Roman bronze hydraulic pump from Sotiel Coronada, Museo Arqueologico Nacional · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

Sotiel Coronada Copper Mines

Metalla Sotielensia

MineHispania Baetica · Calanas, Huelva Province, SpainBuilt 100 BCE

About

A bronze hydraulic pump recovered from these Huelva copper workings, now displayed in Madrid's national archaeological museum, shows Roman engineers draining shafts here with the same screw technology used at Rio Tinto. One surviving Archimedes screw measured 3.6 meters long and 48 centimeters across, one of a set of three installed in series to lift water stage by stage from one sump to the next, deep below the surface. Tartessian miners had worked this ground centuries before Rome arrived, and Roman-era slag heaps called teleras still mark the district today, alongside shafts that plunged far enough underground to require exactly this kind of relay pumping to keep them dry.

What happened here

Work goes on underground by lamplight in shifts, and the lamp is also the clock. Galleries follow the ore, propped with timber, drained by wooden screws and bucket wheels worked by hand in stages up the shaft. Ventilation is a second shaft and a fire to draw the air. The labour is convicts, slaves and paid men working side by side on different terms, and the paid men do the skilled cutting. Above ground the ore is crushed, washed in long channels, and smelted, and the smoke kills the vegetation for miles. Mines of any size are imperial property, leased to contractors under written regulations covering shifts, drainage, bath-house charges and who may open a new gallery. Settlements grow around them fast and empty just as fast.