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Technological and material features of the gold work of Mesoamerica

2009; Volume: 33; Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/archeosciences.2345

2104-3728

José Luis Ruvalcaba Sil, Gabriela Peñuelas Guerrero, Jannen Contreras Vargas, Edith Ortiz Díaz, Eumelia Hernández Vázquez,

Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts

The metallurgical work in Pre-Columbian America achieved a high degree of development. In the Mesoamerican area, the development of metallurgy started very late, during the post-Classic period (800 AD). Nevertheless, various techniques, such as lost wax casting and false filigree, were rapidly developed and improved. Most of the gold metallurgy was developed in the Oaxaca region, in the South of Mexico, by the Mixtec people.A limited number of gold alloy based artefacts survived after the conquest of Mexico. Few collections are related to archaeological contexts and may be used to obtain reliable information about the technical features and materials used in the Mesoamerican gold metallurgy. For this reason, non-destructive analyses have been performed on some artefacts of the most important collections of the Mexican museums using portable XRF and PIXE in the laboratory.In this work, a full review of the main technical features and alloys of the analyzed gold artefacts from the Mesoamerican area collections are presented. This database may be used to study collections of gold artefacts from the Mesoamerican areas.