Abstract
Mesoamerican metallurgy began in the west of Mexico around 800 AD, perhaps due to interactions with people from South America, who first introduced metal technology in Mesoamerica at this time. However, Mixtecs and Zapotecs from the Oaxaca area, in the South of Mexico, probably established their own contacts with people from Central America and involved themselves in the production of metal objects around 1200 AD. During the late post-Classic period, from 1300 to 1521 AD, Mixtecs were well known for their metallurgy work; they manufactured exquisite assemblages of gold and silver objects to be deposited as offerings in burials.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, as well as Oaxaca’s INAH Centre, for providing the facilities used to carry out this study. This research has been supported by the Mexico CONACyT grant U49839-R.
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Peñuelas, G., Ruvalcaba, J.L., Contreras, J., Hernández, E., Ortiz, E. (2011). Non Destructive In Situ Analysis of Gold and Silver Artifacts from Tomb 7 of Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico. In: Turbanti-Memmi, I. (eds) Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry, 13th - 16th May 2008, Siena, Italy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14678-7_91
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