ABSTRACT
In early modern Europe and the Americas, representations of the extraction of natural resources and metalwork proliferated with the expansion of printed books and increased speculation and investment in land. Treatises, drawings, and land surveys inventoried the qualities and characteristics of a territory as well as the labor used to extract, refine, and commodify natural resources. This paper evaluates the way in which the repetition of motifs, instructions, and imagery related to metalwork validated and standardized the mining and refining processes. By evaluating texts and imagery related to Habsburg mining enterprises, I explore how images served not only to explicate technique but also to document landholdings and sovereignty in territories that spanned the Atlantic Ocean.
