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This paper results from two seasons of field research and registration historical archaeological sites of El Salvador, which had as one of its objectives, the document through archeology and from historical sources, the remains of the old hydraulic devices used in the production of iron of the old kingdom of Goathemala, in the present territory of El Salvador. The research consisted of a study of exploratory and descriptive, through field visits, surface collection of cultural materials and analysis of documentary sources. A total of nine sites were documented historical containing the remains of ancient hydraulic devices that were used to produce iron during the colonial period. Iron production, played a key role in the social, economic, political and ethnic provincial societies of the Kingdom of Guatemala. The region that once it became known as the Iron Metapán, played a major role, along with the towns of San Salvador, Leon and Granada, in the early emancipation movements of colonial Central America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life of the provinces of San Salvador and Sonsonate, which formed the actual El Salvador in Central America, was characterized by their dependency of Guatemalan city and their monoculture. For the second half of the eighteenth century (replacing Sonsonate's cacao after its decline) the añil ink became the most important product for the economy of the kingdom, pushing the development of other products. The most prominent of these was the sugarcane, with such a large production that it came to be an important part of the Guatemalan capital market. This paper argues that this was only possible by the use of an irrigation system of «apante», which was already present in the limited technological and commercial spaces in the rural society. Breaking paradigms of the sugarcane production system, the high productive potential of apante and its background in añil production system, ensured the success of the task, in a little-known example of the contribution of local technology in societies and economies of the colonial hinterland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]