A 16th century lab in a 21st century lab

The archaeological assemblage from Oberstockstall constitutes the most comprehensive Renaissance laboratory ever recovered. The finds were discovered in a dump beneath the sacristy of the church adjoining a manor house in Kirchberg am Wagram, Lower Austria, probably buried after an earthquake. They comprise fragments of eight hundred artefacts, including triangular crucibles, shallow scorifiers, bone-ash cupels, alembics, aludels, cucurbits, adopters, receivers and other chemical apparatuses of ceramic and glass, together with metal and slag remains, furnace bricks and other artefacts of leather, textile and bone.

Dated to the second half of the 16th century AD, the activity in this laboratory coincides with a zenith in the quest for the philosophers' stone and the transmutation of base metals into gold, and with a major development of the techniques of metallurgical analysis in Europe. The tools recovered resemble strongly the equipment described in metallurgical and alchemical written sources of the time .

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http://antiquity.ac.uk/Projgall/martinon/