Caestert mine, Sint Pietersberg, Belgium

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Math Theunissen with his two dogs Pado en Turck (translated from dutch); In this painting, from 1796... the man has his dogs with him and an old oil mining lamp in his hand... !

As with (almost) all of the limestone caves, also the Caestert-mine is officially forbidden to enter... We were underground for doing research on the mining history (dating of the paintings on the walls by a) trying to date the mining techniques b) trying to map paintings to historic events and c) chemical analyses of the pigments used in the paintings and photographing+documenting the information)
and for doing research on the mineralogy on Flint (of which an article will be published).
Thomas Witzke published part of the research here...

So please don't enter the mines without a good reason... and don't enter the mines without a good experienced and equipped guide...
The ethics published here on troglocaris.com are very well written and should be followed.

In the end of 2005 John van Schaik and I visited the mine for doing research again on the mineralogy of flint. I took a Canon EOS 300D digital camera and shot there pictures:

Jacquo Silvertant allowed us, exclusively, to publish his great book on the Caestert here in pdf-format!
(1.647 Kb) (8.097 Kb) (5.072 Kb) (1.284 Kb) (7.125 Kb) (1.171 Kb) (1.412 Kb) (1.482 Kb)

You can download each chapter by clicking on a thumbnail...


Also see here for a tour in the beautiful underground world around Maastricht...



A tour lead by Jacquo Silvertant. See below for his book(s) and dvd(s)


The Caestert mine is one of many mines inside the Sint Pietersberg. Thomas Witzke and I were guided by Jacquo Silvertant there on 07-04-2005: see his DVD and website here: www.sintpietersberg.org. The Caestert mine has many old (to 13. century old) paintings; one was dated to 19 august 1468... and C14-datings even give older paintings and writings... The are hundreds of km of adits in the Sint Pietersberg, of which almost always the upper parts are the oldest, where the blockbreakers (the miners) worked down into the floor of the mine, resulting in such high adits and halls.

Can you help us?. When you have better or more recent information, please click here and help us by writing it...

Also see: tw.strahlen.org/tafeln/100tafeln, sint-pietersberg.nl, caestert.net, members.home.nl/pch1/kerkhofkapel, troglocaris.com,

Mindat.org on this location.

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