Busacca Gallery

Up for sale is this great old hand carved mining Philippine miner's hat. This Beautiful wood hat is in rather good condition for it's age, just the discoloration from wear and age. Great collectable piece. Beautifully carved and handmade. This hat is large and has a lovely design and color . The hat is in excellent condition. Exquisite carved detail, no visible damage but no doubt, there is a nicks and flakes, It is difficult to find these high quality hat carvings in excellent condition, most of these art objects are available in limited numbers so get them while you can! The use of personal protective equipment is to reduce employee exposure to hazards. *All of the art is edited and chosen by us for its high quality and workmanship before posting. These collectibles have been selected with the artist & collector in mind. * We specialize in high end luxury fine art and collectibles from private estates. - Our job is to find and target great art by collecting a vast array of contemporary, vintage, antique and collectible items from across the globe. Individually handcrafted, we breathe new life into these forgotten relics by giving back each piece it's unique story. We welcome dealers, galleries, and private collectors to register securely and buy with us.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or (coal) seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash. Any material that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or created artificially in a laboratory or factory, is usually mined. Mining in a wider sense comprises extraction of any non-renewable resource (e.g., petroleum, natural gas, or even water).

Mining of stone and metal has been done since pre-historic times. Safety has long been a concern as well, though modern practices have improved safety in mines significantly.



Since the beginning of civilization, people have used stone, ceramics and, later, metals found on or close to the Earth's surface. These were used to manufacture early tools and weapons, for example, high quality flint found in northern France and southern England were used to create flint tools. Flint mines have been found in chalk areas where seams of the stone were followed underground by shafts and galleries. The mines at Grimes Graves are especially famous, and like most other flint mines, are Neolithic in origin (ca 4000 BC-ca 3000 BC). Other hard rocks mined or collected for axes included the greenstone of the Langdale axe industry based in the English Lake District.

The oldest known mine on archaeological record is the "Lion Cave" in Swaziland , which radiocarbon dating show to be about 43,000 years old, At this site paleolithic humans mined mineral hematite, which is Iron oxide (similar to rust), was ground to produce the red pigment ochre. Mines of a similar age in Hungary are believed to be sites where Neanderthals may have mined flint for weapons and tools.



Ancient Egyptians mined malachite at Maadi. At first, Egyptians used the bright green malachite stones for ornamentations and pottery. Later, between 2613 and 2494 BC, large building projects required expeditions abroad to the area of Wadi Maghara in order "to secure minerals and other resources not available in Egypt itself." Quarries for turquoise and copper were also found at "Wadi Hamamat, Tura, Aswan and various other Nubian sites" on the Sinai Peninsula and at Timna.

Mining in Egypt occurred in the earliest dynasties, and the gold mines of Nubia were among the largest and most extensive of any in Ancient Egypt, and are described by the Greek author Diodorus Siculus. He mentions that fire-setting was one method used to break down the hard rock holding the gold. One of the complexes is shown in one of earliest known maps. They crushed the ore and ground it to a fine powder before washing the powder for the gold dust.



Mining in Europe has a very long history, examples including the silver mines of Laurium, which helped support the Greek city state of Athens. However, it is the Romans who developed large scale mining methods, especially the use of large volumes of water brought to the minehead by numerous aqueducts. The water was used for a variety of purposes, including using it to remove overburden and rock debris, called hydraulic mining, as well as washing comminuted or crushed ores, and driving simple machinery.

The Romans used hydraulic mining methods on a large scale to prospect for the veins of ore, especially a now obsolete form of mining known as hushing. It involved building numerous aqueducts to supply water to the minehead where it was stored in large reservoirs and tanks. When a full tank was opened, the wave of water sluiced away the overburden to expose the bedrock underneath and any gold veins. The rock was then attacked by fire-setting to heat the rock, which would be quenched with a stream of water. The thermal shock cracked the rock, enabling it to be removed, aided by further streams of water from the overhead tanks. They used similar methods to work cassiterite deposits in Cornwall and lead ore in the Pennines.

The methods had been developed by the Romans in Spain in 25 AD to exploit large alluvial gold deposits, the largest site being at Las Medulas, where seven long aqueducts were built to tap local rivers and to sluice the deposits. Spain was one of the most important mining regions, but all regions of the Roman Empire were exploited. They used reverse overshot water-wheels for dewatering their deep mines such as those at Rio Tinto. In Great Britain the natives had mined minerals for millennia , but when the Romans came, the scale of the operations changed dramatically.