De Re Metallica

Georgius Agricola was a German scholar and mining expert, and De Re Metallica, first published in 1556, is his own comprehensive treatise on mining and metallurgy as practiced in his time, presented here in the standard English translation by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover published in 1912. As Agricola's own primary account it is the correct source for what sixteenth century mining and metallurgical practice actually involved, in the words of a contemporary practitioner rather than a later reconstruction. Its limit is that it describes the technical state of the field in Agricola's own sixteenth century Central Europe specifically, so a claim about mining practice in a different period or region needs a source matched to that other context.