In many valleys of the Southern Black Forest, there are today mostly inaccessible tunnels and shafts that bear witness to the silver mining that took place here in the Middle Ages. In older literature, these mining areas are often associated with nearby castles, under the assumption that the local mountain lords oversaw the extraction and processing of the ores from there. At Birkenberg, located about 10 km south of Freiburg im Breisgau, the remains of a castle complex were excavated for the first time as part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation, Burg & Bergbau, where both the documentary evidence and archaeological findings clearly support this connection. The research results are presented in this volume.