A Reassessment of Chalchihuites Mining

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in MesoAmerican Sacred Landscapes: A Multidisciplinary Assessment" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For the last fifty years, the Chalchihuites area of Zacatecas has been intimately associated archaeologically with mining. In the 1960s, Charles Kelley conducted a series of excavations at the site of Alta Vista along with his graduate student Phil C. Weigand. Over 800 subterranean features dating from 350/400-900 CE were identified and labelled as “mines" by Kelley and Weigand. The attraction was the application of a World System model with the Chalchihuites region supplying Teotihuacan with turquoise and other minerals. However, Chalchihuites is not a turquoise producing area and no convincing evidence of mineral extraction exists, yet the idea of Chalchihuites as a mining area remains firmly entrenched. This paper reexamines Chalchihuites mines in the Gualterio mining group located around 1.6 km southwest of the modern town of Gualterio and around 13 km northeast of the archaeological site of Alta Vista to demonstrate that these features were not mines. A ritual model for these subterranean features is proposed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Subterranean in MesoAmerican Sacred Landscapes: A Multidisciplinary Assessment

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50116