Corpus Fontium Historiae Fodinarum: Difference between revisions

 

===Tablets found at Metallum Vipascense===

The tablets found at Metallum Vipascense (modern Aljustrel), Portugal, are an insight into the organisation of the mining industry at the time of Hadrian’s reign (AD 117–138) in the Iberian Peninsula, western province. They reveal that the mining districts were treated as individual administrative districts with their own boundaries.<ref>Hirt 2010: 48–49.</ref> By the time these tablets were written the industry had had many years to develop into a professional operation with both state and private entrepreneurs involved. The first bronze tablet was found in 1876 in a clay mount at the Algares copper mine (Portugal) and relates to the organisation of the silver mine or Metallum Vipascense and its associated townships. It contains the ''lex metallis Vipascensis'', a law regulating affairs within the Metallum Vipascense only.<ref>Rickard 1932a: 437; Hirt 2010: 48–49, 226.</ref> The second tablet was found some years later in 1906 and applies to a wider area, perhaps even the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. This tablet holds the ''lex metallis dicta'', a law aimed at securing the mine against unintentional or deliberate destruction. The overall aim was the continuation of the mine. It was written down in the form of a letter to Ulpius Aelianus.<ref>Rickard 1932a: 437; Hirt 2010: 48–49, 227, 261–62, 268–69; Levick 2000: 85–88.</ref> The Metallum Vipascense was property of the ''fiscus'' with many ''societates'' and individuals leasing the rights to open business and mining pits/shafts in the area. The tablets give a view of the responsibilities and duties of a ''procurator metallorum'' (4.2. procurator).<ref>Rickard 1932a: 437–39; Rickard 1932b: 585; Brunt 2006: 398–99; Hirt 2010: 4, 39, 49–50.</ref>

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