Hushing
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Hushing is an ancient and historic mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploita
Small tank A near north opencast at the Roman Dolaucothi Gold Mines in Carmarthenshire, Wales: the person is standing within the reservoir bank, which has eroded over the years
Tank C above main opencast at Dolaucothi
Placer mining
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Placer mining is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit mining or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment.
Hushing
…be undermined, and then collapsed to release the ore-bearing material. The Romans developed the method into a sophisticated way of extracting large alluvial gold deposits such as those at Las Médulas in northern Spain, and for hard rock gold veins such as those at Dolaucothi in Wales. The development of the mine…
19th-century miner pouring water into a rocker box which, when rocked back and forth, will help separate gold dust from the alluvium
A placer mine in Alma, Colorado in 1880
Plate depicting placer mining from the 1556 book De re metallica
Panning for gold in Korea, c. 1900