Abstract:

The proliferation of mines in Europe since the late twelfth century is well documented, but only recently have scholars begun to fathom the scale of the industry’s ecological impact, on the one hand, and its role in stimulating environmental thinking and action, on the other. Focusing on the extraction and processing of metal ores, this article begins by illustrating how the renascent sector reshaped different ecosystems, as traced by several palaeo-scientific methods. It then turns to cultural-historical sources to propose that, rather than becoming passive, unwilling, or ignorant victims of a polluting industry, contemporaries criticised what they perceived as extraction’s harms and sought to reduce them, but also developed ways to justify their risks. Communities’ actions, which mingled with the materiality of mines and their surroundings, wrote a major chapter in Europe’s environmental history, one whose ongoing impact remains poorly understood.

摘要：

自 12 世纪末以来，欧洲矿山的扩散有据可查，但直到最近，学者们才开始一方面了解该行业对生态影响的规模，另一方面了解其在刺激环境思维和行动方面的作用。本文重点关注金属矿石的开采和加工，首先说明新生部门如何重塑不同的生态系统，并通过几种古科学方法进行追踪。然后，它转向文化历史资料，提出，同时代的人不是成为污染行业的被动、不情愿或无知的受害者，而是批评他们所认为的开采危害并试图减少这些危害，但也找到了证明其风险合理性的方法。社区的行动与矿山及其周围环境的物质性相结合，