Medieval silver production and its impact on the environment and social structures: multidisciplinary approaches
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The communication will highlight two the most archaeologically visible impacts of medieval production of silver – the essential coinage metal and blood in the veins of economies in the “Old World”. The first was the environmental impact, which was followed by drastic deforestation and contamination of soils with heavy metals. The second was the establishment of settlements of miners and metallurgists by the mines. These settlements, in all respects different from villages or towns, were short-term and temporary, but at the time of the first historically documented boom of silver production in the Kingdom of Bohemia in the 13th century, they represented a not inconsiderable part of cultural landscapes. The topic will be presented on several archaeological examples from the Central Bohemian Highlands (CZ), where multidisciplinary research, containing archaeological excavations followed by large-scale magnetic survey and geochemical as well as archaeobotanical approaches, has been advanced over the last 20 years. |
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