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Roman Mining at Dolaucothi: the Implications of the 1991–3 Excavations near the Carreg Pumsaint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Barry C. Burnham
Barry C. Burnham
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Lampeter
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Extract

The mine workings at Dolaucothi have been a focus for considerable archaeological research during the better part of this century. They were first systematically described by Bosanquet and Haverfield in 1917, while their probable Roman date was underlined by the discovery of several well-preserved wooden objects (including a fragment from the rim of a drainage wheel of well-known type) when miners broke into underground stopes beneath the main opencast in the mid-1930s (FIG. I, NO. 4). The most detailed investigation of the site was undertaken in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Jones and Lewis. This saw a detailed survey of the principal surface workings, an examination of the Cothi leat and its associated features, the discovery of the so-called Annell leat, and the excavations within the newly-discovered fort under the village of Pumsaint. This work still forms the basis of our overall understanding of the early phases of exploitation at Dolaucothi, although much of the detail remains unpublished.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 28 , November 1997 , pp. 325 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Barry C. Burnham 1997. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 R.G. Bosanquet and F.J. Haverfield, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Carmarthenshire (RCAHM, 1917), 25-37.

2 Davies, O., Arch. Camb. xci (1936), 51–7Google Scholar ; Boon, G.C. and Williams, C., JRS lvi (1966), 122–7.Google Scholar

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4 B.C. Burnham in B.C. Burnham and J.L. Davies (eds), Conquest, Co-existence and Change: Recent Work in Roman Wales, 161-6; G.D.B. Jones and K. Maude in ibid., 169-71; Bick, D. and Boon, G.C., Britannia xxiv (1993), 247–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Burnham, B.C. in Ford, T.D. and Willies, L. (eds), Mining before Powder, Peak District Mines Historical Society Bulletin 12, no. 3, (1994), 41–7.Google Scholar

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11 Analyses undertaken by the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Wales, Swansea.

12 Calibration of the samples produces an age range of 15 Cal BC-321 Cal AD and 966 Cal BC-441 Cal BC respectively at the 95 per cent confidence level. Calibration kindly undertaken by the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, with reference to Struiver, M. and Reimer, P. J., Radiocarbon xxxv (1993), 215–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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16 M.J.T. Lewis, Millstone and Hammer: the Origins of Water Power (1996), esp. Section 2. I should like to thank the author for allowing me access to the text prior to its publication in view of the relative importance of the Carreg Pumsaint and the 1982 mill complex to part of his overall argument.

17 ibid., 76 and 78.

18 ibid., 65-7 on ore stamps. I am especially grateful also to M.J.T. Lewis for providing me with copies of the relevant articles relating to the discovery of mortar stones in Spain and Portugal, which form the basis of what follows; Domergue, viz. C., Les Mines de la Péninsule Ibérique dans l'Antiquilé Romaine, Collection de l'Ecole Française de Rome 127 (1990)Google Scholar ; Palencia, F.-J. Sanchez, Zephyrus 37/8 (1984/1985), 349–59Google Scholar ; F.-J. Sanchez Palencia in C. Domergue (ed.), Mineriay Metallurgia en las Antiquas Civilizaciones Mediterraneasy Europeas (1989), 35-49; and J. Wahl in H. Steuer and U. Zimmerman (eds), Montanarchdologie in Europa (1993), 123-52.

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21 Sanchez Palencia, op. cit. (note 18, 1984/5), 356 and fig. 4.

22 Bachicón de Fresnedo: Sánchez Palencia, op. cit. (note 18, 1984/5), 356 and fig. 5; op. cit. (note 18, 1989), 41 and fig. 4; Cecos: Sánchez Palencia, op. cit. (note 18, 1984/5), 356 and pl. 5.

23 Sánchez Palencia, op. cit. (note 18, 1984/5), 356 and pl. 8.

24 Domergue, op. cit. (note 18, 1990), 497 and pl. XXVIIb.

25 Wahl, op. cit. (note 18), fig. 18.

26 Bosanquet and Haverfield, op. cit. (note 1), fig. 38.

27 Lewis, op. cit. (note 3), fig. 15.

28 B.C. Burnham and H.B. Burnham, Excavations at Dolaucothi 1992: Interim Report, figs 6 and 7.

29 For similar stones of medieval date see R.H. Worth in G.M. Spooner and F.S. Russell, Worth's Dartmoor (1967), fig. 96 and pl. 67B.

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32 Jones and Maude, op. cit. (note 4), 170-9.