Resource use as a trigger for social change

A special temporal depth and the presence of several economic sectors make the eastern Eifel region in the far west of Germany a particularly suitable case study for the investigation of social processes. For example, right at the beginning of grain cultivation 7,000 years ago, basalt lava was extracted here for the first time for the production of rubbing stones and millstones. The Roman military exploited the tuff of the Laacher See volcano as a building material. In the nineteenth century, the invention of pumice stone turned farmers into entrepreneurs. Today, the stone industry occupies only an economic niche whose success depends above all on know-how and the prudent use of raw materials.

Over this long period of time, and thus under very different economic, political and social conditions, there are nevertheless constants that have always initiated change. These are, first and foremost, inventions and innovations, but also the influence of superordinate powers. They set sustainable economic processes in motion, each of which led to an intensified use of raw materials. We define such intensive exploitation of deposits with supraregional marketing of the finished products as pre-modern industries. The aim of the project is to precisely name and classify their consequences for individuals and human communities.

We first ask what exactly the consequences are of the industrial activity of antiquity and the Middle Ages. How does participation in it determine the status and prosperity of the individual? How does the population and social structure of communities change, especially through increasing division of labour, labour migration and more diverse occupational profiles? To what extent do early industries foster the formation of new social structures, since societies based on the division of labour are a prerequisite for organised coexistence in cities and states?

Property relations manifest themselves partly directly in the organisation of quarries and mines, partly indirectly in the formation of new strata of professionals and entrepreneurs. Expectations of profit can trigger a willingness to invest heavily, which finds visible expression in production facilities, infrastructures and security systems. Last but not least, access to mineral resources and control over their exploitation are power factors that also served political purposes. 

In the pre-modern industrial area of the Eastern Eifel, we can observe serious social change factors at an early stage, some of which already began in pre-Roman times. We then want to contrast these with corresponding processes in the modern age (the industrial age) in order to work out similarities and differences between early, pre-modern industries and industrialisation. This could be of particular importance with regard to a concept of industry as it is predominantly represented in economic-historical research. According to this concept, industry presupposes a high degree of mechanisation and is therefore inevitably limited to the industrial age. The resulting processes of social change are understood as new and unique. In the project, we would like to formulate a counter-concept to this concept of industry and show that industry already changed people’s lives in antiquity and the Middle Ages.