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This technique is known in the history of Medieval mining as chiselling. The miners’ tools, a square-headed hammer and a chisel – that is, very basic equipment - are still used as symbols today throughout the mining world. The laborious work of advancing along the galleries was stylized in these two instruments. The sharp end of the chisel, with its thin wooden handle, was set against the rock with one hand and hit with the hammer (weighing 1-2 kg) with the other. These blows were not violent, since the miners had so little space in which to work, but rather consisted of a great number of small taps. From the first excavation in the working area, the rock was removed inch by inch, according to its hardness. In one gallery, about 170 cm high and 50 cm wide, three pickworkers were only able to advance a few centimetres during each work-shift. The first miner worked lying down or crouching in a niche between 40 and 70 cm high. A couple of metres behind him, his companions enlarged the tunnel, standing or kneeling, using heavier equipment, until it reached an adequate size.
Working conditions in these narrow spaces - with air which steadily became more and more unbreathable as the miners advanced, constant humidity, and smoking tallow lamps - were, by today’s standards, really inhuman and definitely shortened the workers’ lives, which in Medieval times were in any case very short, only about 40 years.
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history
history of mining on Schneeberg
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