Construction system of a nineteenth-century copper smelting in Atacama, Chile

Abstract

Mining has occupied an important place in the Chilean economy since the 19th century and up to the present day. However, the oscillating cycles of economic booms and crises in the mining sector have left traces of industrial buildings from mining and copper metallurgy with unique characteristics. The objective of this article is to describe the materiality and origin of the construction system used in the ruins of a former nineteenth-century copper foundry located in the port of Caldera, in northern Chile. The ruins of the buildings show that the foundations and walls built with blocks of copper slag melted and molded in situ, was a construction technique brought by the English builders and metallurgists who arrived in the mining centers of Atacama, replicating the techniques used in English works, an activity that allowed the valorization of metallurgical waste.