DOI Artikel:
Witthöft, Harald: Early Medieval mining and smelting in the Harz Mountains - historical perspectives
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56859#0141
109
sevene in de lenge- between any of those 13 pits (grove), measuring 5 by 7 seven
feet (vote) each, there shall be an interspace of 13 feet (Bode 1896, 218.
Ziegenbalg 1984, 44). Surveying and the use of adequate instruments and units
of measurement such as foot (vot) and pit (grove) at the Harz Mountains are
doubtless even older.
Sciences like Historical Geography
have successfully made use of such
metrological traditions in analysing
fields and field-systems of a specific
structure, origin and age.31 It seems
likely that different kinds of remains
and relics in and around the Harz
Mountains, for example charcoal-kilns,
pits, furnaces or cart-ruts, might be
treated in a similar way. The statutes
and other sources of a later period,
containing data on a specific natural or
legal order of mining and related
activities by means of numbers,
measures and weights, may provide the
decisive clues to hidden information,
even back to the early Middle Ages.
In applying such a method, one
should not be looking for precise
metric dimensions i.e. measurements in
feet, inches or centimetre, but rather
for sensible ratios of whole numbers,
i. e. modules within regular structures
of comparable sizes - as in the
Rammelsberg statute from 1271: a pit
(grove) 5 feet wide and 7 feet long. A
standard measure of length to start
from could be the Goslar bronze ell
(Fig. 7), which has survived and is the
oldest of its type in Germany. It is
Fig. 1
Bronce Ell, Goslar, early 14th century,
now being kept in the Town Hall,
carrying in gothic letters the inscription
„Dit.is.de.rechte.Elne.der.Borgere“
31 Vid. now Dunin-Wasowicz 2000.
sevene in de lenge- between any of those 13 pits (grove), measuring 5 by 7 seven
feet (vote) each, there shall be an interspace of 13 feet (Bode 1896, 218.
Ziegenbalg 1984, 44). Surveying and the use of adequate instruments and units
of measurement such as foot (vot) and pit (grove) at the Harz Mountains are
doubtless even older.
Sciences like Historical Geography
have successfully made use of such
metrological traditions in analysing
fields and field-systems of a specific
structure, origin and age.31 It seems
likely that different kinds of remains
and relics in and around the Harz
Mountains, for example charcoal-kilns,
pits, furnaces or cart-ruts, might be
treated in a similar way. The statutes
and other sources of a later period,
containing data on a specific natural or
legal order of mining and related
activities by means of numbers,
measures and weights, may provide the
decisive clues to hidden information,
even back to the early Middle Ages.
In applying such a method, one
should not be looking for precise
metric dimensions i.e. measurements in
feet, inches or centimetre, but rather
for sensible ratios of whole numbers,
i. e. modules within regular structures
of comparable sizes - as in the
Rammelsberg statute from 1271: a pit
(grove) 5 feet wide and 7 feet long. A
standard measure of length to start
from could be the Goslar bronze ell
(Fig. 7), which has survived and is the
oldest of its type in Germany. It is
Fig. 1
Bronce Ell, Goslar, early 14th century,
now being kept in the Town Hall,
carrying in gothic letters the inscription
„Dit.is.de.rechte.Elne.der.Borgere“
31 Vid. now Dunin-Wasowicz 2000.