Rays recognised as an intangible cultural asset of Valais
The canton of Valais has added the search for, exploration and valorisation of minerals* to its list of living traditions. It thus recognises an ancient craft closely linked to the mountains as an intangible cultural asset. The application was submitted by a community of interest made up of ‘cristalliers’, the Naters Radiation Museum, the Musée des Sciences de la Terre in Martinach and the Binntal Landscape Park.
People have been searching for crystals in the high Alps for thousands of years. The first traces in Valais are around 10,000 years old and were found in the remains of hunting camps from the Mesolithic period on the Simplon Pass: small flakes of crystals used to reinforce arrowheads (approx. 8,500 - 7,000 BC). During archaeological excavations in Neolithic settlement remains in Saint Leonard and in Naters (3,500 BC), crystals were again discovered that were used in the manufacture of arrows and tools. The search for and finding of minerals and their processing helped our ancestors to survive as hunters in the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.
Later, crystals became a commodity. Finds in the Binntal valley from the Celtic-Roman period, for example, bear witness to this, when deposits of crystals were created around 2000 years ago. These were exchanged with passing traders for everyday objects and jewellery.
In the late Middle Ages and in modern times, particularly clear and large crystals were sold to urban centres such as Milan, where they were made into magnificent vessels, candlesticks and crosses. The mountain farmers of the Upper Valais called these special artefacts, which they could sell to Milan at a high price, ‘Milanese goods’. This is how we know that the ‘glass coffin’ in Milan Cathedral from the 17th century, in which St Borromeo lies in state, is not made of glass but was cut from crystals that were demonstrably found in the Upper Valais. For the mountain farmers of Valais, blasting had been an important sideline since the Middle Ages.
Finally, in the 19th century, Alpine minerals became the subject of research in the new science of mineralogy. To this day, the blasters still work together with the scientists for whom the minerals provide valuable information on the history of the earth. The Valaisan radiators maintained close contacts with the universities of Bern, Basel, Geneva and Lausanne. A few years ago, the Binner Strahler André Gorsatt received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel in recognition of his services to science.