Ethnoarchaeological Research of Traditional Charcoal Production in Central Michoacan, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Charcoal production along the region known as Bishopric of Michoacan, which included the modern states of Michoacan and Guanajuato, as well as parts of Jalisco, Colima, Guerrero, and San Luis Potosí, in Mexico, has changed very little since the arrival of the Europeans. The expansion of this traditional craft is linked to the development of the colonial mining industry from the early sixteenth century to the turn of the nineteenth century. The exploitation of mineral resources, including copper, gold and silver, involved the use of charcoal to produce heat at numerous points along the extractive process. Charcoal makers represented a socially and ethnically diverse group whose composition captures the complex and diverse nature of the incipient colonial society. Today, charcoal represents an important source of energy in Central Michoacán and its surrounding regions; it is used primarily by the residential and food vending sectors. An ethnoarcheological approach has been developed combining systematic research of written and oral data, as well as archaeological evidence, to investigate charcoal production in the region, and generate a historical and current assessment. The purpose of this paper is to present the preliminary results of this ongoing research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32051