Flat-bedded washeries at Laurion (Greece): A buddling model: A comparative study between archival and field evidence

The research carried out on Laurion, and particularly on mining and the importance of the amounts extracted, raises the question of ore dressing and therefore the process involved. This is the presence of flat-washing dressing floors, flanked by tanks and accompanied by grinding workshops, near the extraction areas, the function and the role and skill of the workers in such devices. The washing facilities, used by the miners of the Laurion, have orig-inated numerous interpretations and controversies. The aim of this paper is to update the various hypotheses and to compare the archaeological evidence with the devices implemented by the miners during the 18th and 19th centuries. In their reports, scholars at the Paris School of Mines meticulously described washing installations, particularly the bud-dles. A buddle is an elementary device used to separate ore from gangue by means of a water stream. The oldest and simplest constructions were an oblong, shallow pit dug into the ground, or a shallow, slightly inclined wooden channel. The process is simple: the mixture of ore and gangue was placed and agitated in a stream of water; the lighter particles were carried away, leaving behind them the much heavier galena. The typical length of a square buddle was around two meters, while the floors at Laurion are shorter. Research carried out on 18th/19th century washing technologies of large-scale washing of secondary iron ores in eastern France have led us to make comparisons with the installations at Laurion. The model proposed here is based on both field observations and iconographic and documentary sources. The washing process is somewhat explicit as soon as the primary product has undergone a first grinding treatment.The precise way to operate the devices becomes obvious once one immerses in such descriptions of the users in old mining journals. The best example is a 18th century mining treatise written by Franz Ludwig von Cancrin, a prominent metallurgist, mineralogist and miner from Hesse, Germany, which proves to be perfectly consistent with the lead-silver ore process in use at Laurion.