Between Potosí and Nuevo Potosí

Abstract

This chapter examines the ways in which knowledge of nature below ground was shaped and deployed in the everyday pursuit of mining in the Andes under colonial rule. The silver mines of Potosí were a fundamental reference point as well as a center of diffusion for understandings of subterranean nature. Nevertheless, geological knowledge also took shape at other sites. The central focus of this piece is a petition to Philip II of Spain made in 1596 by a miner who sought privileges for a newly established silver mining community in the central Andes. In examining this petition, the chapter proposes that the production of geological knowledge was localized and highly relational, shaped by the particularities of place and by competition between different mining sites. Further, the chapter demonstrates that manuscript sources, although little-studied in this context, can yield rich insights into early modern geological theories in colonial Peru.