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Ancient Mining Processes as illustrated by a Japanese Scroll

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

C. N. Bromehead
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Extract

In the Geographical journal for August 1940 I published a brief summary of the ‘Evidence for Ancient Mining’, one illustration for which was taken from a Japanese colour-print by Hiroshigi of the interior of a gold mine. As a result of reading this article, Dr H. J. Osborne White, a well-known geologist, sent me the scroll which forms the subject of the present paper. It is about 22 feet long and I foot broad and illustrates, in a series of attractively coloured drawings, every process from the extraction of gold-ore in the mine on Sado Island to the minting of refined gold. Mr Matsumoto of the Japanese Embassy kindly examined the scroll and was able to translate most of the captions to the pictures and other writings. Though the archaic script sometimes puzzled him, the fact that his family had been connected with mining for several generations was a compensating advantage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 16 , Issue 63 , September 1942 , pp. 193 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1942

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References

1 Mining in Japan (Japanese Bureau of Mines, Tokyo, 1909).

2 William Gowland (1) ‘The Early Metallurgy of Copper, Tin and Iron in Europe, as illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Primitive Processes surviving in Japan’, Archaeologia LVI (1899) ; (2) ‘The Early Metallurgy of Silver and Lead’, ibid, LVII (1903); (3) ‘Silver in Roman and Earlier Times’, ibid. LXIX (1918); (4) ‘The Metals in Antiquity (Haseley Memorial Lecture)’ (Journ. Anthrop. Inst, XLII (1912) ; (5) Metals and Metal Working in Old Japan’, Trans, and Proc. Japan Society, XIII (1915).

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23 Gowland, op. cit. 2 (4),

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