Conical hill

The conical hill as a geomorphological term first appeared in the German language, as Kegelberg, coined by Goethe and geologists of his era.

The first systematic geological mapping of the Kingdom of Saxony, proposed and started by Abraham Gottlob Werner, describes, in his later works, numerous mountains and hills of volcanic or subvolcanic origin as Kegel ("cone") or Kegelberg ("conical hill/mountain").

The term was introduced more definitively by Carl Friedrich Naumann in Notes to Section VII of the Geognostic Charter of the Kingdom of Saxony and its Adjacent Territories (Erläuterungen zu Section VII der geognostischen Charte des Königreiches Sachsen und der angränzenden Länderabtheilungen) thus: "The ordinary form of basalt and phonolitic hills is generally so wonderfully uniform that you can often recognize them even from a distance.

The Mittenberg, a conical hill in the centre between Tollenstein, Schönfeld and Neuhütte; rock, coarse splinters, with grey feldspar crystals.

The reason for this is that stratovolcanoes are composed largely of solid, eruptive material, whereas shield volcanoes are built up mainly by fluid lava flows.

The natural conical shape so formed is simply a result of the fact that the amount of ejected material decreases with the radially distance from the crater.

The angle of repose is, in turn, dependent on the composition of the lava, its viscosity and rate of solidification, and also the amount of ejected loose rock.