Borderlands in the Silver Mines of New Spain, 1540–1660

2019 ◽  
pp. 370-395
Author(s):  
Dana Velasco Murillo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Central Mexico ◽  
Mining District ◽  
Money Economy ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Silver Mining ◽  
Mining Towns

From the sixteenth century onward, mining towns in New Spain produced more than silver; they also led to the creation of new colonial communities and societies. The founding of mining towns outside of central Mexico served as catalysts for northern exploration, becoming and creating new borderlands in their wake. This chapter considers how mining towns constituted both geographical and social borderlands. It focuses on the roles and experience of indigenous, Spanish, African, and ethnically mixed descent individuals (castas) in Mexico’s northern silver mining district from 1540 to 1660. The colonization of the mining borderlands created new economic, social, and ethnic patterns shaped by population scarcity and instability, the labor needs of production, the incentives of the money economy, the lifeways and practices of indigenous populations, imbalanced sex ratios, and under-developed colonial institutions. Ultimately, the chapter argues that mining towns remained borderlands, sites of fluid cultural exchanges and social boundaries.

A Social Welfare Organizer in Sixteenth-Century New Spain: Don Vasco de Quiroga, First Bishop of Michoacán

1957 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86
Author(s):  
†M. M. Lacas
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Central Mexico ◽  
The World

No tourist who visits central Mexico will fail to pay a visit to the world-famous lake of Pátzcuaro. This beautiful and placid lake, with the several islands which dot its surface and the surrounding hills that frame it, formed, in olden times, the hub of the Michoacán Kingdom. Even today, it is the main habitat of the peaceloving Tarascan Indians who cluster around it and, partly at least, live on its abundant fish. An ancient author tells us that the word Michoacán means “fishing place,” and that the main occupation of the early Indians was the mild art of fishing, so opposed to the war-like activities of their neighbors to the east, the cruel Aztecs.

Schools of Empiricism

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-289
Author(s):  
Andreas Friedolin Lingg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Mining District ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Scientific Observation ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Mining Town ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Abstract Recent research emphasizes that empiricist approaches already emerged long before the seventeenth and eighteenth century. While many of these contributions focus on specific professions, it is the aim of this article to supplement this discourse by describing certain social spaces that fostered empiricist attitudes. A particularly interesting example in this respect is the mining region of the Erzgebirge (Saxony) in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The following article will use this mining district as a kind of historical laboratory, as a space not only for scientific observation but also as a structure within which specific forms of knowledge were socially tested, to show how the economic transformation of this region supported the rise of characteristic elements of empiricist thinking. It is common practice to link the appraisal of useful knowledge, (personal) experience and the distrust towards (scholastic) authorities in those days with only small minorities. By addressing not only the struggles of the commercial elites but also the challenges faced by the average resident of a mining town, this paper tries to add to this view by demonstrating how entire masses of people inhabiting the late medieval Erzgebirge were affected by and schooled to think in empiricist ways.

Residue Analysis of Cooking Vessels from Early Postclassic Xaltocan, Central Mexico

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Kristin De Lucia ◽  
Linda Scott Cummings
Keyword(s):  
Fourier Transform ◽  
Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Residue Analysis ◽  
Food Preparation ◽  
Central Mexico ◽  
Early Postclassic ◽  
Ceramic Vessels

This article examines the use of cooking vessels from Early Postclassic (AD 900–1250) Xaltocan, Mexico, through residue analysis of ceramic sherds. The analysis combined phytolith and starch analyses with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Because our understanding of prehispanic foodways in central Mexico is based largely on sources that describe or depict Aztec practices in the sixteenth century, we ask how foods were similar or different prior to the Aztecs. We also seek a better understanding of how plainware vessels were used in prehispanic times. Although there is long-term continuity in the preparation of foods such as tamales and corn gruels, we find that additional foods such as tuber-based stews were prepared in the Early Postclassic. In addition, some ceramic vessels, such as comales and crude bowls, had a wider range of food preparation functions than expected.

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