Quicksilver and Cruelty: Violence at the Santa Bárbara Mining Encampment in Huancavelica, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The colonization of the Americas by the Spanish presents a unique context for exploring structural violence. The rapacious extractivism practiced by the colonizers led to the immeasurable destruction of indigenous communities, particularly those working as tributary labor. At the nexus of the colonial mining industry were the mercury mines of Santa Bárbara in Huancavelica, Peru, which operated from the 16th to the 18th century. From these veins, the Spanish extracted mercury for the refinement of silver for export; this metal was collected by Andean laborers in deplorable conditions for little pay. Bioarchaeological analysis of human remains excavated in 2018 has yielded evidence of extensive violence perpetrated and experienced by the indigenous laborers of the colonial mining economy. Individuals recovered at the site were interred in communal pits after exhumation. These individuals (n=148) show high levels of cranial trauma resulting from interpersonal violence among the community of laborers. I argue that this is indicative of the quotidian experience of the structural violence of the empire. The lifeways of the Santa Bárbara miners and their families were not only lives of labor and hardship, but also of violence, resulting from oppressive institutional policies, and manifesting in everyday interactions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25285