From Ores to Ontologies: Recent Research in South American Archaeometallurgy

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "From Ores to Ontologies: Recent Research in South American Archaeometallurgy" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the last century, scientific and anthropological research on pre-Colombian mining and metallurgy have elucidated many aspects of the chaîne opératoires underwriting the production and consumption of metals, as well as the social and religious significance of metallurgy and metal objects. Evidence points to the use of geologically native metals and alloys in the Andean region of South America since at least the 2nd millennium BCE or earlier. A heartland of metallurgical innovation in the New World, metallurgy would later spread to northern South America, the Caribbean, Central America, and Western Mexico. However, much remains to be understood about South American metallurgy, especially how mining and smelting processes, as well as the ideological significance of metals, varied synchronically and diachronically throughout the continent. In this symposium, scholars present new research on these issues and the theoretical and methodological approaches currently employed in South American archaeometallurgy.