Mining and knowledge of the earth in eighteenth-century Italy

Interaction between geology and mining was a decisive element for the devel opment of stratigraphy during the eighteenth century in Germany, Sweden, En gland, and also Italy. This paper analyses the importance of mining backgro und and experience, and interest in mining, among some eighteenth-century I talian scholars who studied mountains and other terrestrial reliefs paying particular attention to their rocks, strata and formations. Several primary sources are examined, from the early case of Antonio Vallisneri-who, being a physician, used the mines and the quarries as necessary tools of his 'an atomy' of the mountains-up to the geological travels in the Alps and the Ap ennines promoted in the late eighteenth century with mining perspectives. R igorous empirical approaches to the study of the Earth's surface-shown by s cientists such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti and Giovanni Arduino-are here investigated in the light of their mining experti se. This practical knowledge was an essential element of their theoretical work on the 'classification' of mountains.