How to Cite
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Published
Downloads
Antike Tuffbergwerke am Laacher See-Vulkan
With the tuff mines around the Laacher See volcano, we grasp the roots of the building stone industry in Central Europe. It was the master builders who came from the Mediterranean region as part of the Augustan expansion and urbanisation policy who brought the knowledge of stone architecture to our region. Quarried in extensive tunnel systems, the valuable stone was used from the beginning for the construction of representative large-scale buildings. Eloquent evidence of this is the so-called Ubier Monument in Cologne, the oldest stone building in Roman Germany. As an early export hit, tuff was the first "lightweight building stone" and a sought-after building material on ancient and medieval large-scale construction sites. Based on this 2000-year tradition, the tuff industry is still an important economic factor in the region today.
In the book, the 59 known ancient mines are described in detail, as are the techniques used to extract and process stone. The unusually good sources also allow a well-founded assessment of the yield of the deposits. Research on the numerous quarry and consecration inscriptions sheds new light on the sanctuaries in tuff mining and provides insight into the religious imagination of the people working there. A detailed study by Lutz Grunwald on the pottery from the mines led to a completely new assessment of the medieval mining activities.
