The Constructive/Destructive Flame: Fire in Colonial-Period Mexican Mining Communities

Mesoamerican mining communities during the Colonial period employed fire to extract and transform natural resources, fulfilling obligations to the Spanish crown. At the same time, they depended on fire for light, heat, and food. What kinds of knowledge were brought from one fire to the next? How did fire mediate daily life in these mining communities? Drawing on written reports and visual representations of Mesoamerican mining communities held in the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley, this presentation proposes that fire helped to unify these potentially transient communities; the creation, maintenance, and enjoyment of fire were and still are inherently social acts.

Is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley where, for his dissertation, he is exploring the technological styles of the metal objects deposited in the Cenote Sagrado at Chichén Itzá. He earned his B.A. in Art and Archaeology at Princeton University and his M.Sc. at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, where he analyzed metal ornaments from the Colonial occupation of Tipu, Belize. Besides teaching courses at Berkeley, he has taught several courses in Mesoamerican archaeology and in Spanish in the education program at San Quentin State Prison in California.