Metallurgy in the Americas – Part IX

Continued from the previous post regarding the presence of metallurgy in South America, where archaeologists claim metallurgy began, and from there traveled northward into Central, Meso-, and North America, and how metallurgy began in South America and traveled northward Central America, then Mesoamerica, then North America.
    Since artifacts and evidence found shows that ancient North Americans did not alloy any metals and their ore was native copper, with only hammering and shaping being used, many theorists have believed that such shaping and making of copper artifacts satisfied the metallurgy of the scriptural record. Yet, the opposite is the case, for as Nephi stated around 570 BC, “And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance (2 Nephi 5:15, emphasis added). 
    His great nephew, stated two generations later, “And we multiplied exceedingly, and spread upon the face of the land, and became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine workmanship of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools of every kind to till the ground, and weapons of war” (Jarom: 1:8).

A large sample of native arsenic with quartz and calcite

As has been shown, brass and steel are alloyed metals, as well as tools of every kind and weapons, which all need a different knowledge and working of metal ores than working with native copper which simply requires heating, shaping and hammering. The problem is further compounded by the fact that to alloy the copper from vast Great Lakes area deposits, one of two metals would be required: 1) mix copper with tin, or 2) mix copper with arsenic, neither of these other metals were available to the early inhabitants of North America.
    First of all, as has already been mentioned, since there was no tin in North America, other than in Zacatecas in north central Mexico, alloying tin with copper was unavailable. Thus, that method of making bronze was not possible to the Great Lakes or Heartland model people anciently. In addition, since arsenic ore was rare and, of course, unknown, the chances any metal work involving either tin or arsenic, i.e., the manufacturing of bronze, would have been both unknown and unknowable in North America anciently.
    The reason for the problem with arsenic is that it is very rarely found as a pure element in nature, more often as a compound. Even so, in the Earth’s crust it is relatively rare, at 5 parts per million, placing it in the bottom third of all elements, and considered a rare Earth metal. It is usually obtained as a by-product of the mining and purification of silver metal. Today the United States does not produce any arsenic, with the world’s largest producers China and Chile, along with Belgium Nambia, the Philippines and Mexico.

In order to obtain or recover arsenic, the ore in which it is found first had to be (heating in the air), in order to chemically convert arsenic sulfide to arsenic oxide. The arsenic oxide was then heated with charcoal, in which it reacted with carbon and the oxygen in arsenic oxide, leaving behind pure arsenic. However, it is easy to be misled by this since arsenic is present in very small amounts in a number of copper-containing ores (arsenopyrite, enargite, olivenite, tennantite, malachite, azurite), and therefore is present (contaminates) most copper found. Thus, whatever ore was involved that contained copper, the surface minerals would contain some native copper and oxidized minerals, but much of the copper and other minerals would have been washed further into the ore body, forming a secondary enrichment zone.
    This includes many minerals such as tennantite, with their arsenic, copper and iron. Thus, the surface deposits would have been used first; with some work, deeper sulphidic ores would have been uncovered and worked, and it would have been discovered that the material from this level had better properties. However, to do this the art of smelting and alloying would be required, a technique unknown or at least unused in North America anciently.
    In addition, just extraction of copper from ore, rather than finding it in its pure form, would have been extremely difficult in North America anciently. The labor-intensive use of hammerstones (a hard cobble used to strike off lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone) may have been used to break off pieces small enough to be worked, by building a fire on top of the deposit, then quickly dousing the hot rock with water, creating small cracks. This process could be repeated to create more small cracks, which could then be hammered.
    The copper could then be cold-hammered into shape, which would make it brittle, or more likely hammered and heated in an annealing, or slow cooling process, which I a heat treatment that alters the physical and sometimes chemical properties to increase its ductility and reduce its hardness, making it more workable. The final object would then have to be ground and sharpened using local sandstone.
    Great Lake artifacts found in the Eastern Woodlands of North America seem to indicate there were widespread trading networks in the last century BC. As a result, with this progressively introduction of ornamentation in trade, the belief that copper was used for tools decreases exponentially with more and more jewelry and adornments being found in the ground, and less and less weapons.
    However, in history this Great Lake model as a unique source of copper and of copper technologies, seems to have remained somewhat static for over 6,000 years, though there is some question about that, as other deposits seem to have been available to ancient North Americans, even if a lot smaller (Mary Ann Levine, "Overcoming Disciplinary Solitude: The Archaeology and Geology of Native Copper in Eastern North America," Geoarchaeology, vol.22, 2007, pp49-66; and Levine, "Determining the Provenance of native copper artifacts from Northeastern North America; Evidence from instrumental neutron activation analysis," Journal of Archaeological Science, vol.34, iss.4, 2007, pp572-587).

Bronze socketed axe blades

As early stated, the North American peoples were capable of metal craft, the art of executing artistic designs in metal, as in repoussé work, chasing, and inlaying, but did no smelting, melting metal into liquid and alloying various metals. As D.T. Easby, secretary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, well points out, there was metal craft practiced along the shores of Lake Superior, which introduced the earliest known metal working tradition in North America. This tradition was the basis for later developments in the use of copper and related metals by Hopewellian and Mississippian peoples of the first millennium AD. 
    Old Copper culture sites have produced evidence of significant early techniques of metal craft including cold hammering,hammer welding, annealing, and the production of socketed metal tools, conical points, knives and axes, chisels, awls, harpoon heads, and projectile points derived fro prototypes of stone, horn, shell, and bone (Dudley T. Easby, Jr., "Pre-Hispanic Metallurgy and Metalworking in the New World, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, vol.109, no.2, 1965, pp89-98). 
    Consequently, it cannot be said that any location in North America, was capable of such metallurgy and all the evidence to-date shows they did not have metallurgy. This is shown by recently discovered and authenticated artifacts from 200 BC to 400 AD, as well as thousands of artifacts from before 2000 BC to 1450 Ad, have been uncovered in what is called the “Cerberus Collection” from the four corners area. All these artifacts were made wood, hide and fiber, including human effigies made of corn stalk, yucca cordage and wood as well as 2,000 Anasazi, Mogollon and Hohokam pottery and ceramic bowls, along with numerous shell ornaments. There were also projectile points and metates or grinding stones that date to several thousand years ago. 
    The interesting point is that in over 40,000 well-preserved artifacts (that now fill a 2,300 square-foot warehouse) recently recovered in this area dating beyond 2,000 BC to 1450 AD, not a single metal object was included—no copper, gold or silver; no lead, iron or steel; no bronze or brass—just stone, wood, hide and fiber.
    North American theorists, specifically of the Heartland and Great Lakes models, can talk all they want about their locations matching the Book of Mormon descriptions of the Land of Promise inhabited by Lehi and covered in the scriptural record, in one of the most important descriptive areas of the Jaredite and Nephite histories, which includes the metals and alloys mentioned above, not a single sample of such metals other than native copper, have ever been found dating anywhere near the time frame involved.
    In other words, talk, belief, and opinions are one thing; facts are quite the opposite.