Abstract. This article provides a comprehensive and chronological account of the technological advancements in alluvial gold mining. Gold has been a highly prized commodity throughout history and has played a significant role in humanity's economic and cultural progress.
The best-known of the exogenetic ores is alluvial gold. Alluvial gold refers to gold found in riverbeds, streambeds, and floodplains. It is invariably elemental gold and usually made up of very fine particles. Alluvial gold deposits are formed through the weathering actions of wind, rain, and temperature change on rocks containing gold.
One question we've gotten a few times is "what is 'alluvial' gold?" The short answer: alluvial gold refers to tiny gold flakes or dust that came to be through water erosion. This is what prospectors are looking for when panning a river.
Gold mineralization is hosted in a variety of geological settings, from oceanic arcs to orogenic belts including their forelands and back-arc basins, as well as in alluvial (placer) sediments ( Sillitoe 2020; Table 1 and references therein).
Alluvial gold: A geological model (Part 1) 13/02/2021. Philip Dunkerly (UK) Mankind almost certainly first found gold when a yellow, glint from the bottom of a stream bed attracted the attention of one of our ancestors in pre- historic Africa. Ever since, the allure of gold – its colour, improbable density, malleability and scarceness ...
Gold minerali-zation is hosted in a variety of geological settings, from oceanic arcs to orogenic belts including their forelands and back-arc basins, as well as in alluvial (placer) sediments (Sillitoe 2020; Table 1 and refer-ences therein).
Alluvial Gold (Deposited by water movement) and Eluvial gold (disintegration of rock at the site where it originates - not there through water movement) are essentially primary gold broken down by weathering and erosion and transported by gravity or water movement over many millenia of geological time.
"Alluvial gold" refers to the type of gold dust found in that kind of soil. When the beds of rivers or streams are scooped and panned for gold dust, the product is referred to as alluvial gold. Panning for gold is one of the oldest ways to produce gold.
Alluvial gold is gold that has been freed from its host rock and ended up where it is after having been moved by water. Examples would include modern river and creek gravels, fossil tertiary river beds and terraces, as well as modern and ancient beach deposits. If you've ever panned for gold, you've almost certainly panned alluvial gold.
Alluvial gold: A geological model (Part 2) 20/02/2021. Philip Dunkerly (UK) In A geological model for the alluvial gold environment (Part 1), the first part of this article, I discussed how alluvial gold is found and …