Kris

From memory the Dover publications facsimile / translation of Georgius
Agricola's De Re Metallica [it uses Herbert Hoover's translation] shows
typical European gold extraction methods in figures, including panning.
That would put it a century or two later than your Irish reference.

There is also a traditional way of extracting gold using sheep fleeces
that was current in the ancient Greek world, and some say inspired the
legend of the Golden Fleece.  This is probably slightly different to
panning in that it would rely more on sieving rather than sorting by
grain size and density.

cheers

Denis

>>> [log in to unmask] 04/05/2002 02:55:38 am >>>

Hello list. . .

I was wondering if anybody on the list knows about the history of gold
panning. . .  I
never really thought much about it until recently.  I of course know
that prospectors used
pans to recover stream placer gold in California, Alaska, Colorado,
etc. (and presumably
Australia, New Zealand, and other locales as well)  But I was reading a
paper in Antiquity
a while back talking about a gold mining site in Ireland from the
1300's.  (I could have
the wrong century, but it was definetly OLD, i.e. pre-Columbus.)  As I
recall, gold panning
was mentioned as a recovery technique.

What this is all leading up to is this:   Does anybody have any
information/references
about the history/archaeology of panning as a gold recovery technique?


Kris Farmen
Northern Land Use Research, Inc.
Fairbanks, Alaska