- flint mines of Champ à Cailloux
- mines of Champ à Cailloux
- Excavations in Champ à Cailloux
UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
---|---|
Location | Spiennes, Mons, Hainaut, Wallonia, Belgium |
Criteria | Cultural: (i), (iii), (iv) |
Reference | 1006 |
Inscription | 2000 (24th Session) |
Area | 172 ha (430 acres) |
Website | www |
Coordinates | 50°25′11″N3°58′55″E / 50.41983°N 3.98183°E |
The Neolithic flint mines of Spiennes are among the largest and earliest Neolithic flint mines which survive in north-western Europe, located close to the Walloon village of Spiennes, southeast of Mons, Belgium. [1] The mines were active during the mid and late Neolithic between 4,300 and 2,200 BC. Declared to be "remarkable for the diversity of technological solutions used for extraction" the site and its surroundings were inducted into the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 2000. [2]
Discovered in 1843, the first excavations were undertaken by the mining engineer Alphonse Briart and two others during railway construction in 1867, [3] with results presented to the International Prehistoric Congress held in Brussels in 1872. [4] Intermittent excavations have been carried out up to the present day. [5]
The Mines of Spiennes cover some 100 ha (250 acres) of downland four miles south-east of the city of Mons. The site is dotted with millions of scraps of worked flint and numerous mining pits, that Neolithic settlers have gradually turned into vertical mine shafts to depths of over 10 m (33 ft). Underneath is an elaborate man-made network of caverns accessible via the many shafts. [2] [6]
A seminal stage of human inventiveness, technological and cultural application and progress, the transition between opencast and underground mining for flint nodules is impressively displayed and documented. Research has illustrated Neolithic techniques for the cutting of the flint and the extraction of large slabs of flint, that weighed up to hundreds of kilos. The nodules were extracted using flint picks. The stones were then knapped into rough-out shapes of axes, and finally polished to achieve the final state.
The rough-outs were exchanged over a wide area, about 150 km (93 mi), and were often polished at their destination. Polishing strengthens the final product, making the axe- or adze-head last longer. The smooth surface also aids the cutting action by lowering friction with the wood. The axes were used initially for forest clearance during the Neolithic period, and for shaping wood for structural applications, such as timber for huts and canoes.
An interpretative centre called SILEX'S opened in spring 2015. There is a museum on the surface and it is normally possible to descend into a mine. [7] [8]
The site has been compared with Grimes Graves and Cissbury in the United Kingdom, and Krzemionki in Poland, which are also sources of flint stone. However, different hard rocks were used for the polished stone axes. There are several locations in Britain where fine-grained igneous or metamorphic rock was collected from screes or opencast mines, then roughed out locally before trading on to other parts of the country. Examples include the Langdale axe industry, Penmaenmawr and Tievebulliagh.
Mons is a city and municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the province of Hainaut, Belgium.
Alphonse Briart (1825–1898) was supervisor of the coal mines at Bascoup and Mariemont near Morlanwelz in the Hainaut province of Belgium, and a geologist who studied that region. During the period 1863–1896 he and Francois Cornet published a number of books and papers describing fossils and geological structures found near Mons. They devised theories - now generally accepted - as to the geological history of the region. After Cornet's death in 1887, Briart continued to write alone.
The Langdale axe industry is the name given by archaeologists to a Neolithic centre of specialised stone tool production in the Great Langdale area of the English Lake District. The existence of the site, which dates from around 4,000–3,500 BC, was suggested by chance discoveries in the 1930s. More systematic investigations were undertaken by Clare Fell and others in the 1940s and 1950s, since when several field surveys of varying scope have been carried out.
Chasséen culture is the name given to the archaeological culture of prehistoric France of the late Neolithic, which dates to roughly between 4500 BC and 3500 BC. The name "Chasséen" derives from the type site near Chassey-le-Camp (Saône-et-Loire).
Spiennes is a sub-municipality of the city of Mons located in the province of Hainaut, Wallonia, Belgium. It was a separate municipality until 1977. On 1 January 1977, it was merged into Mons.
Blandas is a commune in the Gard department in southern France. It is known for its proximity to the Cirque de Navacelles and the town encompasses one of the principal overlooks on the Cirque. It is also known for its exceptional megalithic sites. It is included in the UNESCO world heritage site "The Causses and the Cévennes, Mediterranean agro-pastoral Cultural Landscape"
Fire-setting is a method of traditional mining used most commonly from prehistoric times up to the Middle Ages. Fires were set against a rock face to heat the stone, which was then doused with liquid, causing the stone to fracture by thermal shock. Some experiments have suggested that the water did not have a noticeable effect on the rock, but rather helped the miners' progress by quickly cooling down the area after the fire. This technique was best performed in opencast mines where the smoke and fumes could dissipate safely. The technique was very dangerous in underground workings without adequate ventilation. The method became largely redundant with the growth in use of explosives.
The history of Wallonia, from prehistoric times to the present day, is that of a territory which, since 1970, has approximately coincided with the territory of Wallonia, a federated component of Belgium, which also includes the smaller German-speaking Community of Belgium. Wallonia is the name colloquially given to the Walloon Region. The French word Wallonie comes from the term Wallon, itself coming from Walh. Walh is a very old Germanic word used to refer to a speaker of Celtic or Latin.
Peyre-Brune is a Neolithic dolmen situated near Saint-Aquilin in the department of the Dordogne, France.
Archaeology of Lebanon includes thousands of years of history ranging from Lower Palaeolithic, Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and Crusades periods.
Krzemionki, also Krzemionki Opatowskie, is a Neolithic and early Bronze Age complex of flint mines for the extraction of Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian) banded flints located about eight kilometers north-east of the Polish city of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. It is one of the largest known complexes of prehistoric flint mines in Europe together with Grime's Graves in England and Spiennes in Belgium.
Tell Aswad, Su-uk-su or Shuksa, is a large prehistoric, neolithic tell, about 5 hectares (540,000 sq ft) in size, located around 48 kilometres (30 mi) from Damascus in Syria, on a tributary of the Barada River at the eastern end of the village of Jdeidet el Khass.
Frédéric Abbès is a French archaeologist working on postdoctoral research, specialising in the stone or lithic industry of the Near East and Mediterranean. He has worked on important archaeological sites such as Tell Aswad and El Kowm.
The Sands of Beirut were a series of archaeological sites located on the coastline south of Beirut in Lebanon.
Heavy Neolithic is a style of large stone and flint tools associated primarily with the Qaraoun culture in the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, dating to the Epipaleolithic or early Pre-Pottery Neolithic at the end of the Stone Age. The type site for the Qaraoun culture is Qaraoun II.
Pointe de la Torche is a promontory located at the southeastern end of the Baie d'Audierne in the commune of Plomeur in the Bigouden region of Finistère, France. It is an officially recognised natural site and at the top of the promontory is a prehistoric settlement and burial site that is registered as a historic monument.
Jean Auguste Hippolyte Houzeau de Lehaie was a Belgian biologist and horticulturist who devoted his career to the botany of bamboo species and the introduction of many into European gardening practice through his property, L'Hermitage, near Mons in the Belgian province of Hainaut. He was also a student of the temperate terrestrial orchids of Belgium and France.
Flint mining is the process of extracting flint from underground. Flint mines can be as simple as a pit on the surface or an area of quarrying, or it may refer to a series of shafts and tunnels used to extract flint.
Actes du XIVème congrès UISPP, Université de Liège, Belgique, 2 – 8 septembre 2001(in French)
Media related to Spiennes at Wikimedia Commons