SCARCE Explores Slovakia's Mining Heritage
- Author(s)
- Claire Sabel, Sarah Seinitzer, Dolores Surlina
- Abstract
Some 20,000 objects stretching 7km make up the collections of the Slovakian Mining Archive (Slovenský banský archív) in Banská Štiavnica, Central Slovakia, a beautifully preserved historical mining town nestled in the Inner Western Carpathian mountains. This mountain of paperwork documents the excavation and management of the Banská Štiavnica-Hodruša mining complex, developed over the better part of the last millennium, and whose approximately 100km of underground tunnels run directly beneath the town and its environs. The surface-level veins of the region’s rich metal ores (formed in the caldera of a long-extinct supervolcano) were already exhausted by the twelfth century, requiring mining operations to venture underground. Aided by German-speaking investment, technology, labor and expertise first solicited by the region’s Hungarian rulers in the thirteenth century, Banská Štiavnica evolved into Europe’s oldest, oldest continually operating, and most productive mining regions, and also one of its best documented. The region’s technical mining structures were recognized with UNESCO World Heritage Status in 1993, and the archival maps and plans covering mining from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries were inducted into UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2007.
The SCARCE team visited Banská Štiavnica in February, 2025 to study the textual and architectural history and heritage of this mining region. Over the course of five days, we explored mines on foot and across hundreds of pages of mining manuscripts, under the expert guidance of Dr. Peter Konečný, who heads the Slovenský banský archív and is a key partner of our project.- Organisation(s)
- Department of History
- Publication date
- 04-2025
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 605008 Cultural heritage, 601005 European history, 601020 Regional history, 207309 History of mining
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/9a9a7c28-6165-4577-8ca1-36a226551cef