Mining and metallurgy in Southwest China, 14th to 19th century: Archaeo-metallurgical investigations and historical geography
Final Report Abstract
The joint projects planned field-based research on pre-industrial technologies of mining and metallurgy in southwest China. Nanny Kim’s German project pursued broader goals of using field findings for spatial analysis for research on local and regional socioeconomic, cultural and environmental transformations, with an additional interest in quantifications in late imperial government records, in their interpretation, the administrative practices that produced them, and in reconstructions of actual conditions. When the pandemic cut off the possibility of carrying out fieldwork in China, the PI turned her attention to Xu Xiake’s diary, a rare specific Ming source, in order to at least realize a contribution to Ming period mining history. She also pursued the side-topic on the late imperial administration and its records by carrying out fundamental research on representations in authoritative written traditions in China. In this context, she developed collaboration for a follow-up project on mining, the state, its records, and actual regional socio-economic structures. She also realized the accessible documentation on the project homepage of 34 sites visited in the current and 58 sites in previous projects. In addition to collected records, field reports, photographs and maps, she added analyses of historic records and field findings. When hopes for further trips faded, she prepared results from ongoing research for publication. The main result is a historico-geographical study on the copper mines of former Lunan department that demonstrates a hitherto unknown history of early large-scale exploitation from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Further results that are still in preparation are a study on iron technologies and on cobalt exploitation. The project could no realize its original goals. Contributions of the project are mainly in the hitherto largely blank slate of regional and local mining histories of the 13th to 17th centuries.
Publications
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Internetseite "Mining and metallurgy in Southwest China, 14th to 19th century: Research in archaeo-metallurgy and historical geography”
Nanny Kim
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"A quantitative analysis of records on silver, copper, iron and lead/zinc mines in the Ming and Qing Veritable Records (Shilu 實錄),” 2020
Nanny Kim; Sun Hui
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Mining off the Map: Fulongchang and Silver Mines in the Qing Empire’s Far Southwest. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 64(3), 251-301.
Kim, Nanny & Yuda, Yang
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Silver ores in Yunnan
Nanny Kim
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Xu Xiake in Yunnan
Nanny Kim
