A diverse range of mine types are also identified with different surface expressions in a remarkably intact anthropogenic surface that presents a rare prehistoric industrial landscape of shaft depressions and up-cast waste, remnants of flint workshops, miners’ camps and communication routes. Gawroniec Settlement, integral to the functioning of the deposit management system, is a legible testimony to the organisation of a prehistoric community based around mining.

Criterion (iii): Krzemionki Prehistoric Striped Flint Mining Region is illustrative of the living and working patterns of settled prehistoric communities that distinguish the Neolithic period from that which preceded it. The serial property bears witness to the economic and social organisation of segments of the Neolithic society, which were linked to the extraction of flint and its use for the production of polished axes. 

The attributes of the property, including the integral Gawroniec Settlement are further enhanced by the proven distribution of striped-flint axes that have been identified in a radius of over 650 kilometres from the complex – the largest recorded range for prehistoric flint axes which act as significant indicators for prehistoric movements.

Criterion (iv): Krzemionki Prehistoric Striped Flint Mining Region represents an exceptional type of Neolithic mining landscape, bearing witness both to a complex technical and social system and to human adaptation to the conditions of natural resource exploitation that is a landmark in the history of mining. It provides evidence that the prehistoric period brought flint mining to produce tools in the largest known example for the prehistoric exploitation of flint. The serial property illustrates diverse underground prehistoric mining structures comprising open-pit, niche-gallery, gallery, pillar-chamber and chamber mines – and primary workshops, which survive intact in well over 4,000 shafts and pits.

Components of serial property:

• mining field Krzemionki Opatowskie
• mining field Borownia
• mining field Korycizna
• prehistoric permanent mining settlement Gawroniec

UNESCO WHC site