Language as Archive and Method: A View from Latin America, 1492–1701

Historians and historians of science have long grappled with a methodological challenge in the study of mining and metallurgy in colonial Latin America. On the one hand, documentary records testify to the profound demographic presence of Indigenous miners and refiners. We know that ideas and insights go hand-in-hand with artisan labor, but without texts written in languages like Nahuatl and Quechua, we have not been able to document their contributions to important mining practices and technologies. This talk presents case studies from my book (Mining Language, 2020) to show how a new approach to colonial scientific communication can shed light on the Indigenous epistemologies, worldviews, and philosophies that shaped the Spanish empire’s most lucrative industry. Using language as an archive and method is not just about telling more complete stories about the past, though. It also enables scholars to serve communities from whom knowledge was extracted in the pursuit of colonial wealth. The talk concludes with an example of a community-driven project to use archival materials like the 1701 manuscript copy of the Popol Wuj (Ayer MS 15, Newberry Library) to support contemporary language preservation efforts among speakers of Mayan languages in Yucatán, México and Antigua, Guatemala. This is a concrete way in which historians can answer the urgent ethical call to use our power, resources, and interdisciplinary training to return knowledge to communities for whom the colonial period remains ongoing.