Smelting Furnaces between XVI and XVIII century in New Spain

Abstract

The Sixteenth century brought new techniques of mining extraction and transformation that substitute the ancient form of mining, handle by prehispanic cultures -like surface mining and small blast furnaces- to the New World. Although in all cases they were replaced, the old methods served to face the new conditions resulting in new extractive and transformation metallurgist constructions and new methods for drifting mining on barely develop mineral deposits in Nueva España. The study of the particularities and typology in the new constructions, allow us to know the ability to change, and the operations of this constructions in the mines that still survive.