Tuesday February 17, 2009 20:16
Construction workers in London just uncovered an enormous 12th century watermill on the banks of the Thames. It’s a very exciting find for the history of science and technology in the medieval period. The most interesting recent revisionist trend in the field has been to challenge the notion of a technological decline after the fall of the Rome - to debunk of the notion of a technological “Dark Age.”
Archaeologist Simon Davis said tide mills were probably numerous along the Thames foreshore at this time. Four were mentioned in Greenwich in the Domesday book of 1086.
‘However, little evidence of mills in use in the early medieval period has been found on archaeological sites, so the discovery of a 12th-century tide mill is very significant and exciting,’ he said.
The find is similar in design to Roman mills. What has survived is the water trough, carved from a single log, and a carved section of the waterwheel itself with paddles.
This mill shows the state of the art of medieval early industrial technology and supports the work of Adam Lucas, among others, in his fascinating Wind, Water, Work: Ancient and Medieval Milling Technology on the medieval technological revolution. (via The History Blog)
