Since March 2018, the Mining Archaeology Department of the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Conservation (NLD), the Rammelsberg World Cultural Heritage Site, Museum & Visitor Mine and the Institute for Geotechnics and Mine Surveying of the Clausthal University of Technology (TU) have been running “Altbergbau 3D – An interdisciplinary project for the research of the mining heritage in the Harz Mountains”. Other partners involved are the Rammelsberg Mine Foundation, the Old Town of Goslar and Oberharzer Wasserwirtschaft as well as Bergbau Goslar GmbH. The research project is fully financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for three years with almost half a million euros.
The project is dedicated to two areas: the mine building of today’s World Heritage Site Rammelsberg and the historical mining models, mainly from the collection of the Upper Harz Mining Museum in Clausthal-Zellerfeld.
The aim of the project is to gain new insights and impulses for the mining history of the Harz Mountains from the intersection of interdisciplinary findings. To this end, the digitised material will be analysed, previously unprocessed archival records will be evaluated and montanarchaeological investigations will be carried out. The 3D models created represent a photorealistic documentation of the actual situation and can be made available online to mining researchers. At the same time, the models have a special significance for communicating them to the public: not only are replicas possible, but virtual reality methods can also be used to make inaccessible areas or animated wheelhouses accessible and experience their complexity.