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Neolithic flint mines of Spiennes
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How it came to be
Spiennes lies south-east of Mons in southern Belgium, where more than 100 ha of Neolithic flint mines spread over two chalk plateaux. They were worked from the last third of the 5th millennium BC to the first half of the 3rd, and form the largest and earliest concentration of ancient mines in north-west Europe, linked to a settlement of the same period.
Miners sank shafts 0.8 to 1.2 m across and up to 16 m deep and brought out flint blocks up to 2 m long. The 14 ha Petit-Spiennes zone alone holds up to 5,000 shafts. Workshops such as Camp-a-Cayaux turned the flint into axes and long blades; rough-outs of axes travelled over an area of about 150 km and were often polished where they arrived. The finds belong to the Michelsberg culture.
In 1867 a new railway line cut through 25 shafts, and the mining engineer Alphonse Briart and two others carried out the first excavations, presenting the results to the International Prehistoric Congress in Brussels in 1872. The site was protected in 1991 and inscribed in 2000.
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