money and coinage: introduction velopment of extensive mineral mining to the north, in the cultural area of the Chalchihuites in modern Zacatecas and Durango Red hematite and cinnabar and blue turquoise were mined in the north and traded south across Mesoamerica To reach the deposits of conglomerate rock containing these precious materials, Chalchihuites miners sunk shallow open pits and deep shafts into hills and gouged horizontal excavations along hillsides and canyon walls Both horizontal and vertical shafts were dug, splitting off into multiple branches connected by tunnels and running up to 3,000 feet underground Pillars of rock left untouched by the quarrying held up the roofs of these galleries, which were reinforced as well by wooden cribbing, and blocks of stone not useful for mineral extraction were used to reinforce the walls of the tunnels The spoils were piled up around the mine entrances, creating mounds as high as 40 feet Like the Michigan miners thousands of miles to the north, the Mesoamerican miners employed simple stone tools—heavy stone hammers to break the surface and excavate the shafts, small hammers to extract minerals from the surrounding rock The dry conditions of northern Mexico preserved many wooden artifacts left by the miners, including torches, the handles attached to some of the stone hammers, and buckets to carry water and rock fragments The bulk of this mining took place between 400 and 600 c.e., the time of Teotihuacán’s fall from political power Andean cultures created gold jewelry and other objects from the second millennium b.c.e onward Gold mining must have been quite extensive, but few traces of it survive in the archaeological record, since the Spanish conquistadors set to work immediately exploiting the same gold deposits and destroying evidence of earlier efforts What have survived are the remains of some copper mines that were used to extract metal for casting objects and for alloying with tin to create bronze At Atacama in northern Chile copper salts preserved not only the tools used by miners 1,500 years ago but also the body of one of the miners, killed in a cave-in The tools found near his naturally mummified remains indicate that the ancient Andean miners, like those elsewhere in the Americas, used large stone hammers as their primary tools, along with baskets to transport the quarried materials See also adornment; architecture; art; building techniques and materials; death and burial practices; food and diet; health and disease; household goods; illumination; inventions; metallurgy; roads and bridges; sacred sites; seafaring and navigation; settlement patterns; ships and shipbuilding; slaves and slavery; storage and preservation; trade and exchange; weaponry and armor FURTHER READING T K Derry and T I Williams, A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to a.d 1900, rpt ed (New York: Dover, 1993) 751 J C Fant, ed., Roman Marble Quarrying and Trade (Oxford, U.K.: British Archaeological Reports, 1988) Robert James Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, Vol 7, Ancient Geology; Ancient Mining and Quarrying; Ancient Mining Techniques (Leiden, The Netherlands: E J Brill, 1997) J F Healy, Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978) J W Humphrey, J P Oleson, and A N Sherwood, Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) M Korres, The Stones of the Parthenon (Los Angeles: J Paul Getty Museum, 2000) Alfred Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, rev ed (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1999) Susan R Martin, Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1999) James Muhly, “Metallurgy.” In Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed Kathryn A Bard (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) William H Peck, “Quarrying.” In Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed Kathryn A Bard (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) Ian Shaw, “Minerals.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ed Donald Redford (Cairo: American University Press, 2001) Ian Shaw, “Quarries and Mines.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ed Donald Redford (Cairo: American University Press, 2001) R Shepherd, Ancient Mining (London: Chapman and Hall, 1993) R F H Summers, Ancient Mining in Rhodesia and Adjacent Areas (Salisbury, Rhodesia: Trustees for the National Museums of Rhodesia, 1969) Robert K G Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986) Dick Teresi, Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002) Amelia M Trevelyan, Miskwabik, Metal of Ritual: Metallurgy in Precontact Eastern North America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004) R E Wycherly, The Stones of Athens (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978) ▶ money and coinage introduction The concept that forms the basis of money is that there is something of value that can be used to measure how much goods are worth In many cultures of the ancient world, at first cattle were used to measure what goods were worth A house, a farm, a cart, or some other good could be measured in how many cattle it would take to purchase it This did not mean that cattle were always exchanged whenever someone bought something, though cattle often were exchanged for a purchase A bushel of wheat might be worth one half a head of cattle, but a horse might be worth four head of cattle If a person wanted to purchase a horse with wheat, for example, he would have to pay eight bushels