“(Not) Gone with the Wind”: the Metallurgical Tradition of the Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope (Atacama Desert, Northern Chile)
Abstract
The Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope contains significant copper deposits and has the highest density of pre-Hispanic mining evidence in the Southern Andes. However, the same does not hold true for metallurgical evidence, which remains poorly documented. The metallurgical practices of the highland pastoralist-caravanning and mining communities of the region (2,400–4,500 m asl) took place during the Late Intermediate and Late Periods (1000–1536 AD), extending from Collahuasi in the north to Catarpe in the south. In this study, we characterize the metallurgical operations of the area in terms of the reduced minerals, the metal obtained, the fuels employed, and the combustion structures, allows us to propose the existence of a metallurgical tradition in the Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope, oriented toward the production of unalloyed metallic copper.
Related
- Wind Furnaces of the Atacama Salt Flat, Northern Chile: Copper Extractive Metallurgy at the Edge of Qhapaq Ñan
- Dataset-level reliability and quality control for metallurgical data structured with large language models
- Comparative Analysis of Heavy Metal Leaching from Metallurgical Slag Using Different Types of Leaching Agents: A Kinetic Models Approach
- Pre-Hispanic mineral cartography in mining districts of the Atacama Desert: a geoarchaeological tool for studying the provenance of copper
- Copper Recovery from Metallurgical Slags Using Biomass in the Form of Fruit Seeds/Stones as a Reducing Agent
BibTeX
@article{cifuentes2026gone,
title = {{“(Not) Gone with the Wind”: the Metallurgical Tradition of the Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope (Atacama Desert, Northern Chile)}},
author = {Ariadna Cifuentes and Valentina Figueroa and Pía Sapiains and Daniela Grimberg and Benoît Mille and Thierry Bataille and Cristián González-Rodríguez and Diego Salazar and José Berenguer},
journal = {Revista del Museo de Antropología},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.31048/srspgg92},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05764755v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - “(Not) Gone with the Wind”: the Metallurgical Tradition of the Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope (Atacama Desert, Northern Chile)
AU - Ariadna Cifuentes
AU - Valentina Figueroa
AU - Pía Sapiains
AU - Daniela Grimberg
AU - Benoît Mille
AU - Thierry Bataille
AU - Cristián González-Rodríguez
AU - Diego Salazar
AU - José Berenguer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
JO - Revista del Museo de Antropología
DO - 10.31048/srspgg92
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05764755v1
AB - The Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope contains significant copper deposits and has the highest density of pre-Hispanic mining evidence in the Southern Andes. However, the same does not hold true for metallurgical evidence, which remains poorly documented. The metallurgical practices of the highland pastoralist-caravanning and mining communities of the region (2,400–4,500 m asl) took place during the Late Intermediate and Late Periods (1000–1536 AD), extending from Collahuasi in the north to Catarpe in the south. In this study, we characterize the metallurgical operations of the area in terms of the reduced minerals, the metal obtained, the fuels employed, and the combustion structures, allows us to propose the existence of a metallurgical tradition in the Atacama Circumpuna´s Western Slope, oriented toward the production of unalloyed metallic copper.
SN - 1852-060X
SN - 1852-4826
ER -