In England charcoal burners were sometimes called wood colliers, so I see
no reason for the term to be inappropriate. Charcoal burning places (to
use a neutral word) that have been pointed out to me consist of a flat
roughly circular platform, perhaps five yards across, often dug into the
slope of a hillside. They are thus not pits in the sense in which the word
is usually used.
On the other hand much shallow mining, whether for coal or ironstone was
carried out using bell pits, the pit being filled in when as much mineral
had been got out as could be safely without installing pit props. Spoil
was commonly piled round the mouth of the pit and not all of that got used
in filling the pit in when it was finished. Over the course of time the
spoil used as filling for the pit settled leaving a hollow a few feet deep
and 4-5 feet across. Could this be what the US Geological Survey meant by
'collier pits'? Such bell pits would be of interest to geologists, since it
would indicate that minerals in their vicinity had already been exploited.
Peter King
----- Original Message -----
From: James H Brothers IV <[log in to unmask]>
To: arch-metals <[log in to unmask]>; Mining History
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 28 February 2000 13:44
Subject: "collier pits"
> Over the last couple of years I have run across the term "collier pits" in
the
> Virginia archeological literature as a synonym for charcoal pits. A
collier
> being someone who makes charcoal or works in a coal mine, "collier pit"
seems
> an unnecessarily ambiguous term, where "charcoal pit" is not.
>
> I have not seen the term used in historic documents and have questioned
its
> use. Charcoal pit being the term used in the iron industry literature.
The
> claim by those using "collier pit" is that they are just following the
lead of
> geologists and the USGS who have marked lots of them on maps. Any
thoughts?
>
> I keep imagining something like a bear baiting pit or a cock fighting ring
into
> which one throws a couple of enraged colliers to fight it out :-).
>
> JH Brothers IV
>
>
>
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