An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c21.s9.t1.3

v1.c21.s9.t1.3

In the beginning gold nuggets were collected from the surface and gold was mined by ‘open cast’ method. A later method used for mining appears to have been ‘fire-setting’, where rock faces were heated and then cracked by throwing water on them. This helped in sinking deep shafts in quartz veins. Stray finds among old workings, two ¹⁴C samples from Hutti and field investigations indicate that shafts through the quartz veins had reached a considerable depth by the beginning of the Christian era. Over 240 m deep anciently worked mines have been recorded at frequent intervals along several km of reefs of the Kolar and Hutti gold mines.