Treasure Excavations in the Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic World

This project explores the history of licensed and illicit treasure-hunting and grave-robbing in Iberia and colonial Latin America. Emerging from Fatimid and Abbasid Egypt, this practice became a bureaucratic system in medieval Iberia and later expanded to the Americas, where Spanish law sanctioned excavations of indigenous tombs. The website offers a database and interactive map documenting these incursions into the archaeological record. Supported by the Mellon-Meliora Digital Fellowship at the University of Rochester, this research sheds light on the premodern roots of scientific archaeology and the exploitation of material heritage.

Project Website: https://baron.digitalscholar.rochester.edu/

Collaborators: Jeffrey W. Baron, PhD Candidate (History), University of Rochester