An ancient quarry and an experiment – on antique and medieval technique of tuff quarrying

Abstract

At least since Josef Röder’s research on ancient tuff quarries in the Pellenz region we know how the valuable building material was cut. The cutting technique for large ashlars described by him in 1957, was now tested in an archaeolog - ical experiment for the first time. It showed that this method of stone cutting functions very well and is clearly less time consuming than it had been assumed by archaeologists so far. It took two quarry workmen about a working day of eight hours to produce ashlars measuring 1.80m× 1.20m× 0.45 m. In order to process the large block into smaller blocks and ashlars a further day can be estimated.