The mine exploited the homonymous ore deposit from the late Middle Ages to the middle of the 20th century. It is a typical skarn deposit at the contact between a dioritic body (Traversella pluton) and pre-existing metamorphic host rocks. The iron ore mineral, exploited from different orebodies, was primarily magnetite.

The Traversella pluton, which can be considered as both the source of the metasomatizing fluids and the "thermal engine" of the system, is a body of medium- to fine-grained plutonic rock ranging in composition from quartz-diorite to monzodiorite. Its best exposures occur within old and active quarries close to Traversella and Vico Canavese villages, or along the Anglosarda tunnel of the mine.

Traversella mine is the type locality for ferro-ferri-hornblende, a member of the amphibole supergroup. The holotype specimen is from the historical collection of Leandro De Magistris (Oberti et al., 2016) and comes from retrograde skarns. The mineral was firstly named "speziaite" by Colomba (1914) in honour of Giorgio Spezia (1842-1911), professor of Mineralogy at the University of Turin, who in 1905 was the first to develop a method for the hydrothermal synthesis of quartz. "Speziaite" was subsequently discredited and considered to be "hornblende". In the type specimen, ferro-ferri-hornblende is intergrown with hastingsite and magnesio-hastingsite. These crystals of variable composition appear as acicular crystals, dark greenish or blackish, embedded in a matrix of fibrous tremolite with minor quartz and calcite.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References