 7.5 to 5 million years ago when the closure of the Strait of Gibraltar cut off the Mediterranean from the oceans and the entire water in the basin was evaporated several times.