SITE DIRECTORY

• Main
• Map of Project Area
• History
• Traditional Smelting
• Preliminary Results
• Bibliographies
• Participants
• Archaeomag Report

Click here to see a video of the process.

3. The ore must be prepared before it can be smelted. To do this it is broken into pea-sized pieces with an iron mallet, and the waste material (gangue) is discarded. The ore is then mixed with litharge (lead oxide) that acts as a flux. (The litharge is a byproduct of the cupellation process, which is described below.) This mixture is dampened with urine, and covered with a piece of canvas until it is needed.

• Charcoal making process
  
• Huayrachinas
  
• Preparing Ore
  
• Smelting
  
• Tapping Lead
  
• Remains of Dismantled
  Huayrachina
  
• Cupellation Furnace
  
• Preparing Silver Ore
  
• Preparing Cupellation Furnace
  
• Final Product.

Funding for this project provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Curtiss T. Brennan and Mary G. Brennan Foundation, and Colorado State University.

Questions about this webpage or the contents herein should be directed to: Andrew.Mueller@lamar.colostate.edu