Amalgamation and small-scale gold mining in the ancient Andes
Open Access
- 1 August 2011
- journal article
- Published by OpenEdition in Bulletin de l’Institut français d’études andines
- No. 40 (2),p. 333-347
- https://doi.org/10.4000/bifea.1471
Abstract
In 1532, the volume of gold provided by Atahualpa, the Inka king, as ransom for his release from the Spanish was hard evidence for the efficient small-scale gold mining that took place before European contact and the number of gold occurrences in the Andes. At Huancavelica, Perú, mercury occurs as a native metal and as cinnabar [HgS], which was used for pigments, funeral preparations, and retorted to obtain mercury.Keywords
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