A Metallurgical Site Survey in the Peruvian Andes

Author(s): Heather Lechtman

Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1976), pp. 1-42
Published by: Boston University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/529806
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A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes

HeatherLechtman
MassachusettsInstituteof Technology

Tohelpdocumentandinterpretthedevelopment of pre-Columbian metallurgy

priorto theSpanishinvasionof theAndes,theauthorconducteda surveyof por-
tionsof northernandsouthernPeruto identifyanddescribeearlymetallurgical
sites includingmines,ore-processingareas,smeltinginstallations.Severalof the
moreinterestingsites are discussedin detail.Coastalandhighlandsourcesof
copperores wereidentified,particularlyalongthenorthcoastandin the
altiplanoborderingLake Titicaca.Amongthemostprovocativeresultsof the
surveyis newevidencethatsulf de oresof copperwerebeingsmeltedlongbefore
thearrivalof the Europeans,therebyindicatinga levelof sophisticationof An-
deanmetallurgynotpreviouslyrecognized.

Introduction have been and will continue to be a primarysource of

Purpose of the Survey
Until recentlyscholarsinterestedin the development
of Andean metallurgyhave attempted to reconstruct
the salient features of that development through
laboratoryinvestigationof metalartifacts.lSuch studies
1. Paul Bergsfe, "TheGildingProcessand the Metallurgyof Copper
and Lead Among the Pre-ColumbianXndians,' IngeniXrviden-
skabelige Skrifter A46 (1938) 1-56; idem, "The Metallurgyand
Technologyof Gold and PlatinumAmong the Pre-ColumbianIn-
dians," IngeniXrvidenskabelige
SkriJfterA44 (1937) 1-45; Earle R. about the Andean metallurgical industry with any
Caley, "ChemicalCompositionof Ancient CopperObjectsof South
America,"in Applicationof Sciencein Examination°f Worksof Art,
W. J. Young, ed. (Boston 1973)53-61;EarleR. Caleyand DudleyT.
Easby,Jr., "The Smeltingof SulfideOres of Copperin Preconquest
Peru,"AmAnt25 (1959) 59-65; Dudley T. Easby, Jr., "Los Vasos
Retratosde Metal del Peru,"Revistadel Museo Nacional,Lima 24
(1955) 137-153; idem, "Two 'South American' Metal Techniques
Found Recentlyin WesternMexico,"AmAnt28 (1962) 19-24;idem,
"Aspectos Tecnicos de la Orfebreriade la Tumba 7 de Monte
Alban," Memoriasdel InstitutoNacionalde Antropologlae Ilistoria3 would
(1969) 345-406; Dudley T. Easby, Jr., Earle R. Caley, Khosrow
Moazeds;'Axe-money:Facts and Speculationy'RevistaMexicanade
EstudiosAntropologicos21 (1967) 107-149;G. A. Fester,'iCopperand societies. These questions can be answeredonly if we
Copper Alloys in Ancient Argentina,' Chymia 8 (1962) 21-31;
HeatherLechtman,"TheGildingof Metalsin Pre-ColumbianPeru"
in Applicationof Science in Examinationof Worksof Art, W. J.
Young, ed. (Boston 1973)38-52;idem, "A TumbagaObjectfromthe
HighAndesof Venezuela,"AmAnt38 (1973)473-482;HeatherLecht-
man and Michael E. Moseley, "The Scoria at Chan Chan: Non-
MetallurgicalDeposits,"NawpaPacha 10-12(1975) 135-185;Heather
Lechtman, Lee A. Parsons, William J. Young, "Seven Matched
Hollow Gold Jaguarsfrom Peru's Early Horizon," Studiesin Pre-
columbianArtandArchaeology16(1975) 1-45;P Rivetand H. Arsan-
daux, La Metallurgie en AmeriquePrecolombienne,Travaux et
Memoiresde l'Institutd'Ethnologie39 (Paris1946);WilliamC. Root
data for the interpretationof the role of metals and of
metallurgy in the Andean area. But metal objects are,
after all, the productsof complextechnologicalsystems,
and by limiting our investigationssolely to them we
tend to ignore the fundamentalstages that precedethe
fabricationof the object itself. Mining, ore processing,
fuel preparation,smeltingand so forth are the ess-ence
of any metallurgicaltechnology,and it is only through
an intimateunderstandingof theseprocessesand the in-
terrelations among them that we can begin to talk
sophistication.It is not just the products of that in-
dustry that concern us, nor even primarilythe tech-
niques that it employed, but the nature and organiza-
tion of the work force involved, the economic and
political control of resourcessuch as ores and fuel, the
articulationof Andeanmetallurgywith other aspectsof
Andean technologyand Andeanculture.Ultimately,we
like to be able to describewhat is specifi1cally
An-
dean about Andean metallurgy,and how it compares
with the other great metallurgicaltraditionsof ancient
consider Andean metallurgicaltechnologyin its broad-
est sense as a systemthat unites people, resources,and
energyin an organizedway consistentwith the cultural
"The Metallurgy of the Southern Coast of Peru;" AmAnt Is (1949
10-37; idemt "Gold-Copper Alloys in Ancient America," JChemEd 28
(1951)76-78; idem, "Pre-Columbian Metalwork of Colombia and Xts
Neighbors," in Essays in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, Samuel
K. Lothrop, ed. (Cambridge, Mass. 1964) 242-257.
2 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
and ecologicalimperativesof the Andeanscene.
A F1rststep toward such an appraisalmust be the ex-
cavationof sites wherethe basic processessuch as min-
ing, ore preparation,and smeltingwerecarriedout. Our
informationabout them is virtuallynil. The Spanishin-
vaders of the 16th centurywere overwhelmedwith the
quantity of gold and silver in use by the Inca and
devoted centuriesof unceasingeffort thereafterto ex-
ploit these resourcesand the peoples who had tradi-
tionally been mining them. The Europeanssfixation on
these two preciousmetals resultedin frequentmention
of gold and silver in their writing,whereascopper, the
real backbone of Andean metallurgy, is rarely men-
tioned. The Spanishchroniclersare equallysilent about
the technical aspects of Andean metallurgy.The Elrst
important work describing mining and smelting
operations is Alonso Barba's 1640 treatise Arte de los
Metales2 which sets forth in detail both the pyro-
technical and amalgamation operations at the great
Spanish silver mining complex in Potosi, Bolivia. By
that time, however, a full 100 years after the invasion,
many Spanish practiceshad already been introduced,
and we cannot rely upon Barba as a source for
reconstructingthe indigenousspre-contacttechnology.
Although many pre-Columbianobjects of metal have
been excavated in the Andes, to my knowledge there
has been no archaeological excavation of a metal-
workingsite.3Thus archaeologyand ethnohistoryhave
thus far failedto providethe data we seek.
2. AlvaroAlonso Barba,Arte de los Metales (1640),ArmandoAlba,
ed., Coleccionde la CulturaBoliviana 11 (Potosi 1967).There have
been numerouseditions and translationsof Barba'streatise,though
many are based on the 1770 Madrid edition rather than on the
original of 1640. I have used ArmandoAlba's edition publishedin
Potosl, Bolivia because Alba, Director of the Casa de Moneda at
Potosi, is intimatelyfamiliarnot only with the historyof Barba'slife
and the surroundingsin which he wrote his Arte de los Metales, but
because as head of the mint and the museum that houses the
metallurgicalhistory of Potosl, he is also an historianof Colonial
metallurgyin the Andes. Alba's edition is exceptional,too, by virtue
of an appendixhe has included consisting of"additions and rec-
tiElcations"made by an "antiguominero,"an old Bolivianminer,in
the marginsof an earlyeditionof Barba'sbook Thesearecomments
upon the various metallurgicalprocessesdescribedby the Spanish
priestin his treatise.An Englishtranslationof Barbais that of Ross
E. Douglassand E. P. Mathewson,El Arte de los Metales (New York
1923).
3. John Topic, working as a member of the Harvard University
Moche-ChanChan project,excavatedin 1972what may have been a
metalsmith'sworkshopat site H75BJ,an area at ChanChan located
south of the CiudadelaLaberinto,west of the northernRiveroAnnex
and the CiudadelaRiveroitself, and north of WachaqueGrande.At
one location in this area, which is generallycharacterizedby small,
agglutinated, irregular rooms, he found finely polished hammer
In reviewing the situation, it became clear that a
broadly-basedsurvey of the Andean zone, in those
areaswheremetallurgicaltechnologywas an important
activityin the pre-Spanishera, was necessaryto locate
and describesites where subsequentexcavationwould
yield informationabout at least one of the many as-
pects of the indigenousmetallurgy.The need for such
a surveywas made more dramaticby the resultsof the
excavationsMichael Moseley and I conductedin 1970
in several presumed metal-smeltingareas within the
monumental architectural complex of Chan Chan,
capital of the Kingdom of Chimor, on the Peruvian
northcoast.4Since 1877,whenSquierSfirstreportedthe
presence of a large metal-smeltingfurnace sn Chan
Chan, archaeologistsand metallurgistswho visited the
site and collected pieces of scoria from the furnace(a
rectangularstructureenclosedby adobe brickwalls and
measuringroughly 70 m. x 25 m.) have consideredit a
Chimu smeltercapableof producinglargequantitiesof
stones, a stone anvil, severalsherdswith coppermineralaccretions,
and fragmentsof coppercakesor ingots.Throughthe courtesyof the
ProjectI was ableto studyand photographthesematerialsin Trujillo.
Luis Rodriguez Orrego, in his thesis entitled Aspeetos de la
ColonizacionIncaica Caraeterizadosa traves de la Mineria y la
Meralurgia(submittedin 1974 for the degreeof Licenciadoen Ar-
queologia to the Facultadde CienciasHumanas,Departamentode
CienciasAntropologicasy Arqueologicas,Universidadde Chile,Sede
Oriente),describestwo smeltingsites, one in northernChile and one
in NWArgentina,whichhis surveyandexcavationsindicatemayhave
been pre-Spanish.At the site of Vina del Cerro, in the Copiapo
Valley, there are the remainsof 26 smelting furnaces,arrangedin
threeparallelrows, on a windyhillside.Only the circularstone bases
of the furnacesremain,measuring1-1.5 m. in diameter.The super-
structureswere apparentlyof adobe. Tracesof coppermineralwere
found on the surroundingsurfacesas well as pieces of slag whose
analyses indicatedthe presenceof copper. Rodriguezmentionsthe
presenceof grindingstones in the form of a batea(trough-like)with
their associatedmanos(hand-heldgrindingstones) in the area. The
associatedceramicssuggestthe site was Incaic.
Even more interestingis the site of La Encrucijada,situatedat 4,-
300 m. in the CalchaquiValley of NWArgentina.Here Rodriguez
reportsa groupof metalsmeltingfurnacesbuilt on artificialterraces,
severalhabitationareas,and a mineralgrindingstone or maray.The
circularsmeltersare made of stoneSmeasuringI m. in diameterand
0.5 m. high. Seriesof holes situatedin theirwallsare both for feeding
fuel and for entryof air. The marayis of the generaltype describedby
Ambrosetti(see note 17) and Boman(see note 14)as commonto the
Provinceof Salta. Bothgroundcoppermineraland groundslag were
found associatedwith the maray and at anotherore crushingarea
nearby.Rodrlguezbelievesthe site was dominatedby the Inca, but
becausethere is ceramicevidenceof a Spanishoccupationthere,it is
extremelydifficultto determinewhetheror not the marayand other
surface features are pre-Columbian(L. Rodrlguez,persona1com-
munication,September1975).
4. Lechtmanand Moseley,op. cit. (in note 1).
5. E. George Squier,Peru,Ineidentsof Traveland Explorationin the
Landof theIneas(New York 1877).

metal. Our excavations,togetherwith detailedanalyses
of the materialsassociatedwith the site (soil, ash, char-
coal, scoria, etc.) demonstratedthat the largequantities
of scoria withinthe walled structurewere not the result
of any metallurgicaloperationbut ratherthe remainsof
a conflagrationthat had destroyed the building and
melted the adobe walls, producing large blocks of
scoriatedearth.The resultsat ChanChanindicatedthat
both ignorallceof and inexperiencewith the processing
stages of early metallurgicalactivityin the Andes have
made it difElcultto formjudicious opinions about what
one might expectto find, what mightbe possibleor im-
probable.The anomalyof a smelterpracticallythe size
of a soccerfield had not struckanyoneas odd!
The survey discussed in this report was carriedout
betweenthe months of Februaryand December,1974.6
The originalplan called for coverageof Peru,northern
Bolivia,and portionsof northand centralChile. It soon
became clear that the large territoriesto be covered
togetherwith the difficultyof accessof most of the sites
and the generallyhazardousconditionsof travel in the
Andes would make such a program unfeasible.Thus
two areas were selected for more intensive study, the
northernportion of Peru (from the Chao Valley to the
LambayequeValley on the coast and from Oyon [Sto.
de Chuco] to Sinchao [Hualgayoc]in the sierra) and
southernPeru (from the San Juan Valley to the Chala
Valley on the coast and from Amparaesto the Peru-
Bolivia border in the sierra) (FIGS. 1, 2). Similarly,
althoughall types of site were sought whethermines,
smelters, or workshops the survey was conducted
with severalspecificissues in mind, and more time and
attentionwere spent on sites that might bear on these
problems.I hope to continue the surveyin the central
sector of Peru as well as in parts of Bolivia, Chile, and
Argentinain the nearfuture.
Some FundamentalIssues
1. It is well known that one of the great regional
centersfor the developmentof metallurgyin the Andes
was the north coast of what is today Peru, speciElcally
the Moche Rivervalley and the valleysto the northand
south. Duringthe EarlyIntermediatePeriod(TABLE 1),7
6. This research was supported by a research fellowship awarded by
the American Council of Learned Societies and by an Old Dominion
Fellowship from the Department of Humanities at M.l.T.
7. The chronology of Peruvian pre-Hispanic cultures, based on the
work of John H. Rowe and Edward P. Lanning, is given in Table 1.
Except for the Late Horizon, dates are approximate and were deter-
mined by C-14 measurements based on a half-life of (5730 i 40)
years. The C-14 values are uncorrected. John H. Rowe, "Stages and
Periods in Archaeological Interpretation," SouthwesternJ. of
Anthropologv18 (1962) 1-27; idem, "Kunst in Peru und Bolivien," in
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 3
Table 1. Chronologyof PeruvianPre-Hispanic
cultures.
Period Dates
Late Horizon 1476-1534A.C.
Late Intermediate 900-1476A.C.
MiddleHorizon 540-900A.C.
EarlyIntermediate 420 B.C.- 540 A.C.
EarlyHorizon 1500-420B.C.
InitialPeriod 2120-1500B.C.
PreceramicPeriods ?-2120B.C.
the Mochica, upon a technologicalfoundation already
provided by the coastal manifestations of Chavin,8
developed a metallurgythat was unsurpassedin later
periods both from the point of view of technical
sophistication and quality of craft production. Some
400 years later, the Chimu, whose capital was the
monumentalcity of Chan Chan in the Moche Valley
and whose empireextendedto the Gulf of Guayaquilto
the north and almost as far as the ChillonValleyto the
south, introducedlittle that was new to the basic reper-
toire of techniques.9They manufacturedmetal objects
on a grandscale, however,almost at a mass-production
level. The quantity of copper in particularthat was
smeltedduringthe Late IntermediatePeriodmust have
been great to judge merely by the large hoards of
copper "points" - agriculturaltools, lances, chisels,
etc. that are found buriedwith the dead at sites from
ChanChanto the Lambayequeregion(FIGS. 3, 4).10
Until the present study, no field inquiry had been
made into the sourcesof the ores used by these peoples
Das Alte Amerika, Gordon R. Willey, ed. (Berlin 1974) 285-297;
Edward P. Lanning, Peru Before the Incas (New Jersey 1967).
8. See Lechtman, Parsons, and Young, op. cit. (in note 1).
9. See Lechtman, 1973 "Gilding of Metals . . .", op. cit. (in note 1).
10. Large numbers of such points are in the collections of the Museo
de Arqueologia of the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo and in the
Museo Arqueologico Brtining in Lambayeque. Some appear to be the
blades of agricultural tools, for their form is almost identical to that
of similar blades of steel used today by farmers in the Jequetepeque
and Lambayeque Valleys. According to the report of a huaquero
(pothunter) who dug up hundreds of these in one of the large burial
mounds at Chan Chan in 1953 (personal communication of Cristobal
Campana, Director of the Casa de la Cultura, Trujillo) they were
found together, as a distinct category of goods, and separate from
maZz,frijoles, semillas (maize, beans, seeds) and large jars of flour all
of which were similarly buried separately and in large quantity.
Similarly, Oscar Fernandez de Cordova reports (personal com-
munication) that Julio C. Tello excavated a graveyard in the Batan
Grande area in 1937 where he uncovered hundreds of copper points
all massed together and separate from other groups of material. In
1973 an M.l.T. student, Michelle Clubb, and I studied one such point,
a chisel-like object from Sipan, and found it to be a Cu-As alloy con-
taining 4.18% arsenic, by weight.
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6 A Merallurgical Site Survey in the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman

Table2. The most common

mineralsof copper,arsenic,and Mineral
Formula Composition(Percent, by weight)
tin that may have been used by Cuprite Cu20 Cu 88.82
earlymetalworkersfor the produc- O 11.18
Malachite CuO 71.95
tion of copperand its alloys. CU2(0H)2C03
C°2 19.90
H2O 8.15
Azurite CU3(oH)2(Co3)2 CuO 69.24
CO2 25.53
H2O 5.23
Chalcanthite CuS°4S5H 2°
CuO 31.87
(Blue vitreol) S03 32.06
H2O 36.07
Brochantite Cu4(SO4) (OH)6 CuO 70.36
S03 17.70
H2O 11.94
Atacamite Cu2(0H)3C 1 Cu 14.88
CuO 55.87
C1 16.60
H2O 12.65
Chrysocolla CUSio3o2H2O CuO 45.2
SiO2 34.3
H2O 20.5
Chalcocite Cu2S Cu 79.86
S 20.14
Covellite CuS Cu 66.48
S 33.52
Chalcopyrite CuFeS2 Cu 34.64
(Copper pyrites) Fe 30.42
S 34.94
Bornite CusFeS4 Cu 63.33
Fe 11.12
S 25.55
Tetrahedrite* cUl2sb4st3 Cu 45.77
Sb 29.22
S 25.01
Tennantite* CU,2AS4S,3 Cu 51.57
As 20.26
S 28.17
Enargite Cu3AsS4 Cu 48.42
As 19.02
S 32.56
Domeykite Cu3As Cu 71.79
As 28.21
Olivenite Cu2(As04) (OH) CuO 56.22
As2Os 40.60
2° 3.18
Chenevixite Cu2Fe2(AsO4)2 CuO 26.40
Fe203 26.49
(OH)4tH20
As2Os 38.14
H2O 8.97
Arsenopyrite FeAsS Fe 34.30
(Mispickel) As 46.01
S 19.69
Stannite Cu2FeSnS4 Cu 29.58
Fe 12.99
Sn 27.61
S 29.82
 Journalof FieldArehaeology/Vol.3, 1976 7

Mineral Formula Composition

(Percent,
byweight)
Cassiterite SnO2 SnO2 ca. 92-94io
Fe203 ca. 8-3So

*The tetrahedriteseries is composed of mineralsof the following general for-

mula: (Cu, Fe, Zn, Ag),2 (Sb, As)4S,3.Cu is always predominant,but con-
siderablesubstitutiontakes place, most commonly by Fe and Zn. The Sb-As
elementsforma completeseriesfromtetrahedriteto tennantite.

of the north coast. The questionis compoundedby the
fact that a glance at currentminingactivityin Peru, on
the part of both large companies and small-scale
operators,revealslittle exploitationof the north coast.
One does not normally regard that area as highly
productivein comparison,for example,with the sierra
or even with the south coast whereat the momentsmall
miners are feverishly engaged in exploiting the rich
copperoxide and carbonateveins whereeven old mines,
previouslyworked, now yield mineralat the 10%con-
centrationlevel. Secondly, recentstudiesll have shown
that by the Late IntermediatePeriod the Chimu were
consistentlyproducingcopper-arsenicbronzes,and that
alloy may even have been a late developmentof the
Mochica four or more centuriesearlier.Caley and C.
Pattersonhave suggestedthat arsenicmineralssuch as
domeykite or olivenite, whose chemical compositions
are given in Table 2, were the sources of the arsenic,
and Caley goes further to speculate about the use of
such complex copper sulfarsenideores as enargite or
tennantite. The survey revealed no evidence for the
presenceof any of these ores on the coast. In fact, both
domeykiteand olivenite are extremelyrare in Peru. In
the northern sierra, however, the sulfarsenides of
copperare particularlyabundant.
Were the Mochica and Chimu exploiting coastal
ores, ores in the highlands,or both?If highlandsources
werebeing tapped,who controlledthem?Werethey ob-
tained through trade or an exchange system of some
kind, or is there evidence for "verticality," the
overarchingmodel Murral2has proposedto explainthe
Andean solution to control of resourcesthat change so
rapidlywith altitude:the use by nuclearcommunitiesof
colonists or outliers to exploit for them ecological en-
vironmentsat altitudeshigheror lower than their own.
Did the Chimustate control its mineralresourcesin the
sierrathroughcolonists of minersthat it dispatchedor
11. Caley, op. cit. (in note l); Clair C. Patterson iiNative Copper,
Silver,and Gold Accessibleto EarlyMetallurgists,"AmAnt36 (1971)
286-321;cf. note 10.
12. John V. Murra,"E1'Control Vertical'de un Maximo de Pisos
Ecologicosen la Economiade las SociedadesAndinas,"in InigoOrtiz
de Zfiniga, Visita de la Provincia de Leon de Huanuco (1562)(Huan-
uco 1972) vol. 2, pp. 429-476.
otherwisedominatedin the highlands?These are impor-
tant questions,some of which might be partiallysolved
if we could identify the ores and ore sourcesthat were
actuallyin use.
2. What is the geographic relation among an ore
source, the smeltersthat treat the ore, and fuels?What
are the overridingcriteriathat determinethe locations
of smelters?Are these criteriadominatedby technical
or ecological factors alone or do social and political
realitiesplay a role? For example,are there differences
not only in scale but in concept between the ore-
smelter-fuelcomplex of a small but powerfulhighland
kingdom such as that of the Lupaca, who dominated
the highlandplateau on the sw shores of Lake Titicaca
prior to the Inca expansion,and that of the Inca state?
Once mineralresourcesbecome the exclusive property
of the state, once gold and silverbecomethe symbolsof
the royal lineage to be utilizedonly by it, once copper-
tin bronze was disseminatedthroughoutthe Empireas
the Imperialmetal, the standardof the Inca hegemony,
what changes do we see in the earlier established
patternsof ore extraction,processing,and the winning
of metal?
3. What types of smelters and smelting processes
werein use in the Andes?Werecoastalsmeltingsystems
similarto or quite differentfrom highlandsystems,and
are the differencesrelated to the types of ore being
treated?Or was there a pan-Andeanstyle of smelting
that may have had varyinglocal developmentsbut that
fundamentallywas universal?Was uniformitya result
of and maintainedby the unifyingeffects of the expan-
sion of the great coastal and highland cultures --
Chavin,M-ochica,Tiahuanaco,Chimu,Inca?
The Spanish chroniclerswere intriguedby the Inca
wind furnacel3or huairafrequentlydescribedby them
13. The literaturewrittenin Englishdescribinghuairasoften refersto
them as 'iwind furnaces,"and this term has been acceptedas syn-
onymouswith the particularform of furnacedescribedhere. A wind
furnacein normal metallurgicalterminology,however,is one that
operateswith its own naturaldraught,i.e. throughthermalconvec-
tion. That is not the way the Andeanhuairafunctioned.It depended
upon air enteringthe furnacethroughthe force of the naturalwinds
that blew in the vicinity. That is why such furnaceswere always
located where prevailingwinds were strong, usually on the windy
slopesof hills.
8 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
as situatedin great numberson hillsideswhere,at night,
the light from their burningchargesresembleda field of
stars.'4The characteristicsof these furnacesare not at
all clear, however. They all depended upon natural
draughtswhich made windy hillsidesoptimal locations.
They were roughlycylindricaland ca. 1 m. high with a
D. of 0.5-l.Om. But referenceis also made to a portable
type of huairaJmade of clay, and some of the early il-
lustrationsof wind furnacesindicatetheir form (FIGS. 5,
6). They may well have been Spanish adaptations of
Figure 5. Drawing of a huairaas it appears in Alvaro Alonso Barba's
1640 treatise, A rtede los Metales.
Inca smelters,l5and in any case none that can be proved
to be pre-Columbianhas been reportedin the archae-
ological literaturedespite the fact that they were ap-
parentlyused by the thousands.l6At the moment,then,
we have virtuallyno archaeologicaldata about Andean
smelters,and where furnacesare reportedit is difficult
to establishboth that the structuredescribedis a metal
smelter and that it is pre-Spanish.l'Furthermore,the
chroniclers described Late Horizon technology. We
have little evidence to indicate the time-depthof that
technology,and it is most probablethat earliersystems
were quite different. Were smelting operations, let us
say of the Early Horizon or EarlyIntermediatePeriod,
carriedout in pits dug into the ground,in small ceramic
pots, or in braziers of some sort?lBWhen do actual
14. See Modesto Bargallo, "La 'Guaira,' Horno de Fundicion del
Antiguo Peru Estudio de las Referencias de los Cronistas,"
Mineria(Lima) 91-92 (1969) 43-49, and Eric Boman, Antiquite's
de la
Re'gionAndinede la Re'publique Argentineet du De'sertd'Atacama
(Paris 1908)for the most complete listings of these citations.
15. Bargallo, ibid.; Luis Capoche, Relacion General de la Villa
Imperialde Potosi(1585),Lewis Hanke, ed. (Madrid 1959).
16. Bruhns published what may have been a small metal smelter from
Colombia, but it is not a huaira.Karen O. Bruhns, "A Quimbaya
Gold Furnace?," AmAnt35 (1970) 202-203.
17. Boman, op. cit. (in note 14);Juan B. Ambrosetti, El Bronceen la
RegionCalchaqui,Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires 11
(Buenos Aires 1904)163-314;see note 3.
18. Barba, op. cit. (in note 2) iv. 4; P. Bernabe Cobo, Obras:Historia
del NuevoMundo(Madrid 1956)iii. 41.
Figure 6. A huaira, made of clay, in use in the highlands of Bolivia
for smelting argentiferous ores of lead (galenas). Illustration from
Robert Peele, Jr., "A Primitive Smelting-Furnace," The School of
Mines Quarterly 15 ( 1893) 8-10.
smelting "structures"appear, and of what materials
were they made- clay, adobe brick, baked brick,
stone?Was the same kind of smelterused for all ores or
were smeltersore-specific?What kinds of system were
used for metal refining?Is there any evidencethat some
formof cupellationwas employed?
These were the kinds of questions that were upper-
most duringthe course of the survey. In the discussion
that follows, some of the more interestingsites and data
are described, and occasionally a partial answer is
suggestedto some of the issuesjust raised.But we are a
long way from a deep appreciationof the arte de los
metalesin the Andes.
Ores
Because of the Spaniards'almost obsessive involve-
ment in gold and silver miningin the Andes, we have a
fair idea of the locations of the majorminingcentersof
the Inca. The early chroniclersmention some of these
sites and, what is more, the Europeanstook over many
of the Inca mines, greatly enlarging their scale of
operationsby exploitingAndean labor. But it is almost
impossible today to locate any of these pre-Spanish
mines, and none was identified on the survey. They
were often small, pit-like excavationsjust deep enough
to permit the entry of a single miner; many were
deliberatelysealed and camouflagedby the Inca as the
Spanish armies advanced throughout Tawantinsuyu,
and the European mines located at the same sites
obliteratedevidenceof Inca or pre-lncaicworking.
In comparisonwith all that was written about silver

and gold, there is scarely a mention by the Spanishof
copper being mined or worked by the Andean peoples.
Yet from the sheerquantityof copperand copper-alloy
objects we have from the Andes, it is clear that the
productionof copper was a long-standingand impor-
tant activityfromthe Earlythroughthe Late Horizon.'9
Moreover,the criticalstages in the developmentof An-
dean metallurgy are associated with the increasing
sophisticationwith which copper and its alloys were
handled. The developmentof Andean metallurgyas a
system of technology is based upon copper, not upon
silver or gold, in spite of the specialplace accordedthe
lattertwo metalsin Inca cosmology.
Two of the great centers for the manufactureof
copperand copper-alloyobjectsin pre-ColumbianPeru
were the north coast and the altiplano (high plateau)
along the western shores of Lake Titicaca. Today
neitherof these areasis especiallyknown for its copper
resources.Metallogeneticand miningmaps from Peru20
indicatevirtuallyno copper mines or untappedcopper
resourceson the northcoast. The plainsborderingLake
Titicaca are dotted with silver-leadmines, but copper
mines occur considerably further to the west in the
high, ruggedpuna. The surveywas designedto explore
as thoroughlyas possible both the north coast and the
altiplano in order to determinewhetheror not copper
was being exploitedrelativelyclose to the centersof ar-
tifact productionin these two importantareasor if ores
wereminedat considerabledistancesfrom such centers.
The north coast surveyincludedthe areabetweenthe
Chao Valley to the south and the LambayequeValley
to the north (FIG. 1), roughly correspondingto the
region politically uniEledby the Chimu in the Late
IntermediatePeriod and including most of the Early
IntermediatePerioddomainof the Mochica(the valleys
betweenthe Chicamaand the Nepena rivers).Thus the
N-S or littoral extension comprehended that area
dominatedby the two great copper-workingculturesof
19. For an analysisof EarlyHorizoncopperand gilt copperobjects
from the LurinValley, see GabrielaH. Schwoerbel,"Metalurgiade
Lima,"Actasdel SegundoCongresoPeruanodel Hombrey la Cultura
Andina,1 El Desarrollode la Metalurgiaen la ZonaAndina,H. Lecht-
man,ed. (Trujilloin press).
20. The most useful metallogeneticand mining maps of Peru con-
sulted during the survey were: Mapa Metalogeneticodel Peru
(Sociedad Nacional de Mineriay Petroleo, Lima, 1969);Mapa de
YacimientosMetalicos del Peru (Servicio de Geologia y Mineria,
Ministeriode Energiay Minas,Lima, 1970);MapaMinerodel Surdel
Peru(InstitutoNacionalde Investigaciony FomentoMinerodel Peru
and the United States Geological Survey, 1959);and the various
Departmentalmapspublishedby the ServicioNacionalde Geologiay
Mineria, Ministerio de Energia y Minas: Mapa de Yacimientos
Metalicosdel Dpto. de Apurimac(1970);Mapa Minerodel Dpto. de
Puno (1970); Mapa Minerodel Dpto. de la Libertad(1970); Mapa
A{inerode los Dptos.de Moqueguay Tacna( 1972).
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 9
the north, the Mochica and the Chimu. The "coast"
was definedto includealtitudesfrom sea level to about
2,000 m., thus incorporatingboth the narrow,flat strip
of desert (interrupted by fertile river valleys) that
borders the Pacific, and the intermediateor Andean
"foothill"zone betweenthat strip and the high sierrato
the east. The intermediatezone was considered that
zone which could easily be reachedin a day's walk and
was not especiallydifficult of access. After a ten-hour
trip on mule-back and on foot from the village of
Chorobal (850 m.) in the Chao Valley to a colonial
coppermine nearthe Cooperativeof Oyon (2,880m.) in
the mountainsto the NE, I decided that my deElnition
was a practical one!2' It became clear that this in-
termediatezone was extremelyimportantin terms of
the coppermineralit contains.Table 3 lists some of the
sites in the zones surveyed,the kinds of ore or mineral
present, and in those cases when ore or mineral was
sampledand analysed,the resultsof those analyses.
TheNorthCoast
The Chao River,in its NE courseinlandfromthe sea,
divides near the HaciendaBuenavista22 into a northerly
branch, the Rio Chorobal, and a southerly, the Rio
Huamanzana-Huaraday. The entirezone betweenthese
two rivers, roughly within the triangle formed by
Buenavista(150 m.), Oyon (2,700 m.) and Guacapungo
(2,700m.), is rich in coppermineraland in silverores as
well. As mentionedearlier,thecolonial mines at Oyon
(2,880m.) are coppermines,the ore primarilymalachite
and cupriteto a depth of about 30 m. Two independent
analyses of samples of these ores, one made by a
prospector,the other by a miner who recentlyworked
the Spanish site, yielded 30io Cu and 46aSo Cu, by
weight.On the opposite side of the riverfrom Chorobal
at E1 Alumbre (900 m.) a new copper mine has been
opened, and furtherup valleythe QuebradaHigueronis
full of copper oxides and colonial mines. At E1Cortijo
(1,025 m.), just east of Casablanca, a Spanish ore-
processingand smeltingsite was visited. The silverand
copperores broughtdown to the riverfor grindingwere
taken from Cerro Cochete immediatelyto the north;
some of this mineralwas found at the site. Fartherin-
land, and slightly higher, Cerro Fundicion (2,800 m.)
takes its namefromthe largeSpanishsmeltingsite there
for winningsilver from its ores. Not only is this entire
zone rich in the oxides of copper and in silverores, but
21. Farmerswho travelentirelyon foot betweenthe two villagesto
attendthe weeklymarketat Chorobalmakethe tripin less thanhalf a
day.
22. Haciendais hereafterabbreviatedHda. Q. stands for Quebrada
(ravine),andCo. for Cerro(hill).
10 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman

Table 3. Selectedlist of metallurgicalsites surveyedin the PeruvianAndes.

NORTHCOASTANDSlERRA

Site SiteNo.* iMap No. Department Province Description

Mina Zapotal 1SF(78°58' 12" LO- Small,modernCu mine:Chalcopyrite
7°12'35" LS) 8 Cajamarca Contumaza and copperoxidesand carbonates
Mina PaciElco, 15F(78°53'56" LO- Small,modernCu mine:Chalcopyrite,
Llallan 7°11'42" LS) Cajamarca Contumaza malachite,andcuprite
9
Denuncio Cruz 1SF(78 °47' 15" LO- Copperoxide outcrop:Oresampled:
del Cobre (Puente 7°12'12" LS) Cajamarca Cajamarca ca. 12SoCu,byweight
la Mulluna) 10

Mina Leque Leque 14E(79° 19'10" LO- ModernCu mine:Malachitein a quartz

6°57'25" LS) Lambayeque Chiclayo matrix:8.25g0Cuintailings
Co. Songoy 14E(79°28'48" LO- 6 Pre-Columbiansite, possiblyLateMoche-
6°53'10" LS) Lambayeque Chiclayo EarlyChimu,with abundantevidenceof
coppersmelting:scoria,charcoal,
mineral,sherdson surface;batan;
mineralidentifiedas chrysocolla
Co. Landosa 14E(79°17'55" LO- Pre-Columbiansmeltingsite, possibly
6°53' LS) s Lambayeque Chiclayo late Chimu:surfacesherds,charcoal,
scoria,Cu mineralidentifiedas
malachite
Pampa de Tablazo 14E(79°24'30" LO-
6°40'48" LS) Lambayeque Chiclayo Batanes
Co. de las Minas, 14E(79°23'45" LO- Coppermine,possiblyColonial;mineral
near Tablazo 6°40'25" LS) Lambayeque Chiclayo identifiedas malachite
4
Mina San Victor, 13D(79°40' LO- Copperoxideworkings,possibly
Co. Pan de Azucar 6°24'40" LS) Lambayeque Lambayeque pre-Columbian
Mina Sta. Marta, 14D(79°38'20" LO- Copperworkings,possiblypre-Columbian:
Co. Blanco, Batan 6°31'15" LS) Lambayeque Ferrenafe Cu mineralidentifiedas cuprite
Grande and chalcopyrite;galenaalso present
Mina Salaverry 17F(78°54'15" LO- SmallCu mine,workedby hand;chalcocite
8°11'25" LS) La Libertad Trujillo identified;oresampled:32SoCu,
ll by weight
El Ingenio 17F(78°59'40" LO- Batanes;ore processingsite, probably
8°7'40" LS) La Libertad Trujillo Republican
12
Minas Co. Sto. 17F(78°53'15" LO-
Domingo 8°6'25" LS) La Libertad Trujillo SmallCu workings,possiblyColonial
13
Sitio Fermin 16G(78° 19'10" LO- Sto. de PossibleColonialmines,Zn & Pb
Vein 7°58'55" LS) La Libertad Chuco workings:surfacesherdsandmineral
14
Sitio Co. 16G(78°19'35" LO- Sto. de Colonialmines,Pb & Zn: surface
Portales 7°58'30" LS) La Libertad Chuco sherds,glass, mineral
15
Sitio Sta. Cata- 17G(78° 17'40" LO- Sto. de Colonialore processingsite;batanes,
lina (Quiruvilca) 8°0'25" LS) La Libertad Chuco possiblefurnace:surfacesherds,
16 glass, scoriatedstone
 Journal of Field Archaeology/ Vol. 3, 1976 11
(Table3 continued)
Site SiteNo.* MapNo.Department Province Description
E1Cortijo 17G(78°26'15"LO- Sto. de Colonialore processingand smelting
8°29' LS) 17 La Libertad Chuco site;adobefurnaces,batanes.
surfacesherds,minera!(Pb-Ag),scoria
Minas Oyon 17G(78°24'10" LO- Sto. de ColonialCu mines:cuprite;ore sampled:
8°23'20" LS) 18 La Libertad Chuco between30 and46No Cu,by weight
Mina la 16F(78°35'50" LO- SmallColonialsilvermine,worked
Serpentina 7°59'10" LS) 19 La Libertad Otuzco a mediabarreta
Mina Quebrada 16F(78°35'50" LO- Smallsilvermine,probablyColonial,
Blanca 7°59'20" LS) 20 La Libertad Otuzco workeda mediabarreta
Fondo la Fabrica 16F(78°34'40" LO- Late l9th-early20thC. smeltingsite;
7°38' LS) 21 La Libertad Otuzco 2 furnacesfor smeltingAg ores:
relave,remainsof water-poweredmill
Olluco 16F(78°43'10" LO- Remainsof metalsmelters,pre-Columbian
7°33'10" LS) 22 La Libertad Otuzco or Colonial:surfacescoria
La Capilla 16F(78°43'20" LO- Colonialchurch& associatedarchitec-
7°32'15" LS) 23 LaLibertad Otuzco turalstructures;remainsof several
adobesmelters
Iglesia Vieja l5D(79°34'50" LO- 16thC. clay smelternearsite of
7°8'5" LS) 24 LaLibertad Pacasmayo Colonialchurch:surfacescoria
Co. Pitura l5E(79°22' LO- Pre-Columbianadobeconstructions;
7°19'45" LS) 25 LaLibertad Pacasmayo terraces;possibleIncasmelting
site:surfacescoriaand Cu mineral

CENTRAL COAST
Ancon 24I(77°9'21" LO- Metallurgicalslagsfromsmeltingand/or
11°46'36" LS) 26 Lima Lima refiningof coppersulfideores and
argentiferous(?)galenas

-
SO UTH COAST A ND SlERRA
Matarani 32N(74°2'38" LO- Oreprocessingsite, Colonial,with
15°33'50" LS) 28 Arequipa Caraveli manyhugebatanesin zone richin
gold ores
-
PuebloViejo 32N(74°3'45" LO- Pre-Columbianhabitationsite, Inca and
(CuatroCercos) 15°37'32" LS) 27 Arequipa Caraveli earlier;stone batanesfor workingore
probablyColonial;site opposite
La Capitanagold mine
La Fundicion 32T(71°24'27" LO- Stone metalsmelters,probablyColonial,
(Callalli) 15°31'45" LS) 29 Arequipa Cailloma said to be for Cu smelting:mineral,
scoriaon surface
Qqena 31T(71°24'30"LO- Metal smeltersnearpre-Spanish
(Ccena) 15°29'47" LS) 30 Arequipa Cailloma occupationsite mineral,scoria,
surfacesherds
Co. Chillo & Mina 30M(75°13'20" LO- Inca and possiblypre-Incaoccupation
Sta. MariaCelia 14°34'20" LS) 31 Ica Palpa site;cerro containsAu in quartz
vein;possiblypre-Spanishworkings
Villacuri 28L(75°56'40" LO- Colonialoccupationand metalsmelting
13°55'12" LS) 32 Ica Ica
site;adobefurnacespartlyintact:
copperscoria,surfacesherds
12 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
(Table3 continued)

Site Site No. * Mdap No. Department Province Description

Curamba 28P(73°8' LO- PossibleIncaore smeltingand/or
13°37'20" LS) 33 Apurimac Andahuaylas refiningsite;terraceswithfire-
reddenedchannels,charcoal,scoria,
surfacesherds
E1Trapiche, 72°5' LO Colonialsilverore processingsite;
Amparaes 13°2' LS** 34 Cuzco Calca stone furnace,ore crushingmill,
relave,mineral,batanes
Laicacota 32V(70°1'28" LO- Colonialand possiblypre-Spanish
15°52' LS) 35 Puno Puno Ag mine
Itapalluni 32V(70°3'10" LO- Colonialsilverore processingsite;
(Chorillos) 15°52'50" LS) 36 Puno Puno mill, storagerooms,batanes
Plateria 32X(69°50' LO- Metalworkingsite;evidenceof ore
15°56'48" LS) 37 Puno Puno preparationandpossiblesmelting;
Colonial,Inca & pre-Incaoccupation:
Cu mineral,scoria,relave,surface
sherds,bones;mineralidentified
as nativecopper
Chiluyo 33V(70°9' LO- Colonialsilverore processingsite;
16°5'34" LS) 38 Puno Puno mill, adobefurnaces
Andamarca 33V(70°6'32" LO- Colonialsilverore processingsite;
16°5'20" LS) 39 Puno Puno mill, furnaces
Nairanaqque 69°25'48" LO- Colonialand possiblypre-SpanishAg
16° 13'24" LS** 40 Puno Chucuito mine,workedamediabarreta
Jaruni - 69°34' LO- Colonialcopperminesand ore processing
16°20' LS** 41 Puno Chucito site;mill and evidenceof smelting
activity

Llaquepa 69° 12'24" LO- Pre-Columbian(LateHorizon)metalworking

16°21'12" LS** 42 Puno Chucuito sitewith laterSpanishoccupation:
Cu mineral,identiEledas cuprite,
malachiteand chrysocolla;ore
sampled:24.057OCu, by weight
Batalla- 69°12'24" LO- Probablepre-Columbianmetalworkingsite
Rinconada 16°19'54" LS** 43 Puno Chucuito with evidenceof powderedcopperore
Trapiche- 69°5'12" LO-
E1 Molino 16°25'54" LS** 44 Puno Chucuito Colonialore processingsite;mill
(Co. Capia)
Paratia 31U(70°35'43" LO-
15°27'5" LS) Puno Lampa ColonialAg-Pbmine
45
Mawka Paratia 31U(70°36'48" LO- Colonialore processingsite;hornos,
15°36'57" LS) Puno Lampa mill, associatedstructures:
46 surfacesherds,relave,dungcharcoal
La Rinconada 69°31'42" LO- Colonialand possiblypre-SpanishAu
San Francisco 13°39'36" LS** Puno Sandia miningand processingsite, still
47 in use;quEmbaletes
Caca Punco 30X(69°32'55" LO- ColonialAu washingsite and habitation
(Chaquiminas) 14°40'32" LS) Puno Sandia site;sluices,represa,houses,corral
48
 Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 13
(Table3 continued)

Site SiteNo.* MapNo. Department Province Description

Fundicion 69°45'24" LO- Oresmeltingsite, probablyColonial:
14°27'12" LS** 49 Puno Sandia scoria,mineral(unidentiEled)
Huacchani 69°44'6" LO- ColonialAu mineandAu washingsite
14°28'36" LS** 50 Sandia (lavadero)
Puno

*All site numbersare given in the form specified in 1973 by the Departamentode MonumentosAr-
queologicosof the InstitutoNacional de Cultura,Peru. The numberand letter precedingthe parentheses
correspondsto the quadranglesheet of the 1:100,000topographicmap of Peru issued by the Instituto
GeograficoMilitarin Lima.The expressionwithinthe parenthesesis the valueof the longitudeand latitude
coordinatesof the site as determinedfrom these maps. For example,Ancon is found on quadrangle24I
(Chancay)and is locatedat 77°9'12"west longitudeand 11°46'36"south latitude.The 1:100,000seriesmaps
were not availablefor those sites markedwith a double asterisk(**). Site numbersfor Nairanaqque,Jaruni,
Llaquepa,Batalla-Rinconada,Trapiche-ElMolino (Co. Capia), Fundicion,and Huacchaniwere obtained
from 1:200,000maps;for Amparaes,from a 1:1,000,000map, and for La RinconadaSan Francisco,from a
1:670,000map.Theselattermapsare also issuedby the InstitutoGeograficoMilitar.

it was a perfect location for smelting, for the region
abounds in los Yoques,large standsof a hardwoodtree
whichservesas an excellentfuel.
Travellingnorthwardto the Viru Valley, one finds
rich copper deposits in the area which stretchesfrom
the zone known as Unigambal(roughly2,000 m.) to the
east as far as the Hda. Tomobal (200 m.) on the river
itself. The northernlimit of this area is Juyaculand the
southernHuacapongo(400 m.). In the PampaColorada
(728 m.) in Juyacul there are Colonial mines, and the
zone is rich in malachiteand chrysocollaas well as in
sulfidesof copper. This site is almost halfway between
the Viruand MocheValleys.CerroHuacapongo,which
rises from the northernbanks of the riverto its peak at
1,762 m., also exhibits early mines as well as surface
scoria. At the eastern end of the Quebradade la Bura
Vieja (300 m.), which runs roughlythe same course as
the Rio Seco to the north of the Viru River delta, there
are also numerousold copperworkings.
Most of the sites visited in the Moche Valley are
clusteredin the group of hills south of the river, SE of
Laredo and almost due east of the port of Salaverry.23
The Mina Salaverry(450 m.), situatedin the Co. de la
23. Michael E. Moseley has describedto me a series of mines, all
within 1 km. of each other, locatedin the Q. de Ancados,in igneous
hills on the north side of Co. Ochiputur(10 km. NNEof the port of
Salaverry)at an elevationof ca. 350 m. (The hills Co. Ochiputur,Co.
Santo Domingo, and Co. de la Minaare adjacentto one another,ly-
ing on the SE side of the Moche Valley between Laredo and
Salaverry.) There is pre-Hispanic occupation, principally small
ChimCand Inca sites, at differentpoints in the quebrada,but no
Colonialoccupationwas found. Thereare no artifactsof pre-Spanish
or Europeanorigindirectlyassociatedwith the mines,nor can any of
the sites in the regionbe tied to them.The minesthemselves,worked
by hand,are in the form of simpletrenchesthat followedcloselyveins
of copperore in a quartzmatrix.Chunksof discardedgreen-stained
quartzMoseleycollectedat the site wereanalysedin Trujilloandwere
Mina, is a coppermine abandonedabout 1940.Selected
samples of its ore, containing chalcocite, yielded ap-
proximately 36So CU, by weight upon wet chemical
analysis.The sets of grindingstones used to crush the
ore24extractedfrom the minewerefound at a site called
E1 Ingenio (sea level), immediatelyto the west of the
Huaca del Sol. Recently a miner opened a small shaft
hereto exploita new vein, and sacksof comminutedore
were found stacked outside the mine entrance. Micro-
scope examinationof a sample of this ore proved it to
be a low grade chrysocolla.Slightly farthernorth, the
foothills of the Co. Santo Domingo (260 m.) are pock
markedwith small pits fromwhichcopperores wereex-
tracted, possibly in the Colonial period. Copper sul-
fides, coppercarbonates,and chrysocollawere all iden-
tified in the walls of these pits during the survey. Dr.
Luis Rodriguez Lopez, Professor of History at the
UniJversidad de Trujillo,claimsto have beenguidedto a
pre-Spanishcopper mine at the summit of Co. Santo
Domingo (1430 m.) several years ago (personal com-
munication), but our attempts to relocate the mine
proved unsuccessful.Due north of Laredo, on the op-
posite side of the river, many Colonial mines are
situated in the Co. de Las Minas, particularlyin that
area known as the Co. Dios Dado (1,800 m.). Here the
ores are complex:copper, silver,gold, and lead are all
foundtogether.
Interestingly,the surveyof the ChicamaValleyyield-
ed no obvious outcrops of copper ores or remainsof
found to contain copper. Moseley's impressionwas that the most
easily accessiblecopper ore was strippedfrom the vein, and that a
greaterlabor investmentwould have been neededto follow the vein
further(personalcommunication,August 1975).
24. For a generaldiscussionof the Andeansystemof grindingores,
see the sectionon "OreProcessing."
14 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
gold workings. At the site of Olluco-La Capilla,
situatedon the riverat an elevationof 820 m., there are
remains of Colonial smelting furnaces, but these may
have been used to smelt the rich silver ores in Co.
Carangas(2,000 m.) which is further inland and just
west of the town of Lucma. It should be noted,
however, that a few km. to the west of Olluco, at
PuebloViejo (800 m.), thereis a largeChimusite which
dominatesthis intermediatezone betweenthe coast and
the sierra. No evidence of metallurgicalactivity was
found there,however.
In the next valley to the north, formed by the Rio
Jequetepeque,many outcrops of copper mineral were
found and sampled.Some of these outcropsare current-
ly being worked. The hills borderingthe river to the
north, between Gallito (450 m.) and Tembladera(400
m.), are full of the oxides and carbonatesof copper. In
addition, Co. Sapo and Co. Pena Blanca have par-
ticularlyrich deposits of arsenopyrite(FeAsS). Follow-
ing the river inland, one passes Zapotal (900 m.),
Llallan(900 m.), and Chilete(1000 m.), finally crossing
the Rio Magdalenaat the Puente La Mulluna (1,000
m.). Each of these sites, with the exception of Chilete,
contains substantial deposits of copper ore, primarily
oxides and carbonatesof copper, but chalcopyritewas
also identifiedat Zapotal, the Mina PaciElcoat Llallan,
and at the Puente La Mulluna. The Mina Paredones,
just north of Chilete, was one of the most famous Por-
tuguese and, later, Spanish silver mines in northern
Peru.The 16thcentury Visita. . . a las Siete Guarangas
de la Provinciade Caxamarca. . . de 1540 publishedby
WaldemarEspinosa,25together with the VisitaGeneral
of 1572-74leave no doubt, however,that the silverwas
worked much earlier by Andean miners. It should be
remembered,too, that the zone describedhere which
hugs the river for a distance of about 55 km. is par-
ticularly rich in archaeologicalremains, both occupa-
tion sites and burial sites, from the Early Horizon and
subsequentperiods.
The most interesting sites in all the north coast
valleys surveyed were several in the Zana Valley, for
both pre-Columbian smelting sites and sources of
copper ore were found in close proximity.The survey
includedthe area in the valley from the town of Zana
(sea level) inland to the village of Viru (324 m.) on the
northernbranchof the Rio Zana, and to the village of
Nanchoc (400 m.) on the southern branch which
changesits name to the Rio Nanchoc. The hills in this
zone Co. E1Portachuelo(Co. Alumbral),Cos. de la
Ramada, Co. Derrumbe,Co. Leque Leque, Co. Con-
quis are extremely rich in copper ores. At Co.
25. WaldemarEspinosa S., "E1 PrimerInforme Etnologico Sobre
Cajamarca.Ano de 1540,"Revista Peruana de Cultura 11-12(1967).
Songoy (100 m.), a small hill on the northernbank of
the river to the east of Hda. Cojal, abundantremains
of pre-Spanishcopperworkingwerefound:smallpieces
of mineral,charcoal, broken sherds with scoriatedin-
ner surfaces and accretions of copper slags, a large
grinding stone possibly for crushing the copper ore.
X-ray diffraction analysis of several mineral samples
taken from the site proved them to be chrysocolla
(CuSiO3a2H2O).26 On the day that the site was visited,a
group of huaqueros (pot hunters) was digging what
appearedto be Late IntermediatePeriod graves in the
tiny Huaca Songoy nestled betweenthe two branching
foothills of the cerroitself. A detaileddescriptionof the
Late IntermediatePeriod smeltingsite of Co. Landosa,
several kilometers SE of the town of Nueva Arica, is
given below in the section on "Smelting."Suffice it to
say that the mineralfound there was malachite,and its
source may well have been malachite from the Cos.
Leque Leque, severalhours walk to the sw. A small bit
of mineralfound at the site was analysedwet chemically
and showed a copper concentrvtion of 28.3go, by
weight. At Viru (324 m.), a village to the east of
Oyotun, a small mine worked by a local farmerin the
Cos. de la Ramada yielded chrysocolla and chalcopy-
rite. It should be noted that not only were the pre-
Columbiansmithsof the Zana valley able to exploit the
mineralwealth of this region,but it is likely that the in-
habitantsof the LambayequeValleyto the northutilized
these ores as well. For example,Sipan, a site in the
LambayequeValley where severallargecakes or ingots
of cast copper have been found, is only about 13 km.
from Zana; the Hda. Pampa Grande that yielded the
Late Chavin/EarlyMochegold jaguars27is on the other
side of the complex of hills that lies between Co.
Songoy and the Rio Chancay, hills which are low
(roughly 600-800 m. high) and rich in copper. We
should consider the area betweenthe two rivervalleys
from about longitude79°10' E to 79°40' E as one large
coppermetallurgicalzone.
The Lambayeque Valley, the northernmostvalley
studiedon the survey,is probablyas well known as the
Moche Valley for the wealth of copper objects found
there, particularly the large hoards of copper im-
plements that appear to be agriculturalblades, spear
points, chisels, etc. (FIGS. 3 and 4 illustrate several
varieties). For purposes of this study, the valley was
26. All of the petrographicexaminationsreportedin this studywere
carriedout by RobertKamilli,a graduatestudentin the Department
of Geology at HarvardUniversity,to whom I am indebtednot on]y
for his expert help but also for the generousallocationof his own
researchtime. Many of the x-raydiffractionanalyseswere also con-
ductedwithhis assistance.
27. LechtmanParsons,Young,op. cit. (in note 1).

consideredthat area between the Rio de la Leche and
the Rio Chancay, although the two river systems are
not connected. Two mines said to have been worked
prior to the Spanish invasion were visited, one at the
famous Hda. Batan Grande-the huaquero's paradise
that has yielded myriad objects of gold, silver, and
copper,particularlyof Chimuorigin and the otherin
the Co. Pan de Azucar,directlynorth of the old hacien-
da. The Mina Sta. Marta (300 m.), located in the Co.
Blanco in Batan Grande, was recently mined for
copper. About 20 m. of copper oxide were removed
between the ancient mine, a small and shallow shaft,
and the modern mine below it whose ores were com-
plex, consisting of chalcopyrite (CuFeS2), sphalerite
(ZnS), and galena (PbS). The site in Co. Pan de Azucar
consisted of several shallow shafts excavated into the
rock face near the summit of the hill (ca. 850 m.). The
entry to the one mine visited was blocked by fallen
rock, but my guide had enteredthe mine in 1969 and,
findingrich veins of cupritewithin, made a claim to the
site. Further south, in the Chongoyape region of the
Rio Chancay, there is a series of copper outcrops and
abandoned mines from Tablazo to Los Higuerones.
Samplesof ore taken from the tailingsof a coppermine
at Las Minas (250 m.), just east of Tablazo, proved
upon x-ray diffraction analysis to be malachite. One
sample of pure malachite was found as well as many
other less rich ores from the oxidizedzone of the vein.
Polishedsectionsof these ores showed that the original,
unweathered ore was chalcopyrite which had since
alteredto covellite(CuS) and to cuprite(Cu2O).In fact,
almost all the samples studied had been almost com-
pletely altered to cuprite, but small centers of chalco-
pyrite surroundedby a layer of covellite and finally by
cuprite were identified. Some of the green mineral on
such sampleswas malachite,but other greenareaswere
simplythe quartzrock stainedgreenfrom disseminated
copper salts. It was also interestingto find that on the
Pampa de Tablazo, just 1.5 km. from the mine, the
plain was full of large batanes,Andean grindingstones
that appeared to be in their original locations (see
below the section on "Ore Processing").It may well be
that these stones were used for crushingand grinding
mineral mined in this zone. Although not a large
numberof sites was visited in the LambayequeValley,
it seems clear that the region is rich in copper mineral,
particularlyon the north side of the Rio de la Leche
and on the south side of the Rio Chancay.
It is evident,even from this briefsummaryof the sur-
vey and sites visited, that the north coast of Peru is a
zone repletewith copper ores, especiallythe oxides and
carbonatesof copperthat are so easy to smelt. In some
areas, oxide deposits were 20-30 m. deep; in others the
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 15
oxides were intimatelymixed with varyingamounts of
sulfides that may have been smelted along with them.
The Lambayeque, Zana, Jequetepeque, and Chao
Valleys have abundantmineralresources,and some of
these are being mined today. All the evidenceindicates
that these ores were systematicallyexploited by the
Spanishand, I am certain,by the Andeanpeoples long
before. Neither the Mochica nor the Chimu had to go
fartherthan the coastal valleysthey controlledfor their
supplies of copper. On the other hand, once copper-
arsenic bronze became an important and often-used
alloy in the Late IntermediatePeriod,it is likelythat the
ores providingthe arsenicwere mined in the highlands.
Duringthe courseof the surveyin the north,great care
was taken to investigateany possible source of arsenic
both on the coast and in the sierra. Since it has been
argued28that Peruis sufElciently richin arsenicminerals
such as domeykite (Cu3As), a copper arsenide, and
olivenite [Cu2(OH)AsO4] (an arsenatefrom the weath-
ered zones of copper sulfarsenideores), to have per-
mittedthe alloying of copper with arseniceither by the
directsmeltingof the copper-arsenicoxides or by simp-
ly meltingthe alreadyalloyed arsenides,these minerals
were sought as were realgar (As4S4) and orpiment
(As2S3).Not a single sample of any of these minerals
was located either on the coast or in the sierra.
Mispickel, or arsenopyrite(FeAsS), is slightly more
abundantparticularlyin the JequetepequeValleyand in
the area betweenContumaza(2,700 m.) and Cascas(1,-
200 m.). Raimondialso mentionsa samplehe locatedin
the District of Trujillo,betweenChicamaand the Hda.
Menocucho.29It seems much more likely that the
sourceof the arsenicwas not any of the arsenicminerals
per se but ratherthe coppersulfarsenideores that are so
abundant in the northern sierra, particularlyin the
regionfrom Quiruvilca(ca. 4,000 m.) to Sinchao(3,860
m.), which is NW of Hualgayoc,the importantSpanish
silver-miningcenter. These ores enargite(Cu3AsS4),
tennantite(Cu,Fe),2As4S,3 are as scarceon the coast
as they are abundantin the sierra.I found no evidence
of them at all on the north coast. Cossio and Jaen30
mentiona small mine (1,050 m.) 8 km. northof Ascope
(ChicamaValley) where the veins consistedof enargite
and chalcopyritein a matrixof calcite and quartz.The
mine was abandoned,they speculate,becauseof the low
copperconcentrationand the smallnessof the vein. On
28. Caley, op. cit. (in note l); C. Patterson, op. cit. (in note 11).
29. Antonio Raimondi, Mineralesdel Peru(1879) T. 2 (Lima 1939)
Sample 1186.
30. Aurelio Cossio and Hugo Jaen, Ceologiade los Cuadrangulos
de
Puemape,Chocope,Otuzeo, Trujillo,Salaverryy Santa, Servicio de
Geologia y Mineria, Boletin 17 (Lima 1967).
16 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
Table 4. Analyses of selected samples of ores from the mining districts of Quiruvilcaand
Sinchao,northhighlandPeru.
Sample Wet Chemical Spectrographic Analysis
No. OreType Site Analysis
(x-raydiffraction Cu As A1 Ag Bi Ca MgMn Pb Sb Si Sn
Fe
determination) 45.7 14.0 1.26
0.34 VFT
670 Enargite Sinchao
671 Enargite Quiruvilca 45.4 15.1 1.42 0.015 FT- FT VFT FT FT T 1.97 T T
T
LEGEND:
VFT 0.0001-0.001(Yo L 0.1-1.0%
FT 0.001-0.01% Not detected
T 0.01-O.l<Yo
the other hand, wet chemicaland quantitativeemission
spectrographicanalysesof selectedsamplesof enargiteI
collected from Quiruvilcaand Sinchaoshowed them to
be richin arsenic,as is indicatedin Table4.
The implication of the use of complex copper sul-
farsenideores in the pre-Columbianera is, of course,
that they are sulfides and, therefore, requiredspecial
smelting regimes that are more difElcultand sophis-
ticated than those associated with the straightforward
smelting of oxide, chloride, and carbonate ores. C.
Patterson3'for example,claims that Andean metallur-
gists never smelted sulEldeores and that the smelt-
ing of complex sulfarsenidesof copper was virtual-
ly out of the question. Researchon this extremelyim-
portant problemof the preparationof Andean copper-
arsenicbronze is just beginning,but unless substantial
quantities of arsenic mineral suddenly surface on the
north coast, I think we must look to the sierrafor the
key to arsenic bronze and to sulEldesmelting in the
northernAndes.
TheLake TiticacaAltiplano
Poor weatherconditionsdid not permitas rigorousa
survey of the Peruvianaltiplanoas was conducted on
the north coast, but the purposeof the southernsurvey
was also somewhat different. Since the publicationin
1964 of the important Visita Hecha a la Provinciade
Chucuitopor GarciDiez de San Miguelen el Ano 1567,32
Andean scholarshave paid more and more attentionto
the Aymarakingdomsthat dominatedthe altiplano,in-
31. C. Patterson,op. cit. (in note 11).
32. Garci Diez de San Miguel, risita Hecha a la Provinciade
Churuito. . . en el Ano 1567, Documentos Regionalespara la Et-
nologia y EtnohistoriaAndinas 1, Casa de la Culturadel PerG(Lima
1964).
Composition [No,by weight]
Sr Ti Zn
VFT- FT 0.66 L FT FT T -
.
.<
_,
_ T
cludingthe Provinceof Chucuitovisitedby Diez, before
they were conquered and incorporatedinto the Inca
empire.33The Visita,one of the few publishedexamples
of such i'administrativereports of inspections . . .
compiled in the Eleldby royal Spanish ofElcialsin the
Elrstfew decades after the Europeaninvasion,"34is es-
sentially an account cabecera(provincial center) by
cabecera,parcialidad(moiety) by parcialidadof the
lands, herds, and other resourcesof the Lupaca who
controlled the southwesternshores of the Lake, with
distant colonies in the coastal river valleys from Arica
to at least Moquegua. Among the questions asked by
Diez of the caciques(chiefs) of the seven cabeceras of
the Province was whether there were mines of silver,
gold, or other metal in their respectiveterritories.The
answer,of course,was inevitably'ino." Yet throughout
the documentthe caciquesfrequentlymake mention of
towns of platerosand olleros,metalworkersand potters,
and the Visitais particularlyvaluablebecauseit names
some of the lands with which such craftsmen were
associated. For example, the site called Sunacaya is
listed as a town of platerossubject to the cabeceraof
Chucuito.
During the course of the survey, another extremely
valuable document pertaining to the Province of
Chucuito was found and transcribed by AnaMaria
Soldi to whom I am indebtedfor having brought it to
my attention.This is DocumentNo. 256 of the Archivo
Especialde Limitesin Lima, drawnup in 1685by Juan
Francisco Inda Vidaurre,35which describesthe lands
33. John V. Murra, "Una Apreciacion Etnologica de la Visita," in
Garci Diez de San Miguel, ibid. 421-442; idem, "An Aymara
Kingdom in 1567," Ethnohistory 15 ( 1968) 115-151.
34. Murra, 1968ibid. 117.
35. Juan Francisco Inda Vidaurre, Descripcion de las tierras de la an-

pertainingto the "indios" of the Provinceof Chucuito
in that year. This document lists the ayllus(lineages)
associated with each cabeceraand the lands they
possessed. For the cabeceraof Pomata, the ayllu
Tacataca Plateros is listed with lands at Llaquepa,
Carapasa,and half of Batalla extendingto the Co. de
Capia. For the cabeceraof Acora, the ayllu Plater-
oininga is listed, whose lands are called Sunacaya,
otherwiseknown as Plateria(. . . tienenestosAilloslas
tierras nombradas Sunacaya, por otro nombre
Platerfa. . ), as well as Ypara.
With both documents at hand, the survey was
directedtoward locating those lands of the Lupacaex-
plicitlymentionedas belongingto plateros.It should be
noted here that in the risitas only platerosand olleros
are named and distinguishedby profession. No other
groups are singled out in this manner."Platero"is the
Spanishword for silversmith,but the documentsclearly
refer to metalworkers, though neither the kinds of
metals they treated nor the nature of their activitiesis
described.In the Visita,the Sunacayalands are subject
to Chucuito; in the Limitesdocument, they belong to
Acora and are specificallyreferredto as Plateria.The
present lakeside town of Platerialies two-thirdsof the
way between Chucuito and Acora, and it seems clear
that both documents refer to this site. Furthermore,
Elias Mujica B. and John Hyslop, during their 1974
archaeologicalEleldsurveyof the Provinceof Chucuito,
told me of copper "slags"they had seen in the fields of
a farmer living on the old Hda. Plateria opposite the
main plaza of the town. The Lupaca territory thus
seemeda uniqueregion in which to documentIncaic or
pre-Incaicmetallurgyby combiningethnohistoricaland
archaeologicalstrategies.
The Hda. Plateria(3,8SOm.) is situatedon the slopes
of the Co. Teecollo at km. 29 on the south side of the
main altiplano road between Puno and Desaguadero.
Surface evidence of metallurgicalactivities there take
the form of two large Colonial ore grindingstones (FIG.
7) which are almost identicalwith that from Itapalluni
(FIG. 11), abundantsmall pieces of green copper miner-
al, an occasional bit of melted copper or slag with a
high copper content, and pieces of animalbone stained
green from ground water containing copper salts in
solution.An old farmerwho tills these lands finds, as he
turns over the soil, larger pieces of copper mineral,
abundantash and charcoal,and big chunksof earthin-
Elltratedwith a green, powdery sedimentthat has been
layed down in strata and binds the earth particles
tiguaProvinciade Chucuitosacadade las diligenciasoriginalesunidasa
la matriculade 1685actuadapor JuanFranciscoInda Vidaurreen este
partido, Documento 256, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores,
ArchivoEspecialde Limites,Limitescon Bolivia,Lima.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 17
Figure 7. Two abandoned, Colonial ore-crushing stones (the upper
stones of a set) in the fields of a farm at Plateria, Province of Puno,
Peru. Note the strong resemblance in form between these stones and
the stone from Itapalluni (FIG. 11), also from the Peruvian altiplano
together.These materialsoccur at a depth of about 0.3
m. Duringthe site visit, in an excavationthe farmerhad
made while constructinga new house, we removedlarge
chunksof the compacted,powderedgreen materialthat
was clearly the remains of finely crushed copper ore.
This was the "slag" reported by Mujica and Hyslop.
Bits of charcoal were also present and nearby lay
broken stone quEmbaletes(see the section below on
"Ore Processing").Some years earlier, at the western
end of the site, the farmerhad found three stone-lined
pits filled with brightgreencoppermineral.Indeed,this
portion of the site had a much denser surfacecover of
large pieces of copper ore than other areas. Co.
Teecollo, which was surveyedabout 10 years ago by a
miningengineer,containsno copperoutcrops,however.
Old copper workings in the area occur at Co. Yana-
mure, approximately 10 km. to the SE and at
Chimchala,just east of the Hda. Terroba and 3 km.
from Plateria.The mineralmay have been brought to
Plateriafrom such mines.
The fields at the Hda. Plateriacontain numerousInca
and Chucuito pottery sherds and, less abundantly,
Colonial sherds. The presence of the typical Spanish
ore-grindingstones indicates without doubt that the
Spanish were processing copper mineral there. The
Europeanpresenceprobablyalso indicatesthat the site
had functionedearlieras a metallurgicalcenter.The old
farmer as well as the gobernadorof Ccota, the lands
contiguouswith Plateriato the north, claimedthat the
site is known to be an Inca smeltingsite. Both the Visita
and the Limites document supportthis local tradition.
No remains of furnaces were found, though the
18 A AtetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
presence of ash, charcoal, and small bits of molten
metaland/or slag indicatesthat smeltingor meltingwas
carried out. Thus the lands of the ayllu Plateroininga
weregiven over to winningcopperfrom its ores.
Several of the large green chunks of copper ore
collectedat Plateriawere analysedpetrographicallyand
wet chemically. A polished section revealed that the
highly altered igneous rock contained large quantities
of native copper in particulate form disseminated
throughoutthe matrix.Cuprite(Cu2O)had replacedthe
copper in many areas, and the surface of the ore was
green from the formation of malachite. The wet
chemicalanalysisprovedthat many ore samplesare ex-
tremelyrich, containing41.4%Cu, by weight. It is in-
terestingthat Raimondi36collected a sample of copper
ore from a mine about 3.4 km. from Juli, one of the
seven cabeceras of the Lupacakingdom, 50 km. SE of
Plateriaalong the main altiplanoroad. He describesit
as containingziguelina(red oxide of copper,i.e. cuprite)
and malachite, intimately mixed with a quartz sand-
stone. Its copper content he gives as 66%. Raimondi
comments that the sample is quite analogous to those
from Corocoro in Bolivia (Corocoro is situated in the
Bolivian altiplanojust 90 km. south of Desaguadero)
where one also finds a cupriferoussandstone,with the
differencethat at Corocoro the ore consists of native
copper instead of copper oxides. He reasons,therefore,
that it is quite probableone would find nativecopperin
the Juli mine from which his samplecame if one went a
little deeper.37Actuallyat Corocoro,chalcociteis also a
primarymineralat depth and would tend to oxidize to
malachiteand oxides at the surface.Though we do not
know the exact source of the ore at Plateria,it seems
that the altiplano, at least from Corocoro to Juli, is
characterizedby copper deposits that contain native
copper at relatively shallow depths. Evidently the
Plateriaore was extracted from such a source, and it
could not have been distant.The trip from Plateriaover
the lakesideplain to Juli, for example,is only a matter
of hours on foot.
The 1685 Limites document names the lands of the
Tacataca Plateros, an ayllu in the jurisdiction of the
cabeceraof Pomata, as Llaquepa,Carapasa,and por-
tions of Batalla extendingto the Co. Capia. The com-
munitiesof Batalla(3,830 m.) and Llaquepa(3,800 m.)
on the 1929 Carta Nacional of Peru (1:200,000)38are
36. Raimondi,op. cit. (in note 29) Sample1531.
37. Ibid.580-581.
38. I was unableto obtaina moreup-to-date1:1,000,000topographic
map of this area, since it is close to the Peru-Boliviaborder, and
special permissionis needed from the Peruvian(Sovernmentto ac-
quiresuchmaps.
approximately11 km. SE of Pomata. Both lie in the
western foothills of Co. Capia, just off the main
altiplanoroad, and are about 3 km. from one another.
On a visit to Llaquepa,an erodedembankmentnearthe
schoolhouse was found covered with sherds, green-
stained animal bone, and bits of green copper mineral.
Large numbers of sherds were located in the general
area, almost all of which were Inca in style. Only two
were identified as possibly Chucuito pottery, several
were Colonial, and several modern. On a farm nearer
the road entering Llaquepa,the upper layers of tilled
land were mixed with big pieces of brightgreen copper
ore. The farmerexplained that the ore appearedat a
depthof ca. 20 cm. duringplowing.He also found small
quantitiesof ash at about the same depth. No one at
Llaquepa knew of furnaces or other metallurgical
remains in the area. Everyone,however, knew of the
copper mines in Co. Capia. The schoolteachersaid an
Italian companyhad workedthe mines there as late as
the 1930s and it is generallyagreed that there are old
Colonial workingsin Capia as well. Emilio Romero, in
his 1927 Monogra%Ia del Departamento de Puno,talks
about the rich copper tailings ("ricosdesmontesen
cobre")39 on the slopes of Co. Capialeft by earliermin-
ing activitiesthere. They contained up to 20%copper,
he states. Alberto Cuentas40also refersto Kkapia as a
source of copper in his descriptionof the Provinceof
Chuquito.
X-ray diffraction, petrographic,and wet chemical
studieswere made of samplesof the ore from Llaquepa.
A polished section of one sample showed that the ig-
neous country rock containscupriteand malachiteand
possibly also chrysocolla. The diffractometercharts
confirmed the presence of quartz, malachite, and
cuprite,and wet chemicalanalysisgave a 24.0%copper
concentration,by weight.
No observableevidence of this kind was found at
Batalla nor in the lands called Carapata(Carapasain
the 1685 document)which form part of Batalla, lying
slightly to the west of the center of the community.I
was shown an areaclaimedby severalvillagersto be the
site of an ancient smelterwhere they had found quan-
tities of ashjust below the groundsurface.Severalpeo-
ple also claimed that green mineral and a green
;;powder"had been recentlyplowed up on one of the
farmsnearby.
Thus the data providedby the Visitaof Garci Diez
and the 1685 Limitesdocument about the location of
39. Emilio Romero, Monograffadel Departamentode Puno (1927)
460.
40. Alberto Cuentas, Chuquito.Album Graficoe Historico (Lima
1928).

metalworkersamong the Lupacaare excellentand were
conElrmedby the survey. The plateroswere working
copper, both at Plateriaand at Llaquepa-Batalla,and
the ore was close to the metallurgicalcenters them-
selves. Co. Capia must have playeda significantrole in
the metallurgy of three of the cabeceras(Pomata,
Yungayo, and Zepita), for the three are situatedat the
cornersof a trianglein the midst of which lies Capia. In
fact, at the Cooperativa E1 Molino (3,870 m.) in the
southernfoothills of Co. Capia, about 11 km. along the
road from Zepita to Yungayo and another2 km. from
that road into the hillside itself, there is a Spa-nish
molinofor grinding mineral. Though no traces of the
mineral were found, it must have been from Capia
itself.
The Peruvian and Bolivian altiplanoare generally
consideredthe locus of the developmentof copper-tin
bronze in the Andes. Considerablediscussionhas been
generatedabout the source of the tin, and there seems
little doubt that most of it came from what is today
Bolivia where rich deposits of cassiterite(SnO2)extend
all along the CordilleraReal from the southernshores
of Lake Titicacato Argentinain an uninterruptedzone
some 800 km. long.4'Tin, in the form of ore or metal,
travelledfrom the Bolivianminesto Cuzco and perhaps
farthernorth as well. Bingham42reportedhavingfound
a rolled strip of tin at Machu Picchu, and copper-tin
bronzewas obviouslyone of the symbolsof state power
disseminatedthroughoutTawantinsuyu by the Inca. But
the other vital component of bronze copper was
evidently mined closer to home, and the Lupaca
metalworkerswereexploitingcopperlocally long before
theirincorporationinto the Inca state.
The surveyof the Peruvianaltiplanoand of the high
puna also involved visits to many Colonial ore-pro-
cessing and smeltingsites which abound in that region.
Most of thesesites are associatedwith silverminesowned
by the Spanish but worked by the Andean pop-
ulations. Processingsites such as MawkaParatia(4,375
m.) (mine at Paratia), Itapalluni, also known as
Chorillos, (4,000 m.) (mine at Laicacota in Co.
Cancharani),Andamarca (4,000 m.) (mine at Picha-
cane), and Chiluyo (4S100m.) (mine at Pichacane)are
all in excellent condition and would provide extraor-
dinary data for a student of Andean metallurgyof the
Colonial period. Even here, however, we are on Elrm
41. Federico Ahlfeld and Alejandro Schneider-Scherbina,Los
YacimientosMineralesy de Hidrocarburos de Bolivia,Departamento
Nacionalde Geologia,Boletin5 (La Paz 1964).
42. Hiram Bingham, Machu Picchu, A Citadel of the Incas (New
Haven 1930);see also C. H. Mathewson,'*AMetallographicDescrip-
tion of Some Ancient PeruvianBronzesfrom MachuPicchu,"AJSci
40 (1915)525-616.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/
Vol.3, 1976 19
groundin assumingthat manyof the silverminesworked
by the Spanish were exploited earlier by the highland
miners.Cuentas43mentionstwo importantminingareas
near Juli, at Nairanaqque (4,000 m.) and at Aruni
(Jaruni)(4s100m.), both of which aroused the enthu-
siasm of the Spanishwhen they Elrstenteredthe areas
since it was evident that Juli was the site of "unaher-
mosa civilizacion''(;;a beautiful civilization"). The
Jesuits Acosta and Zuniga who visited the area con-
sideredJuli an appropriatesettingfor the establishment
of a mission of the Companyof Jesus and in 1569 the
Jesuits founded a mission there. Cuentas obtained his
informationabout the early years of the Jesuit stay in
Juli from the Jesuit documentsin the National Library
in Lima, documents that were destroyed in the con-
flagration of 1942. In an interview with Cuentas in
Puno in November 1974 he maintainedthat the docu-
ments clearly stated that the two ;;asientosmineros,"
Nairanaqqueand Jaruni,werebeingworkedat the time
that Acosta and Zuniga arrivedat Juli. Both sites were
visited on the survey.Jaruniis surroundedby hills rich
in copper ore, and the small Spanishmolinofor grind-
ing that ore is still in situ; Nairanaqqueis situatedin a
silver-lead zone whose veins were worked by the
Spanish a mediabarreta,that is, following the vein
closely and sinkingverticalshaftswherevernecessaryto
extract the ore. By 1698, the Spanish were exploiting
silver from the Province of Chucuito at such a pitch
that the Andean miners were excused from their mit'a
servicein the silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia in order
to work the silverores of Chucuitoitself.44
Further study of the altiplano,aided by ethnohis-
torical sources, will surely reveal other pre-Spanish
metallurgycenters in a zone that is so rich in both
copper and silver and that has evidentlybeen exploited
continuouslyat least since the MiddleHorizon.
Ore Processing
By ore processingI referto the treatmentof ores after
they have been mined to preparethem for smelting.In
43. Cuentas,op. cit. (in note 40).
44. The followingpassageis taken fromCuentas,ibid. The book has
no page numbers.The excerptis found in the section titled "La Ac-
tual Provinciade Chucuito,"paragraphspertainingto mines: . . .
Los asientos minerales fueron tan famosos en la Provincia de
Chucuito,que en la epoca del Coloniaje,el Condede la Monclavaen
cartade 1696,de 10 de juniosrecibeordenpara que los de Chucuito
ya no miten en Potosi sino en su provincia."17 de octubrede 1698.
Que en atenciona constary ser cierto habersedescubiertominasque
se lavan y beneElcianen la Provinciade Chucuito,se despachapara
que los indios de dicha provinciasean escusadosy relevadosde ir a
mitaral Cerroy minas de Potosi, en el intervalopor todo el tiempo
que hubieren minas y se labren y beneElcienen la Provinciade
Chucuito."
20 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
Figure8. An unusuallylargelowerstonewhichservedas the base for
two upperstonesof an ore-crushingsystem.Note the concavities
formedby the grindingactionof eachpair.FromMatarani,Chala
Valley,Peru.
the pre-Columbianera this probably amounted to no
more than the mechanicalbreaking up of the ore to
separatethe metal-bearingmineralfrom the unwanted
rocky debris or gangue. Once the mineral has been
hand-sortedfrom the country rock, it is common prac-
tice to comminuteit still furtherbefore it is smelted.An
example of this practice is provided at the Late
Intermediatesite of Co. Landosa, describedbelow in
the section on "Smelting,"wherethe ratio of the size of
the average chunk of discardedgangue to that of the
smallpiecesof almostpure mineralis about 5:1.
The literatureof the l9th century and later abounds
with descriptions of ore-crushingsystems thought to
have been in use prior to the Spanishinvasion.45All of
these systems involve the use of sets of two large and
heavy stones which crush the ore introducedbetween
them and may also grind and powder the mineral.The
upperstone is movable and acts somewhatlike a pestle
or millstone;the lower is immobile. The ore is placed
betweenthe two and crushedor powderedas the heavy
upper stone is rocked back and forth upon the base
stone.46 The working surfaces of both stones are
carefullydressed,and often the upper stone is Flnished
on all sides. The lower stone may be nothingmore than
a large, flat rock whose upper surface slowly becomes
concave by virtue of the grindingaction (FIG. 8). This
45. TeodoricoOlaechea,"ApuntesSobre el Castilloy Fundicionde
Curamba,"Anales de la Escuela de Ingenierosde Construcciones
Civilesde Minase Industriasdel Peru(Lima)(1901) 1-21;Ambrosetti,
op. cit. (in note 17); Boman, op. cit. (in note 14); Ahlfeld and
Schneider-Scherbina,op. cit. (in note 41);Georg Petersen,"Mineriay
Metalurgiaen el AntiguoPeru"Arqueologicas12(1970) 1-140.
46. Ahlfeldand Schneider-Scherbina,
ibid. Elg.100.
Figure 9. A pair of ore-crushing stones, probably of the Colonial
period. Note the cylindrical hole in the upper stone, used to secure the
handle. Height of upper stone ca. 0.75 m. Matarani.
straightforwarddevice, powered by hand or foot,47by
one man or several, continued to be used widely into
the Republicanperiodand is not uncommontoday. For
example,the minersin the small gold-miningvillage of
La RinconadaSan Francisco,situatedat approximately
5,000 m. above sea level at the snow line of the Nevado
Ananea, Province of Sandia, Department of Puno,
crush their gold-bearingquartz ores with such quEm-
baletes(FIG. 10). Two men stand on either side of the
upper stone. They alternate pushing down on the
wooden bar fastened to it so that it rocks, in see-saw
fashion, on the lower stone.48In some areas one man
stands on top of the stone, straddlingit, with a-foot on
either side of the bar. By shifting his weight from one
side to the other he can rock a largestone ratter easily.
Ore crushersare called by a varietyof names.A guide
who showed me several abandonedstones used in the
1940sat the site of El Ingenio nearthe Huaca del Sol in
the Moche Valley referredto them as mortero(lower
stone) and molejon(upper stone). Large Colonial
crushersat the site of El Cortijo in the Chao Valley,
near Casablanca,were describedby a local residentas
molinete(lower) and chungo(upper).The huge stones
used by the Spanishfor crushinggold ores at Matarani
in the Chala Valley were describedby the farmer in
whose fields they lay as quEmbaletes (FIGS. 8, 9); he did
not use separate terms for upper and lower stones.
Finally, the miners at La Rinconada San Franciscoin
Sandia also call these systems quEmbalete but dis-
tinguish between the macho(!) or upper stone and the
tassaor lower stone. One finds other terms used in the
47. Ibid. Elg.101.
48. Petersen, op. cit. (in note 45) Elg.2.

literature, such as maray and konacho. 49 The most
general term is batanwhich refers to any grinding
system utilizing a set of stones, but this term does not
distinguish,for example, between batanesfor grinding
maize, trigo, or other foods and those for grinding
mineral.50
There are few references in the chronicles to ore
preparation.Cobo simply says that ore was made into
small pieces before smelting, when smelting was per-
formedin ceramicpots, but that once furnaceswereused,
the ore was introduced into the furnaces as it came
from the mine, without being further comminuted.5'
Barba, on the other hand, describesdifferentkinds of
furnaces for smelting ores in differentphysical states,
ores that are pulverized and ores that are in chunk
form.52By 1640, however, the systems for preparing
and smelting or roasting ores at Potos1 had become
quite elaborate,particularlybecausethe silver ores had
to be specially preparedfor amalgamationwith mer-
cury, a processintroducedby the Spanishfor separating
the silver from the rocky constituentsof the ore body.
Baltasarde Ovando,53writingin 1605, describessmelt-
ing in huairaswhich are chargedwith "elmetalcernido
y lavado'' (mineral sifted and washed), as does
Capoche.54
Thereis no doubt that ores were crushed,the mineral
hand-sorted, and later reduced to smaller pieces for
smelting.Apart from Barba'sillustrationof a maray,55
all the other examples of grinders thus far published
were found in the 19th century and afterwards.A1-
though archaeologistssuch as Boman were convinced
that the stones they or others had found were pre-
Spanish, it seems unlikely that they were. Ambrosetti
believed, rather, that the large maraysfound in the
Calchaqul region of northwest Argentina had not
always been used by the local people and suggeststhat
49. The term maray is used by Boman, op. cit. (in note 14), Am-
brosetti,op. cit. (in note 17), and Barba,op. cit. (in note 2). Konacho
is foundin Barba,idem.and in Olaechea,op. cit. (in note 45).
50. For a good summaryof the various terms, many of which are
Quechuaand Aymarawords,suggestingthe pre-Spanishuse of these
grindingsystems,see Petersen,op. cit. (in note 45) 69-70.
51. Cobo, op. cit. (in note 18) iii. 41. Note, however,that Cobo is
referringhere to the winning of mercuryfrom cinnabar,a rather
special case utilizing equipmentand methods not common to the
smeltingof otherores.
52 Barba,op. cit. (in note 2) iv. 3.
53. Fr. Baltasarde Ovando, "Descripciondel Peru," in Relaciones
Geograficasde Indias,M. Jimenezde la Espada,ed. (Madrid 1965)
T.2, Apendice4.
54. Capoche,op. cit. (in note 15)I. 110.
55. Barba,op. cit. (in note 2) 118.
Journalof FieldArchaeotogy/
Vol.3, 1976 21
Figure10. QuEmbaletecurrentlyused by the minersat La Rinconada
San Francisco,Provinceof Sandia,Peru.The gold ores, introduced
betweenthe upperand lowerstones,arecrushedin the presenceof
mercurywhichamalgamateswiththe gold. Waterrunninginto the
enclosurewashesawaythe rockygangue.Note the methodof at-
tachingthe woodenhandle.
other stone mortars found throughoutthe region that
are known to have been used for food preparationwere
probablyused at some point for grindingores as well.
Unless we can assumethat the upper,dressedstones of
these sets, whetherfound in Peru,Argentina,or Bolivia
were all of almost the same size and shape, utilizingvir-
tually identical systems for attachingthe long handles
of wood, it is more reasonable,I believe, to argue that
such stones were made after a common prototypeand
were introducedby the Spaniardsat their many mining
and processingcenters. For example, Figure 11 shows
the similarity between one such stone found and
measured at Itapalluni (Chorillos),56and thatswhich
Boman describedfrom San Antonio de los Cobres in
the Atacama region of Argentina.57They are not only
extremely close in size and shape but even in the
diameter and depth of the holes drilled to accept the
pegs used for lashingthe pole handlesin place. Both are
close in shape and proportion to the example Am-
brosetti illustratesfrom Capillitas, Argentina.58I was
amazed to find that the diametersand depths of the
cylindricalholes in the stones I measuredat Spanish
sites in many parts of Peruwere almost standard- for
example,the diametersof those at Mataraniare 4 cm.
and their depths 10 cm., in comparisonwith the 5 cm.
diameterand 10 cm. depth of the San Antonio de los
Cobresmarayand the 4 cm. diameterand 10 cm. depth
56. Itapalluni,nearthe city of Puno,is the almostperfectlypreserved
site establishedby Jose Salcedoin the 1670sto processthe silverores
fromhis nearbymineat Laicacota.
57. Boman,op. cit. (in note 14)pl. 41.
58. Ambrosetti,op. cit. (in note 17)fig. 1.
 < l.Om
Andes/Lechtman
SiteSurveyin thePeruvian
22 A Metallurgical
$)),),),1,l ,1,1,ll} ,11 l t1f<$ ; (
1.32m
Figure11. At the left, a drawingof the uppermemberof a pairof Colonialore-crushingstonesfoundat Itapalluni
(Chorillos),Provinceof Puno,Peru.At the right,the marayfromSan Antoniode los Cobres,AtacamaRegion,N.
of Bomansop. cit. (in note 14)
Argentina,drawnfromthe illustrations
areextremelyclosesrepresentinglocal varlationsof a commonprototype.
of the Itapallunistone. It was this regularitymore than
any other that suggested a common prototype, of
Spanishorigin, for all these widely scatteredexamples;
a prototypethat may have used a standardcylindrical
peg of wood or metal that was convenientto manufac-
ture and/or distribute.I have not seen any metal pegs
or clampson the examplesI have studied,nor tracesleft
by their corrosion products (e.g., iron rust or green
copperstaining).Ambrosettialso speculatesabout their
use.59On the other hand the holes may have been made
on the basis of standard,rule-of-thumbinstructions,for
they all seem to follow a simple 2:1 ratio of depth to
diameter.
That is not to say that the Spanishactuallyproduced
these stones or that the indigenousminershad not used
similar systems prior to the European invasion. Cer-
tainly the thousands of grinding stones described by
Fuchs60in El Trapiche, ParinacochassDepartmentof
Apurimaesor the 60-oddstones I saw at Matarani,both
Colonial sites, were made by local workmen highly
59. Ibid. 179.
60. Olaechea, op. cit. (in note 45) 9 note 3.
>
r )
o
11S ' . ' ' ( ' !t
)) i/)s}
( (,3 J
E a)
o co
o
o
o o
I
s Q70m >
0 10 20 30 40 50 60cm
W.
The
103-104.
F1gS. size and basicformof the stones
skilled in stone quarryingand dressing. Furthermore,
the Late Moche-EarlyChimu site of Co. Songoy in the
Zana Valley, 9 km. east of Hda. Cayalti, lends strong
evidencefor the use of the batansystemin ore crushing
long before the appearanceof the Spanish.The SE side
of the hill is covered with remainsof what appearsto
have been a workshop where smelting of metal was
carriedout on a small scale and probably in ceramic
pots or crucibles.Numerous small pieces of copperore
(identiEledby x-ray diffractionanalysis as chrysocolla)
are strewn over the surface as are bits of carbonized
fuel, pieces of scoria, and sherds whose inner surfaces
are scoriated and often covered with copper minerali-
zation.6l One large batan is also present at the same
location as these other materials:it is the lower of two
crushingstones (ca. 1 m. x 0.7 m.), its upper surface
slightly concave. This is a form typical of pre-Spanish
61. A rim sherd, eolleeted from the surXee of this site, whose inner
seoriated surfaee is eovered with slag, has been identified tentatively
by Carol Maekey, eo-direetor of the Moehe-Chan Chan projeets as
Late Moche - Early Chimu in date I am most grateful to her for her
assistanee in identifying several of the ceramie eolleetions I made dur-
ing the surveys

batanes,but its large size and association with the
metallurgicalsite strongly suggest that it was used for
preparingthe copper ore smelted there. The Spanish
variantsdescribedabove and illustratedin Figures7-9
and 11 are simplymodificationsof this basic type.
Of the batanesI have studied in Peru and that I
suspect are pre-Columbian,the lower stone is a large
slab of rock (always a separatestone, never bedrock),
roughly rectangularin shape, whose upper surfacehas
been carefully Elnishedso that it is flat and smooth,
althougheventuallyit wearsand becomesconcave. It is
usuallythese lower stones that one Elndsat sites such as
Co. Songoy or the Pampade Tablazo(ChancayValley)
when their association with a nearbymine or with the
remains of metallurgicalactivity suggests their use as
ore crushers.I have neverseen any with mineralstill on
or near them, which makestheir identiElcation difficult.
Such stones are often hauled away and used for other
purposes,such as for grindingmaize or as door steps,
and it is not unusualto Elndthem in localitiesthat have
nothingto do with metallurgy.But they are muchlarger
than the batanesordinarilyused in food preparation.
The dimensions of three that I suspect are pre-
Columbianwere 1.0 m. x 0.5 m.; 1.0 m. x 0.7 m.; and
0.96 m. x 0.79 m. Heights are usually 0.4 m. - 0.5 m.
Becausethis rectangulartype has persistedand is still in
use today, assigninga date to isolatedstones is virtually
impossible. The Spanish stones are much easier to
* z 5
recognlze.pw
As the Spanish increasedthe scope of their mining
activitiesand once mercurywas introduced(ca. 1571)as
the preferredtechnique for separatinggold and silver
from their rocky matrices, the variety of processes
developedfor treatingdifferentkinds of ores increased
62. At severalof the Ramessidecoppermining,ore-processing,and
smelting sites surveyedand excavated in the Timna Valley, Beno
Rothenbergfound large numbersof"saddle-backed,"hard, gritty,
red sandstonehandgrindersfor crushingand grindingthe local ores.
They resemble the pre-Columbianbatanes in their roughly rec-
tangularshape and pronouncedconcaveuppersurfaces,thoughthey
appear smallerthan the Andean type. Since none of the published
photographsof these stones includesa scale, I cannot be certainof
their size, but they appearto be betweenca. 0.5 m. and 0.7 m. in
length. Beno Rothenberg,WereTheseKingSolomon'sMines?(New
York 1972)63, 66, plates23, 24. Apartfromtheseexamples,I am not
familiarwith the use in other partsof the ancientworldof ore grind-
ing systemssuch as those commonto the Andes.The Greekminersat
Laurionalso used a combinationof hand grindersand rotatingmill
stones for processingtheir argentiferouslead ores. But a diagramof
the hand grinders,illustratedby Ardaillonas typical of many such
stones found at Laurion,shows that the systemconsistedessentially
of a large mortar and pestle. The mortars, made of trachyte, a
volcanicrock, were cut in the shapeof a sewingthimble,and the ore
was crushedby repeatedblows of the heavy pestle or rammeras it
droppedonto the ore from above. EdouardArdaillon,Les Minesdu
Laurion(Paris1897).
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 23
appreciably.63Aside from the mercuryamalgamation
process, the one important change the Spanish in-
troduced was the use of water power for ore crushing
and grinding.Thus most of the large Colonial process-
ing sites are situatednear sourcesof water, needed not
only to drive the wheels that turnedthe milling stones,
but also for washing the crushed and amalgamated
metal to separateit from the dressedore. It is not un-
usual at such sites to find several varieties of ore-
crushingmechanisms.The mills themselves(FIGS. 12-15)
were undoubtedly used for the primary and rough
crushingoperations,but handgrindingwas neveraban-
doned for the finerpowdering.Whengold ores were in-
volved (gold, usuallyin a quartzmatrix),the previously
ground ore was introduced, together with mercury,
between a pair of hand-poweredstones. As the stones
ground the two constituents, water was introduced
which slowly washed away the gangue, leaving the
heavy mercury-metalamalgamin situ. This is the sys-
tem still in use at La RinconadaSan Francisco(FIG. 10).
By the Republican era, another grinding system
became popular and is still in use today. The arrastra
(fromthe Spanisharrastrar, to drag)is a water-powered
system which, instead of utilizing two milling stones
that rotate in a horizontal plane, one above another,
employs two large stones of equal size attachedat the
far ends of a commonbeamof wood. The stones rest on
the flat uppersurfaceof a large,cylindricalbed of stone
(FIG. 16). The beam rotates as the waterwheel turns it,
draggingthe two heavy stones around and around on
top of the flat bed, crushingthe ore introducedbetween
them and the bed. Figure 16 illustratesan abandoned
arrastra at La Taona, near Hualgayoc Departmentof
Cajamarca,which was in use in the 1920s.Another, in
the same region, was still intact at Punrrewhere it was
built in 1928.Thereis some evidencethat the same kind
of system,perhapspoweredby hand or by animals,was
used by the Spanishas well.64
Smelting
No intact pre-Spanishsmelterwas found duringthe
courseof the survey,althoughseveralsites were located
wheresmeltinghad been carriedout, and most of these
were coastal sites. The heavy rains in the sierra,
together with frequentand often violent earthquakes,
have either destroyed or buried most of the early
smeltinginstallations.The placingof Andean wind fur-
63. ModestoBargallo,La Amalgamacion de los Minerales de Plata en
Hispanoamerica Colonial (Mexico 1969).
64. At the Colonialsite of E1Cortijo,in the Chao Valley,therewere
many varietiesof grindingstones some of which looked as if they
mighthavebeenusedsomewhatas the arrastras were.
24 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
Figure12. A water-poweredmill, originallyused for crushingsilver
ores, at the Colonialsite of MawkaParatia,Provinceof Lampa,Peru.
The structureis typicalin layoutand constructionof manyobserved
in the highpuna of southernPeru.One of the originalmill stoneslies
outsidethe buildingin the foreground.
naces on hillsides,where they were situatedto take ad-
vantageof the strong naturalwinds, greatlyaccelerated
their rate of burial from landslidesand rapid erosion.
Many have been lost throughland reclamation:several
sites wheresmall Colonial smelterswere intact only five
years ago are now under cultivation, and only vestiges
of the scoriated furnace walls can now be seen. At
Curamba,an Inca site describedbelow, the villagersof
the nearbypueblo are slowly plowing the centralplaza
and the andenes(terraces) that house the "ovens."
Coastal sites are betterpreservedbecausethey are much
drier. On the other hand, those sites located near
shifting desert sands are often buried (for example at
Ancon, discussedbelow, and Incaic furnacessaid to be
situatedin Co. Pitura,JequetepequeValley, now com-
pletely covered with sand). On the coast, however,
buried smelting installations may be expected to be
reasonablywell preserved.
The three smeltingsites describedhere are all late in
the course of Andean culture history and in terms of
metallurgical development. On the basis of surface
evidencealone, they cluster aroundthe end of the Late
IntermediatePeriodand the Late Horizon.
CerroLandosa
This small hill or foothill of the complex known as
Co. Portachueloto its west is locatedon the northcoast
in the Zana River valley, about 32 km. due east of the
town of Zana. It is 5 km. SE of Nueva Arica, on the
roadlto Nanchoc, and lies at an elevation of 200 m. As
one approaches the cerro from the west, its most
notable featureis the series of terracesthat encirclesit
and that are most prominenton the westernslopes (FIG.
Figure13. Detailof a Colonial,water-powered ore-processingmill
builtat the side of a riverin the villageof Amparaes,Provinceof
Calca,Peru.The waterenteredthe archedopeningunderthe mill
wherethe waterwheelwas originallylocated(see the samefeaturein
FIG.12).
17) where the vertical stone walls that maintain the
terracesare best preserved.At the foot of the west slope
and slightlyhigherup that slope lie severallong lines of
squareor rectangularstone structuresthat appearto be
storehousesratherthan dwellings.Some of these struc-
tures have obvious entries, others have not; some are
single units, separatedfrom the others by corridorsor
alleys, whereas others are connected and appear more
like banks of rooms. Two of the single units measured
4.45 m. x 4.20 m. and 4.05 m. x 4.20 m. The wall
thicknessof the formerwas 0.58 m. The highestremain-
ing wall of these two stood 1.10 m. from the ground,
bllt other nearby and better preservedstructureshad
walls at least twice this height. The floors of these units
were not clearedto searchfor materialsthat mightgive
a clue about their function, but their size and arrange-
Figure 16. The arrastra, a water-powered system for crushing ores,
popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Figure 14. A pair of mill stones, one of several varieties used to crush
silver ores at the Colonial ore-processing site of Chiluyo, Province of
Puno, Peru.
ment suggested that they may have been used for
storage,possiblyfor the storageof fuel.
About mid-wayup the NW slope of the hill there are
substantialsurfaceremainsof greencoppermineraland
of charcoal.Just below the surfaceare quantitiesof ash,
charcoal, and occasional tiny fragmentsof metal slag.
Hand trowelling to depths of about 30 cm. revealed
remains of fire-reddenedearth throughout the entire
NW sector at this level and higherup the hill. The entire
cerrois densely covered with sherds, and there is a
numberof huaquero pits in the NW sector as well as on
the crestof the hill.
Approximately seven years before the site visits
(made in June and July, 1974),a farmerfrom a nearby
villagevisited Co. Landosawith a miningengineerwho
was prospecting for ore. Noticing the bright green
mineralon the hillsidesurface,as well as ash and char-
coal, they excavated an area in the NW zone approxi-
Figure 17. Cerro Landosa from the west. The terraces that contour
the hill are prominent. Remains of copper smelting were found in the
NW sector. Province of Chiclayo, Peru.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 25
Figure15. Chiluyo.AbandonedColonialmillstones.Suchstonesare
often used,as here,in the constructionof wallsto formcorralsfor
herdsof camelids.
mately 6 m. x 6 m. in size and, about 0.5 m. from the
surface,came upon a large quantityof a green-colored
copper mineral within a stone-walled enclosure. The
farmerdescribedthe thicknessof the pile of mineralas
approximately0.5 m. They collected most of their find
and broughtit to his farm where the mineralis still ly-
ing in a sheapin his yard.They searchedthe cerro for the
ore source,but no copperoutcropswerefound.
The actual shape, area, and depth of the original
enclosure is difficult to reconstructbecause of their
priorexcavation,but it seemsto have been rectangular,
with stone walls, and probably was a stone-lined pit
ratherthan a free-standingstructure.Inspectionof the
excavated area revealed many small pieces of copper
mineral together with pieces of charcoal. The mineral
was all in comminutedform, that is, broken into small
pieces as if in preparationfor smelting. The bits of
mineralnear the pit as well as scatteredgenerallyover
the surface in the NW zone were about 2-3 cm. or
smaller in size, whereas the chunks carted off by the
farmerwere considerablylarger,4-9 cm. X-ray diffrac-
tion analysis of a small fragmentof mineral collected
from the surfaceof the NW sector where fire-reddening
of the ground was marked, proved the mineral to be
almost pure malachite with only a small amount of
quartz.Another sample, analysedwet chemically,con-
tained 28.3% copper, by weight. On the other hand,
petrographicstudy of a polished section of one of the
larger chunks removed by the farmer from the pit
revealed an igneous rock containing phenocrysts of
felspar and of biotite, a quartz veinlet, some biotite,
haematite pseudomorphs after pyrite (no pyrite was
presentnor any other sulfideminerals),and small quan-
tities of malachite.In otherwords,the largerchunksare
a porphyritic,volcanicrock whichhas been subjectedto
26 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
Figure18. CerroLandosa.A fragmentof a ceramicmouldfoundon
the surfaceat the NWsectorof the hill. The clay is redin color from
heatalteration,and the mouldcavityis scoriated.
copper mineralization.The copper mineral present is
malachite, but in low concentration. Wet chemical
analysis of a portion of this same chunk gave 4.98'!37o
copper,by weight.
It is clear that the NW sector of Cerro Landosa was
utilizedfor metal smeltingwith at least one smelterand
perhaps many more built upon artificialterracescon-
structedat that position on the cerro where the strong
winds blowing roughly SW-NE could be utilized. The
copper ore brought to the site was comminuted, the
high-grademalachite separatedand smelted while the
low-gradecountryrock, representedby the largerpieces
removedfrom the stone-linedpit, were discarded.Iden-
tification of a surface collection of sherds from Cerro
Landosaas belongingto a Late Chimu occupation(ca.
1400 A.C.)65 provisionally establi-shesthis as a Chimu
smelting center. Aside from sherds, a fragment of a
ceramic mould, presumablyfor casting metal ingots,
was also found (FIG. 18). The interior of the mould
cavity is scoriated,contains tiny areas of green copper
mineral,and its shape is similarto that of copperingots
from the Batan Grandearea in the LambayequeValley
(FIG. 19).
Otherstrong evidencefor smeltingactivity at the site
was providedby the accounts of three individualswho
had visited it when at least one of the smelterswas still
partially intact. Each of the accounts was given in-
dependentlyof the others. IngenieroJulio Rivadeneyra,
65. The sherdswereidentiEledin Trujilloby MichaelE. Moseley,co-
directorof the Moche-ChanChan project.I am most gratefulfor his
helpand advice.
Figure 19. A group of ingots of copper or a copper alloy found at
sites in the Lambayeque Valley, Peru. Such ingots might have been
made in a mould similar to that illustrated in Fig. 18. They are in the
collection of the Museo Arqueologico Briining, Lambayeque.
a miningengineerand geologist from Chiclayowho has
spent many years working in the Zana Valley and
knows it well, describedthe preciselocation of Co. Lan-
dosa which he said he had visited 40 years before (i.e.,
ca. 1934).There he found, on one of his surveys,a fur-
nace charged with malachite and algarrobo(a dense,
hardwood common to the north coast) in alternating
layers, ready to be fired. He describedthe furnaceas a
huayrona,the term commonly used to describe pre-
Columbianwind furnaces, and made of stone, but he
was not sure about its construction.The structurewas
partiallyinterredwhen he saw it. With him was another
man who now lives in a small village near Nueva Arica.
In conversationswith him, he too describedthe furnace
as being in the Co. Dos Cruces (the name of Co. Por-
tachuelo in the neighborhoodof Co. Landosa) and as
having been chargedwith mineraland wood. During a
conversationmany months later with the distinguished
Peruvian archaeologist, the late Dr. Jorge Muelle,
Muelle describeda trip he had taken in 1935 with Ing.
Rivadeneyrato a site not far from the town of Zana
where Rivadeneyra had shown him a metal smelter
("hornodefundicion")chargedwith mineraland char-
coal.66His impressionwas that the smelterwas dug into
the hillsideand not constructedof adobe brickor stone,
but that possibly a portion of the smelter hidden un-
dergroundmighthave been madeof stone.
Eight km. sw of Co. Landosa, as the crow flies, are
the hills called Cerros Leque Leque. A visit to a
modern, abandonedmine in these hills, reachedaftera
21/2hour walk from Nueva Arica, revealed the mine
shaft and piles of comminuted,green-coloredrock. X-
66. See the sectionon "Fuels"for a discussionof the stateof the fuel
in a furnacecharge.

Figure 20. The main plaza at the site of Curamba, with the Incaic usnuto the east and the promontory on which are
located the andenesand their '4ovens," to the south.
ray diffraction analysis of a specimen of this rock
proved it to be quartz and malachitewith only minor
amounts of other minerals.Wet chemical analysis of a
sample of these tailings gave 8.25<Yocopper, by weight.
Petrographicexaminationof a polished section showed
the rock to be an altered volcanic variety with felspar
phenocrysts,biotite, and large quantities of malachite
present in fracturesthroughoutthe sample. This ore is
thus not at all dissimilarto that found in the pit at Co.
Landosa;the rock type is very much the same. It seems
evident, therefore, that the ore being smelted at Co.
Landosa could easily have come from the hills nearby.
The mine at Leque Leque is at an altitudeof 600 m. Its
ore is typicalof other such outcropsin the area.67
Curamba
The site of Curambahas been mentionedby various
chroniclerssince 1534 when Pedro Sancho, secretaryto
Francisco Pizarro, referredto it as one of the places
where Pizarrostopped on his marchfrom Jaujato Cuz-
co.68Situatedat the peak of a hill at an altitudeof 3,600
m. in the Department of Apurimac, Proyince of An-
dahuaylas,District of Huancarama,it lies approximate-
ly mid-way between the towns of Abancay and An-
dahuaylas and was on the Inca royal road that ran
67. Samplesof charcoalcollected at the smelting site have not yet
been identifiedas to genus and species.Two varietieswere submitted
for analysisto the Forest ProductsLaboratoryof the U. S. Depart-
ment of AgricultureForest Service. Both varietiesare hardwoods.
The EIne-textured sample is probablya shrub, the coarser-textured
one may be anotherlegume. R. C. Koeppen,personalcommunica-
tion, October1975.
68. Pedro Sancho, An Account of the Conquest of Peru, Philip A.
Means,trans. and ed. (New York 1917);Pedro Pizarro,Relacion del
Descubramientoy Conquista de los Reanos del Peru in Bibliotecade
AutoresEspanoles(Madrid1965)T. 5.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 27
north to the coast. According to von Hagen69it may
also have been the point of departure of the road
leading from the highlands to Nazca and the coastal
road to the south. Cieza de Leon describesCurambaas
a town belongingto the Chancawho inhabitedthe area
now consideredthe Provinceof Andahuaylasand who
fought vigorously against Inca domination.70On a
marchtowardthe town of Andahuaylas,PachacutiInca
seizedCurambafrom the Chancaand ordereda Temple
to the Sun erected at the site.7' That is the stepped
pyramid or usnu (FIG. 20) located in the main plaza
whichremainsas the most prominentfeatureof Curam-
ba and has been described by the 19th century
naturalistsand geologists who visited there72and more
recently by an occasional archaeologist.73The site has
not been studiedarchaeologically.
For the purposesof this study, Curambais especially
importantbecauseit is believedto have been a centerof
69. Victorvon Hagen, The Incas of Pedro de Cieza de Leon (Norman,
Oklahoma1959).
70. Pedro de Cieza de Leon, La Cronica del Peru, PrimeraParte
(Madrid1962)i. 90.
71. Garcilasode la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Ineas (Madrid
1963)iv. 15; Pedro de Cieza de Leon, La Cronica del Peru, Segundo
Parte(Lima 1967)ii. 47.
72. Antonio Raimondi,Historia de la Geografia del Peru, V. 2 of El
Peru' (Lima 1876); Charles Wiener, Perou et Bolivie (Paris 1880);
E. W. Middendorf,Das HochZandvon Peru, V. 3 of Peru (Berlin
1895).
73. Joel GrossmanvisitedCurambabrieflyin 1971and drewa rough
sketchmap of the main plaza with some of its architecturalremains,
includingthe usnu, but did not look for the furnaces.In 1973,Fidel
Ramos, the field archaeologistin charge of the site survey of the
Departmentof Apurimacunder the aegis of the Centro Regional
(Cuzco)de Investigaciony de Restauracionde BienesMonumentales,
visitedCurambaon his surveyand also sketchedportionsof the cen-
tral plaza. He did not investigatethe terracesto the south. Dr. Ramos
and I studied the site together during the course of my survey in
September,1974.
28 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
metallurgical activity, probably for the smelting of
silver ores, practicedon a near industrialscale during
the Inca occupationof the site.74Today the evidencefor
some kind of pyrotechnologicalactivity at Curamba
consists primarilyof the remainsof a hundredor more
highly localized, heat-alteredareas on the flat surfaces
of three artificialterracesthat contour the slopes of the
hill which rises to the south of the main plaza,
dominatingthe site (FIG. 20). Walkingthe lengthof each
terrace,one passes in rapid succession strip after strip
of fire-reddenedearth, each area lying parallel to the
next and all orientedwith their main axis perpendicular
to the verticalface of the terrace(FIG. 21). It is clearthat
these reddened areas resulted from the use of E1res
limitedto the preciselocationsof the heat-alteredstrips,
but no traces of whatever superstructuresmight once
have been associatedwith these stripsare preserved.
It is interesting that the association of the site of
Curambawith metal smelting originates in the litera-
ture not with the chroniclers (although Cieza, P.
Sancho, P. Pizarro,and Garcilaso de la Vega all men-
tion the site and/or its stepped pyramid), but rather
with the observationsof Wienerand Valdizan(recorded
by Olaechea) in the l9th century and, more recently,
with those of von Hagen.75On the other hand, Raimon-
di and Middendorfmake no referenceto any ovens or
furnaces at the site, though both describe the usnu.76
The silence of the silver- and gold-hungry Spanish
about ". . . a major Inca center for the smelting of
silver, copper, and gold"77is curious, since they rarely
hide their avarice and delight at a rich F1ndof Incaic
precious metal. There may, however, be some reason-
able explanationfor theirlack of comment.
Wiener categorically states that there were ancient
metal-smeltingfurnaces at Curamba. It is not clear,
however,if he actuallysaw them when he was there,for
he claims that his attention was called to the
". . . beaucoup de hornosde fundicion(hauts four-
naux) . . .",78but he does not go on to describethem.
He does mention their location, however, and has
placed them on his plan of the site on the hillside to
the south that dominatesthe high plateauor plaza (the
74. Olaechea,op. cit. (in note 45); von Hagen, op. cit. (in note 69);
Petersen,op. cit. (in note 45); WarwickBray, "Ancient American
Metal-Smiths,"Proc. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and relandfor 1971 ( 1972)25-45.
75. Wiener,op. cit. (in note 72); Olaechea,op. cit. (in note 45); von
Hagen,ibid.
76. Raimondi,op. cit. (in note 72);Middendorf,op. cit. (in note 72).
77. von Hagen,op. cit. (in note 69) 133,note 3.
78. Wiener,op. cit. (in note 72) 279.
Figure 21. Curamba. Andeneson the SWside of the hill shown in Fig.
20. Note several partly excavated (by local farmers), reddened, stone-
lined areas on the middle terrace.
location of the hornoson his sketch map is correct;his
determinationof true north on that map is incorrect,
however). Writing in French, he carefully cites the
Spanishterm for these features,"hornosde fundicion,''
and then, parenthetically,describesthem as "hautsfour-
naux,'' blast furnaces.He goes on to say, however,that
he is of the opinion, reinforced by what Peruvian
archaeologistssay, that the furnacesare the remainsof
European(i.e. Spanish)installations.
It appears,then, that some sort of ovens or furnaces
lined the hillsideswherethe reddened,fire-alteredareas
are now found. Wienereither saw them or heardabout
them and consideredthem importantenough to locate
on his sketchmap. His referenceto the opinion of Peru-
vian archaeologistsabout the date of these structures
indicatesthat they were visible, if not to him then in the
recent past, and were evaluated as Colonial smelting
furnaces.
Von Hagen'sstatementabout the installationson the
terracesis also ambiguous.He describesthem as wind
furnaces,i'. . . oval-shaped. . . eight feet in diameter
with walls two feet thick;the mouths of the tunnelsface
northeast in the direction of the winds from the
Amazon."79From these remarks it appears that von
Hagen actuallysaw and measuredthe structures,which
meansthey were reasonablyintact in the l950s (?).Why
then is there no mentionin the chroniclesof such large
structuresthat quiteobviouslymust have been visiblein
their prominentposition overlookingthe centralplaza?
Perhapsthey were not visible because they were con-
structed entirely underground,within, not above the
terraces.This is the pictureaffordedby Olaecheaand,
to a certaindegree,by the resultsof the site survey.
79. von Hagen, op. cit. (in note 69) 133, note 3.

In 1888, Sr. Ing. Dario Valdizan visited Curamba,
saw the "furnaces" and measured them. Olaechea80
publishedValdizan'sfindings togetherwith a plan and
elevation of a portion of the three terraceswhere the
"furnaces"were located. Accordingto these drawings,
therewere two kinds of installation,found side by side,
on each terrace.One was rectangularin shape,long and
narrow,ca. 3 m. x 0.7 m., and 0.3 m. in depth;the other
was of similardimensionsbut ended in an oval, domed
space, open st the top, giving the whole a keyholeshape
when seen in plan. One end of each structure ter-
minatedat the verticalface of the terracewhereair was
free to enter the structure.The drawingsindicate that
both types of structurelay entirelybeneaththe surface
of the terracein which they were located, i.e. the struc-
tures were constructedunderground.Their general size
and form, however, match reasonablythe description
given by von Hagen. Perhapstheir subterraneanloca-
tion explainswhy they were so rarelymentionedby the
Spanish invaders and were missed by Raimondi and
Middendorf:they simplywerenot visible.Olaecheawas
convinced that these installationswere Incaic furnaces
for the winning of silver from its ores; von Hagen
agrees. Wiener suggested that they were Colonial in-
stallations,but no otherwritermentionsthis possibility,
and the site survey revealed no evidence of a Spanish
presenceat Curamba.
The southern limit of the main plaza at Curambais
formed by the northernpromontory of a large, oval-
shaped hill whose long axis runs in a roughly N-S
direction (FIG. 20).81 The terracesin question begin on
the north face of this promontoryand continue around
it to the west, flanking the entire western and south-
western side of the hill (FIG. 21). There are three such
terraces, on all of which are the remains of fire-
reddened installations, and the survey indicated that
other similar features exist beyond the main plaza on
some smaller terraces to the east. Whatever the
pyrotechnological activity at Curamba, it was con-
ductedon a grandscale.
The surfacefeaturesof the terracedhill that are still
observable,some of which were clarifiedwith small test
pits or clearingoperations,are as follows.
1. The summit of the promontory itself is flat and
comprises a small, rectangular plaza bordered all
aroundby a stone wall and, on its north and west sides,
by stone buildingsthat may be dwellingsor storageun-
its. These buildings continue beyond the plaza to the
80. Olaechea,op. cit. (in note 45).
81. A site map and an aerial photographof Curamba,showingthe
variousfeaturesdescribedhere and their relationshipsto each other,
will be publishedin a subsequentarticle being preparedby Fidel
Ramosand me.
Journalof FaeldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 29
Figure 22. Curamba. Detail of a stone-lined, fire-reddened, rec-
tangular channel excavated by the author and Dr. Fidel Ramos on
the terrace shown in Fig. 21. The distal end of the channel is shown.
The excavation was continued further into the terrace, beyond the
channel end, where strata of small chunks of gravel can be seen in the
clay bed.
south. The plaza is coveredwith sherds,some of which
are Inca contemporary.No Colonial sherdswere iden-
tified.
2. The hilltop is a limestoneoutcrop.Its soil is slight-
ly sandy and supports a ground cover of ichu. Qeuna
treesgrow here and thereon the hillsides.
3. The terraces themselves are partly cut into the
hillside but have been built up and filled in with a
dense, compactclay which is not naturalto the hill and
was brought in from elsewhere,possibly for the good
thermal properties it would exhibit under the severe
heatingconditionsto which the terracesweresubjected.
During the clearingof one of the fire-reddenedzones, a
local farmerwho was cultivatingportions of the main
plaza and of the terraceson the promontoryremarked
about the clay, explainingthat it was "not from here."
Each terracehas a verticalretainingwall of stone, 1.0-
1.8 m. high;the andenesrangein width from 8.6 to 13.4
m. Theirsurfacesare coveredwith smallpiecesof scoria
formedfrom the vitrificationof earthor clay.
4. The long, narrow, fire-reddenedzones are the
remains of channels, roughly rectangularin section,
which were apparentlyopen at the top for at least half
theirtotal length;i.e., they wererectangularpits open at
the surface,beginningat the verticalface of the terrace
and extending for a distance of about 3 m. into the
terrace.These channelsare linedwith limestone(FIG. 22)
which is covered with a thick layer (ca. 7 cm.) of mud
plasterthat protectedthe stone from severeheat altera-
tion. The mud plaster is baked bright red and is hard
but usually not scoriated(althoughthe one channelwe
cleaned had already been partly excavated by a local
farmer,and many pieces of scoriatedearth were found
30 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PetuvianAndes/Lechtman
Figure23. Curamba.Fragmentof a carbonizedmaizecob, with the
kernelsstill in situ, foundinsidea Elrechannelon the lowestof the
terracesshownin Fig. 21.
inside it). Near the distal end of the cleaned channel
there was a 10 cm. thick accumulationof burnedearth
hard, reddened,and loosely compacted strewnon
the terracesurface in a roughlycircularconfigurations
ca. 1 m. in diameter.The sourceof this burnedmaterial
was not clear. It may originallyhave formed part of a
shallow dome that covered the distal end of the
channel, or it could be the remains of a once much
larger pile of matter that was being slowly heated or
roastedabove the channelitself.
The channelsare aligned parallelto one anotherand
are separatedby distancesvaryingfrom 0.9 m. to 1.6 m.
Their lengths vary, but they are almost identical in
width(0.38 m.).
5. The lowest of the three terracessat the base of the
hill on the west side, was partlydestroyedwhen the re-
cent constructionof a small road eliminatedits stone
retainingwall and ca. 1-2 m. of width. The presentver-
tical face of the terrace is, thus, a cut through the
channelsabout mid-wayalong theirIengths.Withinone
of these channelswe fou-nda large piece of maize cobs
completelycarbonized,with all its kernelspresent(FIG.
23). One of the farmersfrom Ccallaspuquio,the pueblo
to the north at the base of the hill on whichCurambais
located, explainedthat after the road was put in, these
exposed channels were found to contain carbonized
maize cobs. In a small excavationDr. Fidel Ramos and
I made inside one channel on a terracehigher up, we
found two kernelsof maize,completelycarbonizedsand
some tiny piecesof wood charcoal.
6. The wind at Curamba is extremely strong and
variable,blowingwith great force from the sw but also
at times from the NE, as von Hagen observed.We had
occasionally to cease our clearing and excavating
becauseof the strengthof the windsblowingagainstthe
sw slope of the hill. It is clear from the force and direc-
tion of the winds that the installationswerebuilt to take
advantageof the excellentwind conditionsof the site.
7. No metallurgicalslags, ash, or remainsof mineral
or of ore were found associatedwith any of the terraces
or fire-altered zones. The scoria strewn about the
terraces appeared to be the remains of earth or clay
heated to its melting point. A sample of this material
analysed by emission spectroscopyshowed no signs of
any metal constituents except at extremely low trace
levelsof concentration.
8. Many sherds covered the surface of the terraces.
Most could not be identified.82Severalwere Inca con-
temporary.None appearedto be Colonial.
On the basis of this list, some tentativespeculations
can be made about the pyrotechnologicalactivities at
Curamba. Given the lack of any readily identiElable
Colonial sherdsor Colonial architectureat the site, it is
most likely that the terracesand their fire-alteredin-
stallations are Incaic or pre-Incaic. At the moment,
apart from the claims of Wiener, Olaechea, and von
Hagen, the surveyhas providedno evidencethat would
supportthe interpretationof the installationsas hornos
de fundicion.The complete absence on the surface of
any mineralor ore, of metallurgicalslags, of ash, and of
a heavily scoriated lining of the one "wind tunnels'or
channelthat was excavatedraises seriousdoubts about
the practice of any high-temperaturemetallurgicalac-
tivity on the hillside. The constructionof an open pit-
like channelas a wind tunnelwhich leads to a subterra-
nean, domed space open at the top (as representedby
Olaechea) is also unusual, though not unique.83The
presence inside the channels of maize cobs with their
kernels still in situ also seems unusual if the maize is
82. Joel Grossman,who has excavatedthe site of Waywakanearthe
town of Andahuaylasand is one of the few archaeologistsfamiliar
with pottery from the generalarea, was kind enough to look at the
sherdsfrom Curamba.Aside from local Inca utilitywaresand some
Inca Cuzco-style sherds (also identified as such by John Rowe),
Grossman felt that the majority of the other pottery was Late
Intermediateon the basis of featuresit had in commonwith pottery
from that period at Waywaka. Personal communications;Joel
Grossman,"An Ancient Gold-Worker'sTool Kit," Archaeology25
(1972)270-275.
83. Radomir Pleiner has published several medieval steel-smelting
furnacesin Czechoslovakiathat share some of the featuresof the
Curambainstallationsas they are describedby Olaechea, namely
long, open channelsthat lead to the domed portion of the furnace.
Pleiner'sfurnacesare blast furnaces,and the domes are completely
above ground. RadomirPleiner,"ExperimentalSmeltingof Steel in
EarlyMedievalFurnaces,"PamatkyArcheologicke60(1969)458-487;
idem, "StredovekaVyroba Smoly v Krasne Doline u Rakovnika,"
(Die Technologie der MittelalterlichenTeerbrennereiin Krasna
Dolina bei Rakovnik, Bohmen), PamatkyArcheologicke61 (1970)
472-518.

considered as a fuel. One would have expected the
kernels to be removed and only the cobs used to feed
the Elre.The use of maize as fuel in and of itself is not
extraordinary,however. It would certainly provide a
sufElcientlyhot Elrefor roastingpurposesor for the in-
itial heating of an oven or furnace before a second,
longer- and slower-burningfuel were introduced.The
qeunatree that grows on the terracedhillsides might
have provided such a fuel and is used today for mak-
ing charcoal. In fact, the terraced hill is called
Qeunachayoq, the place whereqeunagrows, by the resi-
dents of Ccallaspuquio.Only the specialrole playedby
maize in ancientAndean culture84would argueagainst
its use as a fuel, not its propertiesas a combustible
material.
On the other hand, several factors must be kept in
mind. The drawingsof Olaecheaindicatetwo types of
structure, one long and narrow, the other keyhole
shaped. He arguedthat one type of installationwas for
roastingore, the other for subsequentsmelting.The in-
stallation cleared during the survey was clearly of the
simple, rectangular type, and the rather moderate
heating of its walls may have resultedfromjust such a
roasting procedure though it could have been used
for roasting maize as well as for roasting ore! The
presenceof pieces of ceramicscoria all over the surface
of the terraces does indicate that the fires were hot
enough to melt the clay used in the constructionof the
installations,perhapsreachinga temperatureof about
1100°C. The absenceof any surfaceslag is also not un-
usual for Peru.I visitedmanyColonialsites both on the
coast and in the highlandswhere I knew that smelting
of ores had taken place and found no remainsof ore or
of metal slag. This is often the case becausesuch slags
have been claimed as mining "sites" and have been
removedand re-smeltedfor the metal they contained.85
Curambais remote and difElcultof access and it is un-
likely its metal slags were removed, but this is a
possibilitythat cannotbe discounted.
The one impressiveaspectof Curambathat keepsthe
"furnacetheory" alive is the deliberateconstructionof
the terraces to house installations that are clearly
designedto utilizethe strong naturaldraughtsresulting
from the Elercewinds that buffet the hillsides. It is not
surprising that P. Sancho referred to Curamba as
84. John V. Murra, "Rite and Crop in the Inca State," in Culture in
History, Stanley Diamond, ed. (New York 1960) 393-407.
85. Jorge Flores notes that the once-abundant slags at the Colonial
silver ore-processing site of Mawka Paratia were removed to the
Limon Verde plant near Santa Lucia to recover the metal they con-
tained. Jorge Flores Ochoa, "Los Pastores de Paratia," Anales del
Instituto de Estudios Socio-Economicos, Universidad Tecnica del
Altiplano, Puno 1 ( 1967) 9- 106.
Journal of Field Archaeology/ Vol. 3, 1976 31
Airamba,86meaningpampaof the windsor windypam-
pa. Building those terraces with clay brought from
elsewherewas a monumentalundertaking,one that was
accomplishedfor some quite special activity. All the
descriptionsof the chroniclersof hillsidescoveredwith
furnaces are actually descriptionsof portable huairas
used primarily for smelting silver, a type of furnace
probably introducedby the Spanish once the produc-
tion of silver becameone of theirprimaryoccupations.
In fact, almost all the early descriptionswe have are of
the huairasused to smelt silverores at Potosi in Bolivia.
Nevertheless, wind furnaces for winning metal were
almost surely an indigenous Andean development,as
the data from Co. Landosastronglysuggest,and the in-
stallationsat Curambamay representa particulartype
or types of stationarysmelteror perhapsof refiningfur-
nace. Ores are abundant within an 18 km. radius of
Curamba,although they tend to be copper ratherthan
silverores.87
We can draw no firm conclusion about the presence
or absenceof metallurgicalactivityat Curambawithout
careful excavation of the site. I have dwelt at some
length here on the various aspects of the problem for
several reasons. First, the installationsare stationary
and numerous.If they prove to be relatedto metallurgy
they will constitute our first evidence of large-scale
smelting or refining in non-portablefurnacesthat are
not only pre-Columbianbut are probablythe products
of Inca technology, the technologyof Empire.Second,
as Bargallohas pointed out,88all of the referenceswe
have to possible Andean, as distinct from Spanish,
86. In Sancho, op. cit. (in note 68) 182, Means discusses the
chronicler's use of the name Airamba, although von Hagen, op. cit.
(in note 69) 133, note 3 cites Sancho as having called the site
Airabamba.
87. Since no remains of mineral were found at the site during the sur-
vey, one can only speculate about the kinds of ores in the vicinity of
Curamba that might have been treated there. Olaechea, who con-
ducted a mining survey of the Department of Apurimac, claims that
in the Province of Abancay the predominant ores are silver ores, par-
ticularly tetrahedrite and silver-rich lead ores, but he adds that none
of these minerals was being exploited at the time he wrote. Teodorico
Olaechea, "Apuntes Sobre el Departamento de Apurimac," Anales de
la Escuela de Contrucciones Civiles y de Minas del Peru 6 ( 1887) 1-57.
Several of the maps listed in note 20 above indicated four working
mines within a 22 km. radius (as the crow flies) of Curamba; three are
copper mines and one is a Pb-Zn-Ag-Cu mine. The latter is located
just to the west of the town of Abancay, a one-day journey on foot
from Curamba. In the records of the Oficina Regional de Mineria,
Departamento de Cuzco, all claims to mines or mineral resources are
registered for the Department of Apurimac between the years 1950
and the present. In the District of Huancarama, in which Curamba is
located, only 16 claims were made in 24 years: 10 are listed as copper
mineral; 3 as copper and silver; I as copper and gold; 1 as copper,
silver, and gold; 1 as lead.
88. Bargallo, op. cit. (in note 14).
32 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
smelting practices are from the region near Potosi in
Bolivia, the great Colonial silver mining center. But
what of Andeansmeltingin other areas?Third,it is also
entirelypossible that the so-called smeltingfurnacesat
Curambamay prove as embarrassingas did those at
Chan Chan89in the sense that a long and well estab-
lishedtraditionthat explainsthe originalfunctionof the
structuresas metallurgicalin naturemay simply be in-
correct.Only excavationswill tell.
A ncon
The site of Ancon, ca. 25 km. northof Lima, is one of
the best studied of any Peruvian coastal site.90 Ex-
cavationshave revealeda long sequenceof occupations
from pre-ceramictimes throughthe Late Horizon, but
Inca influence there appears to have been slight.9'
Although metal objects have been found at Ancon,
both in early and late Middle Horizongraves,92Ancon
has not been noted for its metallurgy,displayingneither
a rich abundanceof metal artifactsnor any indication
of metalmanufacturingprocesses.
Uhle, in describinghis excavationsin area P of the
Ancon necropolis, states that copper implements
(Gerate) were found everywhere(i.e., in many of the
graves), and several graves contained gold beads or
other objects made of gold.93The graves in area P
belong to all four periods at Ancon, which are as
89. Lechtmanand Moseley,op. cit. (in note 1).
90. W. Reiss and A. Sttibel,Das Totenfeld von Ancon in Peru (Berlin
1880-1887);Max Uhle, "Die MuschelhEigel von Ancon, Peru,"Inter-
national Congress of Americanists, Proceedings of 18th Session ( 1912)
22-45;WilliamD. Strong, The Uhle Pottery Collections from Ancon,
Universityof CaliforniaPublicationsin AmericanArchaeologyand
Ethnology21 (Berkeley1925)135-190;WilliamD. Strong,GordonR.
Willey,John M. Corbett,Archaeological Studies in Peru, 1941-1942,
ColumbiaStudiesin Archaeologyand EthnologyI (New York 1943);
Gordon R. Willey, "A Supplementto the Pottery Sequenceat An-
con," in Archaeological Studies in Peru, 1941-1942, pp. 201-215;
Rebecca Carrion Cachot, "La Cultura Chavin - Dos Nuevas
Colonias:KunturWasi y Ancon,"Revista del Museo Nacional, Lima
2 (1948)99-172;GordonR. WilleyandJohn M. Corbett,Early Ancon
and Early Supe Culture, Columbia Studies in Archaeology and
Ethnology 3 (New York 1954); Edward P. Lanning, "An Early
CeramicStyle from Ancon, CentralCoast of Peru,"Nawpa Pacha I
(1963) 47-60; idem, "A Pre-Agricultural Occupationon the Central
Coast of Peru," AmAnt 28 (1963) 360-371;Thomas C. Patterson,
Pattern and Process in the Early Intermediate Period Pottery of the
Central Coast of Peru, University of California Publications in
Anthropology 3 (Berkeley 1966); Thomas C. Patterson and M.
EdwardMoseley, "Late Preceramicand EarlyCeramicCulturesof
the CentralCoastof Peru,"Nawpa Pacha 6 (1968) 115-133.
91. Strong,ibid. 186.
92. Uhle, op. cit. (in note 90);Willey,op. cit. (in note 90);WilliamC.
Root, "Analysesof Metallic Content of ArchaeologicalObjectsin
VariousMuseums,"mimeographedtablesof spectrographicanalyses
(unpublished).
93. Uhle, op. cit. (in note90) 34.
follows: Middle Ancon I: toward the beginningof the
Middle Horizon, with strong Tiahuanacoidinfluence;
Middle Ancon II: late Middle Horizon; Late Ancon I:
betweenlate MiddleHorizonand earlyLate Intermedi-
ate Period;Late Ancon II: Late IntermediatePeriodto
Late Horizon.Neither Uhle's reportnor Strong's94later
reevaluation of Uhle's Ancon material, however,
describes the objects or their grave associations.
William C. Root analysed 23 metal objects excavated
by Uhle and presently in the Uhle Collection of the
Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology at the
Universityof California,Berkeley.95 These analysesare
presentedin Table 5. Fourteenof the 23 werefromarea
P; 12 are listed as coming from MiddleAncon I graves,
1 from a Late Ancon I grave,and 1 from a Late Ancon
II grave.The MiddleI objectsare made of copper(e.g.,
a fish hook, a knife, a cast clubhead,a disc);fromsilver
(a plume);froma silver-copperalloy whichwas evident-
ly treated to leave the surfaces of the object silver in
color (several plumes, a topo); and from a gold-silver-
copperalloy, probablya naturalelectrum,that appears
gold in color (several plates from false, gold mummy
heads).The single Late I objectfromarea P, a fragment
of a band, is of silver,and the Late II objectis a copper
knife. Five of the objectsRoot analysedbelong to Mid-
dle II graves from areas M and T. Copper,the copper-
silver alloy, and the naturalelectrumcontinued to be
used. Two objects from the Late I period are of silver
and of silver-copperalloy, and all three Late II objects
are of copper.
Strong, Willey, and Corbett96excavated20 late Mid-
dle Horizon graves in the vicinity of areas B and H of
the Ancon necropolis. Their material falls between
Middle Ancon II and Late Ancon I. Metal objects are
reportedby Willey from six of these graves. Exceptfor
"two small fragmentsof what might be gold or a gold-
copper alloy"97all the other items are described as
fragmentsof sheet copper. Schmidt98illustratesobjects,
said to be from Ancon, in privatecollections.They are
94. Strong,op. cit. (in note 90).
95. After WilliamRoot's death in 1969,PaulineRoot, his wife, was
kind enough to present me with many of his books includinghis
notebooks in which are recorded details of his emission spec-
trographicanalysesof pre-Columbianmetal objects(Root, note 92).
Includedwith this materialis a list of analysesof metal objectsex-
cavatedat the necropolisof Ancon by Max Uhle (Uhle, note 90) and
presentlyin the collectionsof the LowieMuseumof Anthropologyat
the Universityof California,Berkeley.Table 5 presentsthe resultsof
his studyof the Ancon material.
96. Strong,Willey,andCorbett,op. cit. (in note 90).
97. Willey,op. cit. (in note90) 209.
98. Max Schmidt,Kunst und Kultur von Peru (Berlin1929)plates367,
368, 380, 385, 394, 397.
 Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3 1976 33

Table 5. Analysesof metal objectsexcavatedat Ancon by Max Uhle.*

Root Analysis
Analysis Excavation [%,by weight]
No. No. Period Object Au Ag Cu Sn Pb As

1117 P12-6003 Middle I Small disc on cloth T L T

1118 P 12-6004b Middle I Plume L T
1119 P 14-6022a Middle I Plate from false
head of mummy 34
1120 P 14-6022b Middle I 33 2
61
1 121 P 14-6023a Middle I Plume (?) 75 25
65
1122 P 14-6023b Middle I Plume (?) 90 10
o
1123 P14-6025 Middle I Fish hook T L
o
1124 P24-6174 Middle I 1 opo 90 10
1128 P19-6304 Middle I Knife T L
o
1129 P2 1-6306 Middle I Club head T L
1130 P21-6312 Middle I Disc T L T
1 131 P -6323 Middle I Pendant 17 7
76
1110 M4 -5635 Middle II Armlet 20
llll T 14-5671 Middle II Hollow bead 15 80
1112 T7 -5721d Middle II Fragment of plate o 5
1113 T 13-5745 Middle II Fragment of sheet 80 L
1114 T 13-5749 Middle II Armlet 32 L
5
1109
B 103-5599c Late 1 Fragment of sheet T 63L L
Fragments of band 6 89 5 _ _
1127 P1 -6281 Late I

H2 -5838a Late II Armlet L T

1115
H2 -5838b Late II Armlet T L -
T
1116
P -6236 Late II Knife 2 o 98 T
1125
C 102-6271b Late II Headband 5 60 35
1126

Legend:
L 20%or more
S 1-20%
T 0.01-1%
X 0.0001-0.001%

*The analysesreportedhere were performedby WilliamC. Root (see note 95). The determinationswere
made by wet chemicaland spectrographicanalysis.Root recalculatedthe percentagesof Au, Ag, and Cu on
the basis of 100%metal. He analysedthe samples(from Ancon and many others sites in Peru)for Au, Ag,
Cu, Sn, Pb, As, Sb, Bi, Zn, Cd, Hg. In no case was any Sb, Bi, Cd, or Hg found,and in only one case was Zn
detected.Root, therefore,omittedtheselatterelementsfromhis tables.
All the Ancon objects currentlyform part of the Uhle Collectionat the Robert H. Lowie Museumof
Anthropologyat the Universityof California,Berkeley.Furtherinformationaboutthe objectsand findspots
aregiven in Strong(see note 90).

copper or silver in color and are preponderantlyLate 100. Baessler illustrates a number of diverse objects from Ancon:
Intermediateor Late Horizon in form. The vast majori- Tafel No. Tafel
ty show a strong influencefrom the south coast; many 13 184 27 No.

of the styles and motifs are similarto Late Ica99ceramic 15 23 1, 237 30 401
32 461
and metalobjects.'°° 19 313, 315
487
20 326 39
Thus evidencefor the use of metal objects at Ancon 568
22 343

99. Root, 1949, op. cit. (in note 1). Arthur Baessler, Altperuanische Metallgerate (Berlin 1906). Marshall
 \ 1 I J I I \ i
34 A Metallurgical Site Survey in the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
4 z r e 9 tvo
O I t X s
Figure24. Fragments of two lead cakes from Ancon. The bottom of
thecakes is shown.
\\\\\mS
Figure 25. Ancon. Reconstruction of the lead cake illustrated at the
rightin Figure 24.
beginswith the Middle Horizon and continuesthrough
the Inca occupationof the site. The objectsare few and
undistinguishedbut do show a repertoryof metals and
alloys includinggold, silver, copper, silver-copperand
possibly gold-copper, and electrum. It was surprising,
therefore,when a numberof sacks full of metal slags of
various types was found in the archaeologicalstore-
house at Ancon. These were describedas having come
from excavationsin the area behind the Urbanizacion
Miramar,on the pampa to the east of the Panamerican
Highwayand to the south of the necropolis.'°'The con-
tents of only two sacks were examined, revealing
presents his metallographic examination of two silver-colored
fragments of sheet metal from Ancon whose composition he estimates
as Au: 50%, Ag: 50%, by weight. George Marshall, "Notes on the Ex-
amination of Some Pre Colum-bian Metal Samples," Arqueologicas 7.
101. I am most grateful to Dr. Hugo Ludena who told me of the ex-
istence of the metallurgical slags at Ancon and who accompanied me
to the site. According to the guardian at the storehouse, these
metallurgical materials were found by Julio C. Tello who excavated
the area behind the Urb. Miramar in 1943 or 1944; the guardian
assisted in the excavations. He described a rather small area cleared
by Tello where hornos(smelting furnaces), crucibles, batanes(large
grinding stones), slag, and an abundance of ash were uncovered at a
depth of ca. 2.5 m. - 3 m. He claims that Tello later re-covered the
area with sand*.The site, which was visited during the survey, is pocked
with huaqueropits and there is evidence of earlier archaeological
excavations. Because we can reconstruct so little of the circumstances
of the discovery of these materials or their context, the discussion here
of their significance in Andean metallurgy in general must remain
speculative.
I u 10
: i:
-<; 20 1
Figure 26. Ancon. A polished cross section of a scoriated ;'sherd"
(MIT No. 703) with a blue, slag-like accretion on the surface at the
left. The three zones indicated correspond to 1) the slag, 2) the in-
termediate zone represented by the scoriated surface of the sherd in
contact with the slag, 3) the unaltered sherd with many small, rocky
.
lnc uslons.
primarily two kinds of artifacts: (1) heavy, circular,
lead-richcakes, slightly concave in section and thicker
in the middle than at the rim (see FIGS. 24, 25); and (2)
fragmentsof ceramic sherds whose inner surfaces are
coated with thick accumulationsof what appearto be
brightgreenor blue mineralproductsof copper.102
Laboratoryexaminationof the slags is underway,but
some preliminaryresultsare worth noting.
A. A sherd (MIT No. 703) whose inner surface is
heavily encrustedwith a bright blue slag-like material
was studiedboth petrographicallyand by x-raydiffrac-
tion. In addition, wet chemical and quantitativespec-
trographicanalyseswere made of a portion of the blue
material removed from the sherd (TABLE 6). Three
contiguouszones are evident in the polished section of
the sherd (FIG. 26): the sherd itself, Zone 1; a zone
representingthe originalinnersurfaceof the sherd,now
scoriated,Zone 2; and the thick blue accretion,Zone 3.
The ceramic of Zone 1 is highly porous and coarse
102. Only one decorated pottery sherd was found mixed-in among
these metallurgical materials, but it had no adherent metal, slag, or
other smelting byproducts. Its association with the metallurgical finds
is thus a tentative one, at best. The paste is a light orange-tan color,
and the outer surface of the sherd is decorated with geometric designs
in the form of cross-hatched triangles painted in black with vestiges of
painted red background areas. The sherd closely resembles certain
Early Intermediate Period pottery styles found by Lanning at the
Miramar site at Ancon. Lanning, "An Early Ceramic Style from An-
con," 1963 op. cit. (in note 90) plate X, fig. 4; plate XI, fig. 13 a, 14 a.

Table 6. Analysesof samplesof the blue, slag-likematerialadheringto a sherdfromAncon (FIG. 26).
Sample No. Composition [%,by weight]
Wet Chemical Analysis
Cu Fe Pb S Si Zn Ag A1
703 3.66 2.75 43.5 2.05 2.81 3.41 0.26 L
Legend:
FT 0.001-0.01% T 0.01-0.1% L 0.1-1.0%
and is full of quartz pebbles. These quartz grains are
visiblein the black, scoriatedZone 2 indicatingthat the
inner surface of the sherd was raised to a temperature
high enough to melt some but not all of its mineralcon-
stituents.InterspersedthroughoutZone 2 are spherical
globules of varioustypes. One varietyis brightwhite to
gray-whitein reflectedlight and is often associatedwith
a bright blue phase. This brightblue mineralhas been
identifiedas covellite(CuS);the whitephase has not yet
been identified. Zone 2 also contains many spherical
globules of pure covellite and occasionally bits of
covellitethat appearneverto have melted.The polished
section also revealed some covellite in the thick blue
slag of Zone 3. X-ray diffractionanalysis of a sample
removedfrom Zone 3 has shown it to be a highly com-
plex mixtureof many mineralsincludingcovellite and
silicatesof copper,but the diffractionpatternshave not
yet been resolved. It is clear, however, that Zone 3
representsa mixtureof variousmaterialsthat wereonce
molten inside or adjacent to the ceramic vessel and
solidified there. The fact that covellite and other
mineralsare present as spherulesin Zones 2 and 3 in-
dicates that copper sulfide minerals were melted at
some stage and solidifiedin contact with the sherd.The
slag-like nature of Zone 3 is in keepingwith the silica
and high lead content indicated by the analyses,
although the materialitself is not in a highly vitrified
state. A second sherd(MIT No. 704), similarto the Elrst
but much thinner and curved in section, was also sec-
tioned, polished, and examined. It showed the same
three contiguous zones and almost the same spec-
trographic pattern of elements in the accretionary
materialclingingto its inner,concave surface.The mid-
dle, scoriatedzone containsa largenumberof spherical
globulesof covellite, many more than in sherdNo. 703.
One inclusion of galena (PbS) was also noted in this
zone. The inner,concavesurfaceof the sherdcontained
bits of charcoal mixed with the other accretionary
material.
Althoughat this point the interpretationof these data
can only be partialand subjectto change, the evidence
stronglyimpliesthat coppersulfideores or copper ores
with a high percentage of copper sulEldewere being
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 35
Spectrographic Analysis
As Ca Ge Mg Mn P Sb Sr Ti
0.44 L FT L T T 0.82 FT FT-T
smeltedin some sort of ceramicvesselsat Ancon.103 The
use of ollas or pots as cruciblesfor smeltingor roasting
ores was not uncommonin the Andes. Both Barbaand
Cobo mention such practice.l04On the other hand, the
sherd illustratedin Figure 26 is flat and appearsto be
part of a flat-bottomedor straight-walledvessel, per-
haps a type used especiallyfor smelting.It may also be
nothing more than a flat tile onto which the slaggy
detritus from a smelting or refining operation was
deposited.The more strikingresultof these preliminary
analyses is that a technology sophisticatedenough to
smelt sulfide ores of copper apparently had been
developed in the Andes prior to the coming of the
Spanishand probablybefore the formationof the Inca
state.
It shouldbe noted that Caleyand Easbyl05chemically
analysed a copper ingot from the south coast of Peru
and argued on the basis of its sulphurcontent that it
representedmetal won from a complex sulfide ore.
Clair Patterson106 has argued strongly against such
chemical evidence as an indicationof sulfide smelting.
Petrographicand metallographicstudy of slags, ingots,
and other metallurgicalremainsis obviously crucialto
the understandingand reconstructionof any metallurgi-
cal system.NeitherCaley and Easbynor Pattersonused
these techniques,but the evidencefrom Ancon strongly
suggests that Caley and Easby's evaluation of pre-
Columbian technology was substantiallycorrect, that
is, that suflide ores were being smelted in the Andes
priorto the Spanishinvasion.
B. The lead-richcakes, of which there were numer-
ous fragmentsin the Ancon storehouse, have proved
103. Another possible interpretationis that the slag-like material
clinging to the surfaces of these sherds is the product of an ore-
refiningoperationin which silverores containingsome copper,zinc,
lead, and arsenicwerepurified.In thatcase, leador leadsulfidemight
have been added to flux the ore and collect impuritiessuch as those
presentin ratherhigh concentrationas indicatedby the analyses.The
slag accretionson these sherdsmightbe the first productsof a series
of purificationsteps.
104. Barba,op. cit. (in note 2) iv. 4; Cobo, op. cit. (in note 18)iii. 41.
105. Caleyand Easby,op. cit. (in note 1).
106. Patterson,op. cit. (in note 11).
36 A Metallurgical Site Survey in the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
equally interesting.Figure 24 illustratestwo represen-
tative fragmentsof these cakes; Figure 25 provides a-
section through the cake at the right and reconstructs
its originalsize and shape. The bottoms of all the cakes
are slightlyconvex indicatingthat they solidifiedwithin
a concave receptacle.Such a containermay have been
no more than a round cavity dug into the ground, but
the pronouncedbreak in contour betweenthe rim and
body of the cake in Figure25 suggeststhat it formedin-
side a carefully pre-shaped container. All the cakes
share certain features:their upper surfacesare usually
gray in color and contain many small inclusions of
charcoal, spherulesof soft, gray metal, and patches of
white powdery accretions mixed with green copper
mineral; the bottom surfaces are an overall gray or
brown-graycolor with large areas of bright yellow or
yellow-green.Petrographicstudy of polishedsectionsof
these cakes together with x-ray diffractionanalyses of
materialremoved from their upper and lower surfaces
and from various zones within the body of the cakes
have established:(1) that the upper surfaces contain
sphericalglobules of lead; (2) that occasionallybits of
galena (PbS) are also presentat the upper surfaces;(3)
that the lower surfaces are coated with bright yellow
massicot (yellow lead oxide: PbO); and (4) that the
materialconstitutingthe body of the cakes is a mixture
of litharge(yellow lead oxide: PbO) and massicot.l07In
addition, small inclusions of copper metal are dis-
tributed throughout the cakes, and occasionally tiny
bright white particles of another metal or mineralare
found withinthe cakes.
Again, interpretationof these data must await a
much more thorough investigation of the cakes, but
even at this point there seems little question that they
representone of the stages in the purificationof silver
ores or of silver-leadores through the addition of lead
or lead sulfide. There are numerous referencesby the
chroniclersto the winning of silver from its ores with
the aid of suruchecor lead sulfide,108 though such
allusions generally refer to practices carried out at
Potosi. Barba defines sorochesas "those ores in which
lead 'grows', most are black, crusty, and shiny."109
Georg Petersen"° equates suruchewith galena, but
points out that suruchewas the term used specifically
for galenaof smallcrystalsize and that containedsilver;
macrocrystallinegalena, he adds, is poor in silver. The
107. Lithargeand massicotareallotropicformsof PbO.
108. Jose de Acosta, Historia Naturaly Moralde las Indias(1590)
(Madrid1894);Barba,op. cit. (in note 2); Garcilaso,op. cit. (in note
71).
109. Barba,ibid. i. 31.
110. Petersen,op. cit. (in note 45).
lead served as a flux, causing the silver to melt. Gar-
cilaso gives perhapsthe most direct account of the use
of suruchecin winning silver from its ores." ' He
describes the difficulty of smelting the silver ores at
Potosi until the lndians extractedore from a hill nearby
which was almost pure lead ore. When they mixed the
lead ore with the silver ore, the silver was caused to
"run," i.e. it melted. For this reason, he explains, the
lead ore was termedzuruchec, which means that which
causes something to "slip" or to run. He goes on to
describehow the amount of lead ore that is added to
the silver to smelt it depends upon the richnessof the
latter, and that the initial stages of the smelting took
place in portable furnaces, like ovens of clay, out of
doors, using natural draughts.Afterwardsthe second
and third smeltingswere conductedin theirhouses, not
with wind furnacesbut with blowpipes(i.e. he implies
that these final steps werecarriedout in vesselsof some
kind with the air for the fire being providedby people
blowing into copper blowpipes) in order to purify the
silver and get rid of (waste) the lead. Finally, Acosta"2
states that the reason the Indianscould smelt the silver
from Potosi was becauseit containedlead.
It seems clear that priorto the arrivalof the Spanish,
Andean smiths were winning silver from argentiferous
ores of lead, very likely silver-richgalena. They may
also have addedlead to sulfides(whichprobablyhad to
be roasted first) or chlorides of silver to aid in the
smeltingof such ores. We do not know whetherthe ores
they used were combined silver sulfide - lead sulfide
ores or the oxidized zones of such ores that may have
contained silver. Regardlessof the exact nature of the
111. The originaltext in which Garcilaso,op. cit. (in note 71) I. viii.
25 refersto the smeltingof silverores fromPotosi follows.
E1metalde la plata se saca del cerrogrande,como atrasse ha dicho;
en el cual hallaron a los principiosmucha dificultaden fundirlo,
porque no corria, sino que se quemabay consumiaen humo, y no
sabianlos indios la causa, aunquehabiantrazadootros metales.Mas
como la necesidado la codicia sea tan gran maestra,principalmente
en lances de oro y plata, puso tanta diligenciabuscandoy probando
remedios,que dio en uno, y fue que en el cerropequenohallo metal
bajo, que casi todo o del todo era de plomo, el cual mezcladocon el
metal de plata le hacia correr;por lo cual le llamaronzuruchec,que
quieredecirel que hace deslizar.Mezclabanestos dos metalespor su
cuentay razon . . . porqueno todo metal de plata es de una misma
suerte,que unos metalesson de mas plata que otros, aunquesean de
una mismaveta;. . . y conformea la calidad,y riquezade cadametal
le echabanel zuruchec;templadoasi el metallo fundianen unos hor-
nillos portatilesa manerade alnafesde barro.No fundiancon fuelles
ni a soplos con los canutos de cobre, como en otra dijimos que
fundian la plata y el oro para labrarlo, que aunque lo probaron
muchasveces nuncacorrioel metal,ni pudieronlos indiosalcanzarla
causa;por lo cual dieronen fundirloal viento natural.... En ellas
hacian sus primerasfundiciones;despues en sus casas hacian las
segundasy tercerascon los canutosde cobre, para apurarla platay
gastarel plomo; . . .
112. Acosta,op. cit. (in note 108)iv. 9.

charge,the reasonsfor which such mixturesare easy to
smelt have to do with the remarkablepropertiesof lead.
The smeltingof any ore requiresboth the reductionof
the mineralto the metal and the separationof this from
the non-metallicmaterial(gangue)that is present.This
separationis usually achievedby the formationof two
immiscibleliquidswhichseparateunderthe influenceof
gravity.When only small amountsof metal are present,
as in many silver and gold ores, some collector is need-
ed to give bulk to the separatingliquid metal, and lead
ore, which itself often containsa perceptibleamount of
silver,can be used for this purpose.The ores are roasted
to remove sulphurby oxidation and then smeltedwith
charcoal (which serves both as a fuel and a reducing
agent) to yield a lead-richmetal which separatesfrom
the slag, composed of fused rocky matter. The silver,
and gold if present,is almost all containedin the lead,
whichdissolvesit readily.If the roastedore is only part-
ly reduced,the remaininglead oxide servesto flux the
other materials,for it is a potent solvent when molten.
The metal from the first smelting is then heated to
about 900° C and subjectedto a currentof air, forming
molten lead oxide (litharge) which is immisciblewith
the metal and floats on top of it. This is continually
skimmedor run off, carryingwith it oxides of any other
base metalsthat may be present.As oxidationproceeds,
the pool of lead-silveralloy diminishesin size and in-
creases in purity and silver content until ultimately a
mass of pure silver remainsfree from all other metals.
Usually the roasting,the smelting,and the cupellation,
as the last operationis called, are performedin separate
furnaces,for they need differentcombinationsof tem-
peratureand accessto air, but they could be carriedout
consecutivelyin a singlefurnace.
The lead cakes from Ancon seem to representa final
stage in one of the purificationregimes, for they are
almost pure lead oxide. The presenceof galena in the
polishedsectionssuggestthat eithersuruchecwas added
to a silver ore or that a silver-richgalena was being
smelted. The bits of copper present in the cakes are
evidentlyparticlesremoved from the silver ore by the
collectingaction of the lead oxide.
Both the lead cakes and the scoriatedsherdsprovide
evidencefor the smeltingof sulfideores at Ancon in the
pre-Spanishera. It is interesting that such activities
wereundertakenat Ancon whenthe surroundingareais
ratherdevoid of mineralresourcesand perhapsalso of
fuel.113 We do not know if Ancon was as aridin antiqui-
ty as it is today. Even if it were, however,wood was ob-
viously broughtinto the site, since the roofs of many of
the graves reportedby Carrion Cachot were made of
113. Willey and Corbett, op. cit. (in note 90) discuss the aridity and
lack of flora in the Ancon area.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 37
huarango.ll4 Bits of charcoalintimatelyassociatedwith
the slags from Ancon were analysed by the Forest
Products Laboratory of the U. S. Department of
AgricultureForest Service. They proved to belong to
the acacia group of legumes and are likely to be the
species known locally as huarango.ll5Uhlell6 also men-
tions findinglarge accumulationsof llama dung in cer-
tain areas of the necropoliswhich, as we shall see in the
section on "Fuels" below, has and still does serve as
fuel for smelting in many parts of the Andes. He also
mentions the ubiquitouscoastal desert plant tillandsia
as having been used as a fuel at Ancon, the same plant
that sustainedthe conflagrationat ChanChan.
Recent metallogenetic maps and maps of modern
workingmines in Perudo not indicateany mines in the
immediatevicinityof Ancon. The nearestlarge mine is
at Huachoc (ca. 1,600 m.), about mid-way along the
road from the Chillon Valleyto Huaralin the Chancay
Valley. Its ores comprisemixedveins of coppermineral
and gold. On the other hand, Raimondi collected a
sample of malachite with limonite from the Q. de
Canarios(No. 1381) immediatelyto the NE of Ancon,
and another mixed ore (No. 1382) of atacamite,
limonite, malachite,and chrysocollafrom Cerro Pied-
ras Gordas, just 2.5 km. south of Ancon."7 It is quite
possible, therefore,that copper mineralson or near the
coast weresufficientlyabundantto have beenexploited.
Silver ores or argentiferouslead ores could have come
from the highlandsnear Canta or even from the Rimac
Valley where Raimondi describes deposits of argen-
tiferouslead ores in the San Mateo area (ca. 3,139 m.),
now known as the Viso-Aruridistrict.We do not know
if such Pb-Ag ores or the particularlyrich copper ores
of the upper Rimac Valley, from San Mateo to La
Oroya, were exploited and broughtto the coast where
they may havethen been shippedto coastal sites such as
Ancon. If no silver or silver-leadores are found near
114. CarrionCachot,op. cit. (in note 90).
I 15. I am gratefulto Dr. R. C. Koeppen,in chargeof the Centerfor
Wood Anatomy Research, for examiningthe charcoal specimens
from Ancon. His notes follow:"You suggestthis mightbe huaranga
wood, Acacia farnesiana, and from what I can see of the anatomyit
indicatesthat it belongs to the acaciagroup of legumesand it may
well be that species. However, although the cross sectional paren-
chymapatternis of the sametype as huaranga,the wood raysseemto
be rathernarrowfor that speciesand are morelike the relatedA. pan-
iculata, called pashaco." (Personalcommunication,October 1975).
Weberbauercites three species of acacia common to Peru, A.
macracantha, A. riparia, and A. tortuosa. Of these, the first grows
abundantlyon the centralcoast whereit is calledhuarango. A. Weber-
bauer, El Mundo Vegetal de Los Andes Peruanos, Estudio Fitoge-
ografico, Ministeriode Agricultura(Lima 1945).
116. Uhle, op. cit. (in note 90).
117. Raimondi,op. cit. (in note 29).
38 A Metallurgical Site Survey in the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman
Ancon, a highland source is certainly a plausible ex-
planation.
Reexcavationof the Miramararea from which these
materials are said to have come would be well
worthwhile.Would it even be too rash to suggest that
the hundred-oddblack, dioritegrindingstones (each of
which measures ca. 1 m. x 0.5 m.) found scattered
about the necropolis of Ancon and describedboth by
Reiss and Stubel and by Uhlell8 as grindingstones for
the processingof foods might actually have been used
for grinding mineral?Still, we would have to account
for the apparentdisparitybetweenthe scarcityof metal
objects found at Ancon and a flourishingmetallurgical
industry.But Ancon may prove to be a more significant
metallurgicalcenterthan had ever been supposed.
Fuels
There are several questions to raise concerningfuels
for metallurgicaloperations.What kinds of fuels were
used for firing furnaces, or, more generally, for pro-
viding the temperaturesnecessaryto the operationsbe-
ing carriedout? In the case of smelting,wherereduction
of ore is the essential process, was the charge made up
of ore and fuel in its naturalstate (e.g., wood, animal
dung, xerophytic plants, or straw) or of ore and fuel
that had previouslybeen processedinto charcoal?Were
smelting sites chosen for their proximity to good
sources of fuel or was fuel broughtto smeltingsites or
to workshopsfrom considerabledistances?
The chroniclersprovidegood evidencefor the variety
of fuels in use in the Andes duringthe earlyyearsof the
Spanishpresencethere. Barba,in his chapteron "Fur-
naces and Methods of BurningOres in Rock Form''ll9
lists wood (lena) as the principalfuel. Wherewood was
not available, he continues, llama dung (estiercol de
carnerosde la tierra),the yareta plant (azorelayareta),
large pieces of dung from corralswhere cattle are kept
(as distinct from llama or sheep dung consisting of
small pellets),and ichu,the highlandgrassthat grows as
the normal ground cover at elevations of about 3,000
m. and above, were used.l20Zaratel2l also mentionsthe
118. Reiss and Sttibel,op. cit. (in note 90) tafel 4; Uhle, op. cit. (in
note 90).
119. Barba,op. cit. (in note 2) iv. 4.
120. Ichu and yareta are two of the most importantplants in the
ethnobotanyof the Andean sierra.The grassy ichu plant serves as
pasturagefor llamasand alpacasas well as being an importantsource
of fuel. Severaltypes of resinousplants common to the puna of the
southernAndes(S. Peru,Bolivia,and N. Chile)are foundat altitudes
of 4,000 m. and above. Among these are variousspeciesof the genus
azorela(e.g. azorelayareta,azorelamadreporica)
whichareparticular-
ly good fuels becauseof the resins they contain. They make an ex-
use of llama dung in treelessareas,and Cobol22goes so
far as to say that without ichuno mercurycould have
been smeltedin Perubecausethereis no wood available
near the principal highland mercury mines such as
Huancavelica.Mercury,of course, was essentialto the
Colonialsilverindustry.
II1the 19thcentury,Pfordte'23describedthe methods
of smeltingsilver-leadores in reverberatoryfurnaceshe
observed in the Peruvian highlands, near Cerro de
Pasco.There"the fuels consistedmainlyof driedllama-
dung, called taquia,gatheredby the Indiansduringthe
dry season and kept under shelter. Sufficientheat can
be producedwith it to roast and smeltores.... Wood
as a fuel is out of the question, on account of its great
cost. The Elreswere generallystarted with dried grass,
and when necessary,were kept low for a long time by
coveringthe embers."l24Barbal25also mentionsthe use
of ichuas the uppermostlayer of a chargeof fuel-plus-
ore in order to start the fire more rapidly. Remyl26
similarlydescribesthe winning of silver from its sulfur
mineralsin reverberatoryfurnacesin the Departmentof
Junin.
The fuel used is taquia or sheep dung, a common fuel in
most of our highlands, principallyin central Peru. The
dung of llamas is also used for the same purpose,but only
in places and in circumstanceswhere sheep dung is not
available;the latteris preferablebecauseit burnsmoreeasi-
ly.
In orderto be used in furnaces,sheep taquia is preparedby
exposingit to the sun until all the moisturehas evaporated,
which is usuallydone right in the corralitself. In the more
important sites where it is used, there are large covered
storehouseswhereit is kept;all that ts neededfor the yearis
preparedin the dry season, becauseduringthe winterrains
it is not possible to obtain it in good condition. (my
translation)l 27
ceedinglyhot fire and, along with anothergroup of resinousplants
commonly referredto as tola, they constitutethe main fuels of the
puna peoples.
121. Augustinde Zarate,Historia del Descubrimiento, y Conquista de
la Provincia del Peru . . ., A. Gonzalez Barcia,ed., Historiadores
Primitivosde las IndiasOccidentales,T. 3 (Madrid1749)viii.
122. Cobo, op. cit. (in note 18)iii. 41.
123. Otto Pfordte, "Ancient Method of Silver-LeadSmelting in
Peru,"Trans. American Institute of Mining Engineers 21 (1893)25-30.
124. Ibid.26-27.
125. Barba,op. cit. (in note 2) iv. 4.
126. Pedro Felix Remy, "Tratamiento Metalurgico por Fusion
Empleado en el Interior del Peru para los Minerales de Plata
Sulfurados,"Anales de la Escuela de Construcciones Civiles y de Minas
del Peru 3 (1883) 1- 13.
127. Ibid. 5.

Both writersobserve that, because of the rapiditywith
which the dung burns, it must be introducedinto the
furnacein small quantitiesin an almost uninterrupted
manner.
Boman,128 in describing the metallurgicalinstalla-
tions he found at San Antonio de los Cobres in Argen-
tina, speculatesabout the kinds of fuel that might have
been used there: the yareta plant that grows in the
mountains surroundingCobres, churquiwood that is
very rarein the punabut whichis found on the slopes of
the valley near the Cobres copper mines, and taquia,
llamadung.
Evidence of most of these types of fuel was found
duringthe survey.At Co. Landosalargepieces of com-
pletelycarbonizedhardwoods,in the form of thin twigs
or branches, were found among the remains of the
copper smelting area. At Ancon, the site just north of
Limawhich is entirelyaridand coveredby desertsands,
carbonized huarangowood was intimately associated
with the smeltingand refiningwastes.Although no car-
bonized remains of the xerophytic achupalla plant
(TillandsiaLatifolia) that is common to the northern
desertsof Peru were found associatedwith the various
smeltingsites visited on the survey,achupallais used as
a fuel today on the north coast and was the sole com-
bustantthat sustainedthe day-longfire that meltedthe
adobe walls of the presumed monumentalsmelter at
Chan Chan.l29Neither was any coal (carbonde piedra)
found at the sites visited, although Oscar Lostaunau
claimsthat in 1950he found bits of coal associatedwith
a group of Inca wind furnacessituatedon the slopes of
Co. Pitura in the JequetepequeValley.l30The cerro is
now completelycovered with sand, and no vestiges of
the smelterswere found on the survey.The use of coal
in that regionis not at all improbable,becausethereis a
large source of coal in the Q. de Cupisnique,about 20
km. SE of Co. Pitura.l3lA late l9th centurymap of the
area indicatesthe Inca road that passedCo. Pitura,run-
ning south to the ancientsite of Cupisnique.l32
In the southern sierra, at two large Spanish ore
processingand reElningsites in the highpunato the west
of Lake Titicaca, pellets of carbonized sheep and
camelid dung were found. One of these sites, Mawka
Paratia,which lies at an elevation of 4,375 m., was the
128. Boman,op. cit. (in note 14)540.
129. Lechtmanand Moseley,op. cit. (in note 1).
130. Oscar Lostaunauworked with Paul Kosok and is intimately
familiarwith archaeologicalsites in the JequetepequeValley.He ac-
companiedme to Co. PiturawhereI did findtracesof coppermineral
on the surfacesands,but no fuel remainswerelocated.
131. J. Balta, Las Pertenencias Carboniferas del Sindicato Cupisnique
(Lima1907).
132. O. Lostaunau,personalcommunication.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 39
processingcenter for the Colonial silver-leadmine at
Paratia,l333 km. to the west. At this elevation,not even
the potato will grow, and the high, cold and barren
punais covered with the ubiquitousichu.Paratia is a
community of pastores,shepherdswhose economy is
based upon the raising of alpacas and llamas and the
sale or exchange of their wool. The droppings from
these animals are the only source of fuel, other than
ichu, that is both convenient and abundant. The
Spanishtook advantageof this dung as fuel in their ac-
tivities at Mawka Paratia where camelid dung was
found in a dump outside one of the principalovens or
smelters. Similarly, at the Hda. Chiluyo ((4,100 m.),
near Pichacane, a major Colonial silver mine/ore-
processingcomplex, carbonizedpellets of sheep dung
were found when the floor of a furnacewas excavated
to a depth of 15 cm. The carbonizeddung was present
in largequantitiesin a layersome 10cm. thick.
Finally, we must consider seriouslythe use of maize
cobs for fuel as is indicatedby the remainsof fully car-
bonized whole cobs of maize found inside the "fur-
naces"at Curamba.
Evidently, a large variety of fuels was used in the
Andes. People burned whatever was locally available
and would give them both the temperaturesand en-
vironments(e.g., a reducingas opposed to an oxidizing
atmosphere)they required, undoubtedlytailoring the
particularsof any operationto the kind of fuel used. On
the other hand, we have little evidencefor the natureof
furnacecharges as distinct from fuels used simply for
firing. Since I found no intact smeltersduringthe sur-
vey, I cannot tell whether or not the carbonized
materialsassociated with smelting at the various sites
were originally incorporatedin the charge itself, i.e.
mixed with the ore; nor can we determinewhether or
not they were used simplyto providethe heat necessary
within the furnaceand were never in contact with the
ore. And we do not know whether or not they were
used in the form of charcoalor in their naturalcondi-
tion and carbonizedin the heating process. Ingeniero
Rivadeneyradescribed the Late IntermediatePeriod
smelterhe saw at Co. Landosa(see above, the section
on "Smelting")as containinga chargeof malachiteand
wood (lena),in alternatinglayers. Barbaalso explains
the mannerin whichto chargea furnacefor burningore
in chunkform.l34
66Firstplace on the floor of the furnace lengths of thick
wood, if thereis any, layingone above anotherin the form
of a grid, and later place smallerpieces on top; and above
133. Flores, op. cit. (in note 85).
134. Barba, op. cit. (in note 2) iv. 4.
 40 A Metallurgical
SiteSurveyinthePeruvian
Andes/Lechtman
this place the ore, the thickestpieces Elrst,laterthe smaller
ones . . . If wood is not available,this is done with yareta
and llama dung or large pieces of dung that one removes
fromthe corralswherethe cattleare kept, and severallayers
of ichu so that the fire will take more easily" (my
translation).
In Chapters5 and 6 he continueshis account, describ-
ing furnaces in which one uses primarily wood for
smeltingand othersin which primarilycharcoalis used.
In the first categoryare reverberatoryfurnacesand also
circularholes dug into the ground and filled, from the
bottom to the top with alternatinglayers of ichu or
grass,thick piecesof wood, smallerpieces of wood and,
Flnally,the ore on top. In buildingthe charge,a hole is
left in the center so that coals can be thrown in which
start the fire burningat all levels within the excavated
area. If it is convenientto make such a pit neara ravine,
a hole is made in the bottom allowing the fire to be lit
more easily and permittingthe smeltedmetal eventually
to run out.'35Barbastates that this system was used in
los Chichas for smelting lead from galena. Lllis
Capoche,l36describing the smelting of silver ores at
Potosi in 1585, talks about small wind furnaces,con-
structedof loose stones without any clay mortar,which
the local populations charged with ore and fuel, the
latter in the form of camelid dung and wood "because
they had no charcoal.''l37
The only truly indigenousfurnacethat utilizes char-
coal, accordingto Barba, is the huaira.In these, burn-
ing charcoalwas placed on the small protuberanceson
the outside of the ceramic smelters (see FIG. 6). Each
such protuberancewas located below an air hole in the
side of the huaira.The charcoalservedto heat the air as
it entered the furnace. Inside, according to various
chroniclers,'38the charge consisted of ore mixed with
charcoal.As was mentionedearlier,the portablehuaira,
which these accounts describe, was probably the
Spanishversionof a stationaryAndeantype of smelter,
but we have no evidence about the constituentsof the
chargeinsidethe pre-Spanishtype.
Judging from the scant archaeologicalevidence and
our ethnohistoricaland ethnographicdata, I suspect
135. Ibid.iv. 5.
136. Capoche,op. cit. (in note 15)I, 109.
137. Capocheassignsthe inventionof the huaira,whichhe describes
as a smallwind furnacemadeof clay, to a Spaniard,Juande Marro-
qui, who left Potosi for Spain after his inventionhad been adopted.
Capoche,op. cit. (in note 15)I, 110.
138. Cobo, op. cit. (in note 18) iii. 38; Cieza,op. cit. (in note 70) cix;
Ovando,op. cit. (in note 53);Garcilaso,op. cit. (in note 71) viii. 25; P.
BaltasarRamirez,whose descriptionof huairas,written in 1597, is
quotedin Bargallo,op. cit. (note 14)45; Zarate,op. cit. (in note 121)
. . .
Vlil .
that charcoal as such, that is, fully carbonizedorganic
material, was not commonly used in pre-Columbian
times as part of a normal furnacecharge,in close con-
tact with the ore. The ratherloose use of the word car-
bon by the chroniclerssuggests that they really meant
"fuel," and that carbonwas a genericterm widely used
to indicate any sort of fuel. Bomanl39argues in much
the same vein, pointing out that the "lenamenuda,en
rama'' (small twigs) specified by Cobo for use in
reverberatoryfurnaces would have been too thin to
makegood charcoal;he doubtswood such as churquior
the yareta plant was ever carbonizedbefore use. Only
someone as meticulous as Barba, who was intimately
familiarwith the details of the processeshe describes,
distinguishesamong types and conditions of fuels. His
carbonreallymeanscharcoal.
It appears that proximity to an adequatesupply of
fuel was importantin the location of smelters,but the
local adaptationof a wide varietyof fuels to metallurgy
made it unnecessaryto transportcombustiblematerials
over any considerabledistance. Even at Ancon, where
the present arid conditions may have always existed,
fuel supplies in the form of huarango wood were
relativelyclose. I found no evidencein Peruof long dis-
tance movementof fuels. Whereasores travelledwidely,
local metallurgicalregimes were made to conform to
the fuel resourcesat hand.
Conclusions
The issues posed at the beginningof this paper
those that motivatedthe survey are ample in scope
and, if not ambitious,certainlyare beyondresolutionat
this early stage in our efforts to appreciateAndean
metallurgy as a technological and cultural phenom-
enon. Still, the surveyhas answeredsome questionsand
suggestedways of approachingothers.
It is now clear that the north coast of Peru was suf-
ficiently rich in copper ores to have supportedthe im-
portant copper industriesof the Mochica and Chimu.
The ores they smeltedwerenot only the oxides and car-
bonates of copper but also chrysocolla, hydrated
copper silicate. The mining and smelting of ores was
thus as much a coastal as a highlandactivity,a fact that
may seem simplisticbut which I don't think has been
sufficientlyappreciated.
Becauseof the amountof metal producedand its dis-
tribution and function in society (sewing needles are
found as frequentlyas more elite items such as burial
masks or adornments),one may arguethat miningand
smeltingactivitieswere conductedon a large scale. But
139. Boman,op. cit. (in note 14) 552. ProfessorCyrilStanleySmith
has pointed out to me that a reverberatoryfurnaceworks far better
with a long, yellowflamefromwood thanwith only carbonmonoxide
fromcharcoal.

those activitiesdo not appearto have been relegatedto
a few well-deElned geographiccenters.Even if Curamba
proves to be a smelting or refining site of industrial
proportions in terms of Andean production levels, it
probably represents an Imperial, regional center to
which ores weresent for processingfrom manyminesin
the surroundingarea. At the pre-Empirelevel there is,
at present,little evidencefor that kind of arrangement.
Rather,mining and smeltingseem to have been carried
out, at least on the coast, at many locations where the
necessaryores, fuel, and strongwindswereall available.
Cerro Landosa and Cerro Songoy are typical of such
sites. Even at Chan Chan,the data point to the smelting
of small quantities of copper in an almost workshop
type of environment.
It has been argued that because "no vestiges have
been found of the deep mines and copious slags that
should resultfrom the intensemetallurgicalactivitiesof
a sulEldesmeltingera''l40the Andean peoples were not
smeltingsulfideores prior to the arrivalof the Spanish.
If one were to argue solely on the basis of the kinds of
remainsfound at some of the later BronzeAge mining
sites nearthe Iranian-Afghanistan borderor the Roman
sites on the island of Cyprus,such a conclusion might
hold weight. But in the Andes, ore smeltingwas a much
less centralizedactivity,probablycarriedout on a part-
time basis in many communities,and the build-up of
large quantities of slag at any one location is not
typical. Furthermore, highland outcrops of copper-
arsenicores such as enargiteand tennantiteare right at
the surfacein many areas due to glaciationor intensive
erosion. Those I collected from Sinchaowere not more
than 2 m. underground.One of the most important
resultsof the survey,in fact, was the lack of evidenceof
arsenic-bearingminerals or ores on the north coast,
suggestingthat they must have been exploited in the
sierra.The highlandores, however,are chiefly sulfides
or sulfarsenides,a fact amply supported by regional
metallogenicstudies.l4lWe must begin to think serious-
ly about and to seek evidencefor the sulfidesmeltingof
complex copper-arsenicores in the northernhighlands
at least duringthe Late IntermediatePeriod.
What we still havevirtuallyno evidencefor, however,
are the miningpopulationsthemselves.In the altiplano,
the metalworkersof Plateriaand Llaquepa,who repre-
sent the craftsmenof the Lupacakingdom,weremining
140. C. Patterson,op. cit. (in note 11)311.
141. Ulrich Petersen,"RegionalGeology and MajorOre Depositsof
CentralPeru,"Economic Geology 60 (1965) 407-476;"Metallogenic
Provincesin South America,"Geologischen Rundschau 59 (1970)834-
897; "Geochemicaland Tectonic Implicationsof South American
Metallogenic Provinces," Annals of the New York A cademy of
Sciences 196 (1972) 1-38; and personalcommunication,September
1975.
Journalof FieldArchaeology/Vol.3, 1976 41
or utilizing ores very close to their own communities.
An interestingquestion, in fact, is whetherthese com-
munities of metalworkers,so carefully singled out as
plateros in the ethnohistoricalliterature,were special-
ized communitiesof craftsmen,of miners, or of both,
and whetheror not they practicedtheir trade to the ex-
clusion of all else. Were they farmersas well or were
they supportedin their specialtyby other membersof
their communities?'42But, in other situations, when
ores were not locally available,who undertookto mine
and to smelt them?Who suppliedcopper-arsenicores,
in one form or another,to the Chimu, and who mined
the silverores importedto Ancon?How werethese peo-
ple organized?Clearly, ores or won metal were travel-
ing considerabledistances, mainly from the highlands
to the coast, well before the Inca centralizedand con-
trolledthe metallurgicalindustrythroughoutTawantin-
suyu.
It will probablybe easier to determinethe source of
the ores/metal and the routesthey travelledthan it will
the nature and ethnic affiliationof the labor force that
mined and processedthem. The place to look for com-
munities of miners is, of course, the highlandswhere,
however,preservationis least good and where Spanish
exploitation of indigenous sites destroyed them. As
Bray and Bargallol43have pointed out, one has to look
at the farthest reaches of the Inca empire where the
Spanish presence was slight and where even Inca
domination was not excessive. Argentina and Chile
seemlikelyprospectsfor furthersurveys.l44
Finally,a few words about the Andeanwind furnace.
The data from Cerro Landosaand even from Curamba
indicatethat furnacesor ovens were built into artificial
terraces on windy hillsides to take advantage of the
strong prevailingwinds that providedforced air to the
burning fuel. Such installations were stationary and
without doubt were pre-Hispanic. We are on firm
ground in arguing a considerabletime depth for this
solution to the problemof smeltingores, one that seems
to have been in use from at least the Late Intermediate
Period, if not earlier.In fact, the criticalelementin the
location of such installationswas not the proximityof
ore or of fuel, but the strength and direction of the
wind. Ore travelledto smeltersor people travelledto
the ore; local fuels of many kinds were utilizedand the
smelting regimestailored to accommodatethe type of
142. For a discussionof the relationshipsbetweenmetalworkersand
the communitiesin whichthey live and work,see Ambrosetti,op. cit.
(in note 17)and M. J. Rowlands,"TheArchaeologicalInterpretation
of PrehistoricMetalworking,"WorldArchaeology 3 (1971)210-224.
143. Bray,op. cit. (in note 74);Bargallo,op. cit. (in note 14).
144. See note 3 above and the "Introduccion"in Ricardo E.
Latcham,Arqueologia de la Region Atacamena (Santiago1938)5-11.
42 A MetallurgicalSite Surveyin the PeruvianAndes/Lechtman

fuel available.Only the wind remainedan arbiterof the HeatherLechtmanis AssociateProfessorof Archaeology
success of the system, and smelting sites were chosen andAncientTechnologyat M.I.T., withajoint appoint-
primarily for their favorable wind conditions. Con- mentin the Departmentsof Humanitiesand Materials
siderable effort was made to utilize wind action by ScienceandEngineering.She has combinedhertraining
building terracesthat contoured hills in exactly those inphysics,anthropology,andart historytofocus on
orientationswherethe best draughtswould result.Even studiesof ancienttechnologies,particularlythoseof the
Ancon, an otherwiseratherunlikelyarea for smelting, Andeanculturearea. Moregenerally,she is concerned
is a windysite, especiallybetweenDecemberand March withthe articulationof technologyin cultureandin un-
when the entirecentralcoast is extremelywindy, and is derstandingprehistoricculturesthroughtechnicalstudy
now almost entirely buried under thick layers of sand of theirmaterialartifacts.
movedthereby the action of prevailinglocal winds.
Surface evidence of metallurgical activity in the
Andes is scarce and extremely difficult to find.
Nevertheless,surveysof the type reportedhere are the
only way to begin to locate the kindsof sites that would
profit furtherstudy. Though the work may be slow and
"low yield," it is necessaryand worthwhile. By com-
biningarchaeological,ethnohistorical,and ethnograph-
ic methods of inquiry, the results here have been far
richer and more meaningful than any one of these
strategiesalone would have yielded.

Acknowledgments.I owe a great debt of gratitudeto

my Peruvianfriendsand colleagueswithoutwhose help
and counsel most of the survey could never have been
conducted. They, as much as I, are responsible for
whatever measure of success the survey achieved in
answeringsome of the issues it was designedto explore.
Most especiallyI wish to thank Dr. Georg PetersenG.
who sharedwith me his vast fund of knowledgeof An-
dean geology and early metallurgy and whose en-
couragementand guidance were a constant source of
support. My sincere thanks go also to Alberto
Benavides, Edmundo Benites, Cristobal Campana,
Feruccio Carassai, Onofre Castaneda, Americo
Herrera,JackelynePortal, Oscar Lostaunau,Felipe de
Lucio, Luis Lumbreras, Hugo Ludena, Duncan
Masson, Elias Mujica, Rodolfo Ortega, Fidel Ramos,
Rodolfo Ravines, Rogger Ravines, Marciano
Rodriguez, Jorge Rondon, Felix Tapia, Hippolito
Torres,JoaquinSantolalla,AnaMariaSoldi;and to my
North Americancolleagues who helped me duringthe
course of their own researchin Peru:Thomas Dillehay,
Joel Grossman, John Hyslop, Carol Mackey, John
Murra,PatriciaNetherly,and John Wilson.
A first draft of this paper was read by Ulrich
Petersen,Cyril Stanley Smith, and Gordon R. Willey.
Theirmeticulouscriticismshave considerablyimproved
this final version, and I am most grateful to them for
theirgeneroushelp. I would also like to thank Margaret
Towle for her help in interpretingthe plant materials
collectedduringthe survey.