Incorporating indigenous knowledge into extractive economies: The science of colonial silver

What is it about?

Historians of mining in the colonial Americas know from census data and tribute tallies that indigenous miners represented the majority of the workforce. But because we do not have books of mining or metallurgy authored by indigenous experts, it has been difficult to recover their intellectual contributions. This article uses translation and mistranslation case studies to identify where and how indigenous miners provided key vocabularies and ideas in the development of the colonial method of amalgamating silver (Ag) with mercury (Hg).

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Why is it important?

Before the development of the "beneficio del azogue," amalgamation was limited to small-scall, time-intensive, costly operations that were only justified by treating the highest-quality gold and silver. By combining New World and Old World knowledges, colonial refiners developed a technology that would allow them to extract silver from even the most refractory ores. To understand how silver became the global currency standard of the early modern era, we need to understand how indigenous metallurgists contributed to the colonial amalgamation method.

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