Pitch production during the Roman period: an intensive mountain industry for a globalised economy

Abstract

The authors' research project up in the Pyrenees mountains has located and excavated Roman kilns for producing pitch from pine resin. Their investigations reveal a who le sustainable industry, integrated into the local environmental cycle, supplying pitch to the Roman network and charcoal as a spin-off to the local iron extractors. The paper makes a strong case for applying combined archaeological and palaeoenvironmental investigations in upland areas, showing these industries to have been not so much marginal and pastoral as key players in the economy of the Roman period and beyond it into the seventh century AD.