This PhD Project addresses systematic research in two key sectors as seen in economic structure of any pre-industrial society. Textile materials, in its most diverse typology (wool, silk, linen, cotton), and leather, constituted the essential components for manufacturing a wide variety of clothes and other necessities, as used in Ancient Regime daily life. In this sense, urban economies performed an outstanding role in raw materials transformation into manufactures, accomplished in labour places, inserted in a craft work dynamic developed in shops, workshops and other infrastructure for the finalisation of production.

As a paradigmatic case, first half 16th century Seville presents itself as the ideal location for the explanation of this phenomenon. Its incorporation as a strategic settlement in Atlantic trade routes, specially towards the American market, implied an enormous incentive for local productive network development, with repercussions in regional and international scales. Despite this scenario, historiography has been unable to reveal its importance, even if demographic data show a relevant amount of population occupied in productive activities in Sevillian society of its time.

Research in primary sources, preserved in archives, is basic to achieve a reliable approach of these craft groups state. Notarial papers, kept in the Archivo Histórico Provincial de Sevilla, are of special relevance for this dissertation, since they enable to build some knowledge about guilds social reality, in its widest sense. Other document collections are complementary to the aforementioned, which are spread and can be found in several archives (Archivo General de Simancas, Archivo Municipal de Sevilla, Biblioteca Nacional, among other). Moreover, the interpretation, on the one hand, of local guild ordinances as regulation of their activities, in addition to the available bibliography on the matter, complete this study.

This entire document corpus helps to outline and reconstruct the significance of these two sectors -the textile and leather- in a time which holds from the Catholic Monarchs reforms programme until the beginning of Philip the Second of Spain, focusing on aspects such as guilds social composition, its labour organization, internal relationships among members (solidarity, divisiveness), or mentalities sphere (religiousness).