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Spall

First, there were fractures

Spall 001: A brief genealogy of extraction and accumulation

River Landscape with Mining Scene, 1611.
River Landscape with Iron Mining Scene (1611), Marten van Valckenborch. Hovering above the Meuse valley, the painting depicts the architectural and environmental logic of mining districts like Saxony’s Erzgebirge—forested hillsides, water-powered forges, and the quiet residue of excavation.

In the mining regions of 17th-century Saxony, where timbered adits webbed the hillsides and extraction was measured by mule-load, a new entry begins to appear in the margins of guild records and yield ledgers: “spall.” It was not a commodity

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