Airborne lidar finds ancient Roman goldmines in Spain

Nov. 25, 2014

Using an airborne laser teledetection system and flying over the Eria Valley in León, Spain), researchers from the University of Salamanca (Salamanca, Spain) discovered a gold-mining network created by the Romans two thousand years ago, as well as complex hydraulic works, such as river diversions, to divert water to the goldmines.

John Wallace

Ancient goldmines in the Eria river valley had channels and reservoirs. The model generated with LiDAR data (left) allows these structures to be located on aerial photos (right).

Using an airborne lidar teledetection system and flying over the Eria Valley in León, Spain), researchers from the University of Salamanca (Salamanca, Spain) discovered a gold-mining network created by the Romans two thousand years ago, as well as complex hydraulic works, such as river diversions, to divert water to the goldmines.¹

According to the researchers, the study of Roman mining in the Eria valley is the first piece of "geo-archaeology" performed with lidar in Spain. Las Médulas in León is considered to be the largest opencast goldmine of the Roman Empire, but the search for gold extended many kilometers further southeast to the Erica river valley.

"The volume of earth exploited is much greater than previously thought and the works performed are impressive, having achieved actual river captures, which makes this valley extremely important in the context of Roman mining in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula," says Javier Fernández Lozano, geologist at the University of Salamanca.

"We have established that the labor that went into extracting the resource until its exhaustion was so intensive that after removing the gold from surface sediments, operations continued until reaching the rocks with the auriferous quartz veins underneath," notes Lozano.

The lidar allowed the visualization of archaeological remains even under vegetation cover and intensely plowed areas, he adds.

Source: http://alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=147468&CultureCode=en

REFERENCE:

1. Javier Fernández-Lozano et al., Journal of Archaeological Science (2014); doi:10.1016/j.jas.2014.11.003

About the Author

John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)

John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.