The development of the mining industry and mining technologies can be traced by assessing mica production in the northwestern Karelia-Kola region, which continued for many centuries. Mica pegmatite, which occurred in the Chupa-Louhi area and on the Kola Peninsula, has been a conventional source of muscovite mica since ancient times.
When mica was just coming into use, the prospecting, appraisal and production of muscovite were conducted by "ore prospectors", who enhanced their originally hands-on knowledge of mica deposits and associated rocks and minerals, rather than by professional miners. The numerous old mica extraction sites are confined to pegmatite mica exposures located along the western White Sea shoreline. Mica was mined manually by the open-pit method. It was first exposed by annealing (heating by fire followed by watering), wedges and mining picks. Underground mica mines and more advanced methods and tools were to appear later. As time went by, other minerals began to be mined as well. Mica applications were becoming more varied and wider geographically.
Old mica mining areas can be located by analyzing old muscovite samples from various parts of Russia using modern analytical methods, such as X-ray phase and X-ray structural analyses, Raman spectroscopy and ICP-MS, and taking into account the typomorphic characteristics of mica.