Analysis of the fuel wood used in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age copper mining sites of the Schwaz and Brixlegg area (Tyrol, Austria)

Abstract

Charcoal analysis was carried out as part of an interdisciplinary project focusing on the copper mining history of the former mining area of Schwaz and Brixlegg, a region pivotal as a copper source in prehistoric Europe. The goal was to use remains of carbonised wood to investigate environmental implications of prehistoric mining, as well as to gain new insight about the ancient mining technique of fire-setting. Charcoal samples from seven copper mining sites (Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age) were analysed. The results reveal a strong preference for coniferous wood as fuel in fire-setting, but not in ore smelting/roasting processes. Species composition at the ore-processing sites indicates moderate forest degradation processes caused by human intervention.

Resource usage of the hilltop settlement on the Kiechlberg near Thaur (Tyrol, Austria) from Late Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age

“…Théry-Parisot et al 2010;Schweingruber 1976;Kreuz 1988;Dufraisse 2008;Marinova and Thiebault 2008;Vernet 2008, Heiss andOeggl 2008) was mainly conducted on soil samples and secondly on handpicked single pieces. In accordance with the theoretically required numbers of identified charcoal pieces per time period and per archaeological findings (e.g.…”

“…To visualize differences in the charcoal taxa spectra of the samples, results are presented in tables and diagrams which were drawn by the program C2 (Juggins 2007). Additionally, specific charcoal parameters (radius, mean ring width, occurrence of reinforcements, heat damage) were recorded from single pieces according to Ludemann (1996), Ludemann and Nelle (2002), Bräker (1979) and Heiss and Oeggl (2008) to obtain detailed insights into the wood qualities. The radius of the outermost growth ring was measured by adjusting the charcoal piece curvature to a radius stencil to estimate the log diameter from which the charcoal piece originated.…”

13.6 Impacts of Mining on Geomorphic Systems

“…Fire setting, that is, heating rock with fire and then dousing with water, to fracture rock for excavation, has been used for several millennia. Evidence of fire setting for extracting metals has been shown for the Bronze Age (Heiss and Oeggl, 2008). Sand and gravel extraction from rivers has a long history owing to the ready availability of well-sorted materials suitable for building roads and structures (Sear and Archer, 1998).…”

Interdisciplinary characterisation and environmental imprints of mining and forestry in the upper Durance valley (France) during the Holocene

“…Ludemann, 1995;Davasse, 2000;Montanari et al, 2000;Bonhôte et al, 2002;Ludemann and Nelle, 2002) before spreading to other European regions (Gale, 2003;Bond, 2007;Allée et al, 2010). They comprised multidisciplinary approaches that included (i) pollen and charcoal kiln analyses (Davasse and Galop, 1989;Galop and Jalut, 1994), or (ii) dendrochronological analysis of mine timbers (Pichler et al, 2009), or (iii) anthracological study of firesetting charcoals (Téreygeol and Dubois, 2003;Heiss and Oeggl, 2008;Barge and Talon, 2012;Py et al, 2013) or (iv) the analysis of micro-and macro-remains from mining sediments (Mighall et al, 2002a). More recently, the combination of palynological and geochemical analyses has been used to further define human/environment interactions with a renewed approach of mining chronology and the characterisation of environmental imprints from mining, associated activities and metal filiation (Mighall et al, 2002b;Shotyk, 2002;Monna et al, 2004;Baron et al, 2005;Jouffroy-Bapicot et al, 2007;Breitenlechner et al, 2010;Cattin et al, 2011;Garçon et al, 2012).…”