History of mineral exploitation in Southwest China and highland Southeast Asia
The highlands of southwestern China and Southeast Asia are an ancient region of metal mining and metallurgy, with its well-known copper-age cultures. The more recent history, however, is far less clear. Supposed or actual riches of gold and silver in the Dali kingdom are suspected to have been one of the reasons for the Mongol invasion that ended with the conquest of Dali in 1253. Records of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) reflect intensive silver exploitation, yet the sites are unknown. For the Ming period (1368-1644), some copper and tin mining, as well as some twenty silver mines appear in the records, but the overall scope was small to negligible, if surviving tax revenues are systematic and representative of actual exploitations. Qing (1644-1911) records contain more names of sites and occasional details, allowing the identification of roughly 200 mines. As copper mines received special government attention due to the importance of copper for coinage from the early 18th century onwards, official records focus on this sector, reflecting considerable development of overall outputs as well as in the number of exploited sites. At the same time, iron, silver, zinc and tin mining appears to have remained on a modest level.
However, early 20th century materials provide evidence that a large number of historic mines were missing in the official records of the imperial period. Surveys of mineral deposits in Yunnan province dating between 1908 and 1949 record over 2000 sites exploited in the past. Although the scale and period of exploitation is uncertain for most mines, their numbers reflect an omission of 90% of all sites in the available historic sources. Moreover, specific aspects of mining and metallurgical technologies remain insufficiently understood. Thus, surface mining, small open pits and intentionally flushed out gullies, pit mines and the construction of level or inclining galleries may have been employed in succession or concurrently. Smelting technologies become historically visible only from the early nineteenth century, when surprisingly large furnaces were employed in most processes, with numerous technological details and transformations hitherto not understood.
The subject of this project is the systematic exploration of the hitherto under-researched period and region; and the primary aim is the basic research in geo-locating, identifying, surveying and assessing sites, and the analysis of results as a basis for a systematic reconstruction of the region’s mining and metallurgical history.
This project builds on the synergies of the cooperation partners. Yang Yuda’s and Nanny Kim’s project on silver mines in the region established the usefulness of fieldwork and historical geography in researching a largely non-liturgical topic through remains oral histories, and spatial contexts (2009-2014, as DFG project 2015-2018). Li Xiaocen and his team possess the metallurgical expertise, the means of analysing and interpreting sites and specimens, and are thus able to reconstruct historical technologies and transformations. Dagmar Schäfer contributes the wider perspective of long-durational patterns in knowledge and practice.
It employs inter-disciplinary approaches to overcome obstacles to research. The geo-location of sites employs historical geography based on a wide range of data, with a specific focus on clusters of place names that we have developed for the area. Geo-location permits targeted fieldwork for the recording of material remains and oral traditions as well as for sampling ores, slags and other remains. Material analyses on the samples provides scientific data on historical technologies, while GIS analyses offer spatial contexts of surveyed sites in their present and historic landscapes.
This project page mainly focusses on field findings. These are collected for individual sites or clusters of sites in analysis of research materials, field reports, maps, photographs and further materials. You can access the materials by links from the list of sites or from the map.
