Lorena Rodriguez

Preliminary abstract: The MHLM in its 13th edition is going to be held for the first time in an Anthropological institution from Argentina (Institute of Anthropology, University of Buenos Aires -UBA). Although the majority of participants in the first editions of these meetings were historians, the MHLM has also gathered researchers from other disciplines working on topics related to Latin American mining activities, such as social anthropologists and archaeologists. In this 13th edition, our aim as organisers is to strongly incorporate the anthropological dimension on the analysis of past and present mining. The extraction, processing and use of minerals have been very important in the history of mankind. Raw materials for the manufacturing of pottery, architecture, stone instruments, pigments and metal objects, among others, required the procurement of minerals and also complex logistics for its extraction and later transport and processing.These activities generated impacts on the places inhabited by the workers, building a mining landscape in which evidences of extraction, mineral processing, movement of people, knowledge and products, re-organization of working places and sacredness of mountains and mines were all combined and entangled. Although historians have traditionally focused on the study of the development of all these activities over time, anthropology in its different subdisciplines (social anthropology and archaeology) has made (and will continue to make) important contributions to the investigation of these topics. That is the reason why the 13th edition of MHLM is guided by the motto ‘Interdisciplinary dialogues and challenges’, seeking to have a wider approach to past and present mining in Latin America.