^Lot 76 Small Spanish colonial silver "plata corriente" cut piece with partial tax stamp (early to mid-1500s

Small Spanish colonial silver "plata corriente" cut piece with partial tax stamp (early to mid-1500s), 1.46 oz troy (45.30 grams), found in New Mexico ca. 1985. Roughly 1¼" x 7/8" x ½". A thick rectangular chunk, broken on four sides from a large "splash" ingot made of 86% silver with as much as 4.5% lead, 7% iridium, and 2% copper (according to XRF testing), a typical "plata corriente" piece (used for money before coins were available in quantity in the colonies) more or less equivalent to one and two-thirds of an 8 reales in its time. According to the accompanying letter, this piece was among several found at the site of the Santiago Pueblo in the Rio Grande River valley near Bernalillo, New Mexico, by amateur archeologist Dee D. Brecheisen in the mid-1980s. Santiago Pueblo was an indigenous community visited by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1541, destroyed in the process but resettled later that century. Coronado was searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, but instead encountered a dozen villages, or pueblos, like this one, peopled by Tiwa-speaking natives, which became known generally as Pueblo Indians. With letter and provenance statement from the finder's son.