Metal Working in Ancient America – Part I – Did the Jaredites and Nephites work metals?

In speaking of the Jaredites, sometime after 2000 B.C., in their new promised land home, we find that king Riplakish, who heavily taxed his people and built many prisons to incarcerate those who did not pay their taxes and forced them to labor continually for their support: “did obtain all his fine work, yea, even his fine gold he did cause to be refined in prison, and all manner of fine workmanship he did cause to be wrought in prison (Ether 10:4-7, emphasis added).

An ancient pit furnace for casting metal and for heating the moulds

Also later among the Nephites we find: “there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it“ (Helaman 6:11, emphasis added).
    Now the word “refine” means to “remove impurities or unwanted elements from a substance, such as ore. In Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the word “refine” means “to separate from all extraneous matter, to separate the metallic substance from all other matter.” In fact, we can go back to the prophet Zechariah in 520 B.C. who stated the Lord’s promise to Israel: “I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined“ (Zechariah 13:9, emphasis added), showing that the refining of ore was well known in Israel around the time of Lehi and before, since Israel had ironworkers making iron tools during Hezekiah’s reign (727-698 B.C.) and Isaiah mentions the ironsmith (Isaiah 41:7; 44;12), and carbonized iron, forging and making wrought iron objects in his “smith that blows the coals of the fire” and produces weapons (Isaiah 54:16).
    The ability to forge iron and to make tools and weapons was a sign of technical development in ancient societies. According to chemist Dr. Susan V. Meschel, of the Illinois Institute of Technology in “The Use of the Metal Lead in the Bible, “The books of the Bible are a good source for examining the level of technical knowledge in ancient Jewish society” (Academic Journal article, Jewish Bible Quarterly, Vol.44 No.1, January-March 2016). In fact, according to Dr. Meschel, who has developed a course on the “Application of physics and chemistry to archaeology,” claims that metalworking in the earlier books of the Bible deals with manufacturing objects from silver, gold, and copper, which have relatively low melting points and are therefore much simpler to fashion than iron artifacts.
    In addition, metal lead is relatively easy to extract from its ores, and signs of its mining have been found dating as far back as 6400 B.C. in Anatolia (Asia Minor, modern Turkey). Since lead is usually found in ores together with zinc, silver, and copper, the lead was produced by heat treating the ore in furnaces during the Bronze Age (3000-2000 B.C.). The production of iron implements was possible only with the development of carburized iron (0.8% carbon) and the progress in quenching and tempering technology (J. R. Partington, Origins and Development of Applied Chemistry, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1935, pp486-493; James D. Muhly, "How Iron Technology Changed the Ancient World and Gave the Philistines a Military Edge," Biblical Archaeology Review, November-December 1982, pp230-242).

The ancients were well aware that carbon was realized when heating iron over 727º C. Higher austenitization temperature can produce a higher carbon content

To show the use of carbonization in iron, the blacksmith during Old Testament times was called “nappah,” meaning a “user of bellows,” which was required to obtain the heat necessary to smelt iron; and also “pehami,” which meant “user of charcoal,” again, to blow air to increase the temperature of their smelting ovens. In fact, the dish bellows were known and used as far back as 3500 B.C. in the Sumerian city of Girsu (modern Tell Telloh) in Mesopotamia where the smith was known as the nappâhu in Hebrew literature (Robert James Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, E.J. Brill, Netherlands, 1966, p87).
    Despite all of this, the science of Anthropology has long held the belief that the native Americans of antiquity were incapable of working sophisticated metal techniques, and Archaeology claims that no such advanced metalwork such as cold-hammered native gold was conducted in the Americas during antiquity, according to mainstream scientists.
    In fact, according to anthropologist Leslie Alvin White, who created the Department of Anthropology at the university of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and former President of the American Anthropological Association, “gold artifacts have often been discovered in copious quantities at the archaeological sites of cultures characterized by the presence of hereditary elites and complex economies with extensive trade networks.” In these societies, he claims, gold was generally used to signal high status and was frequently incorporated into the dress and costumes of elite individuals.
    Based on this association, the tradition of gold working has often been associated in the sciences being exclusively with a high degree of social and political complexity, wherein elites supported craft specialists and provided them with access to necessary raw materials (L.A. White, The Evolution of Culture, McGraw Hill, New York, 1959, pp 333–338). Thus, mainstream science in this area has long precluded the existence and use of advanced metallurgy in less advanced groups of society. This is especially true among the hunter and gatherer cultures of antiquity.
    This view was also held by Vere Gordon Childe, an Australian archaeologist and philologist of the University of Edinburgh, London, who assumed that since gold metalworking can be technically complex and demanding, such traditions were feasible only when sufficient wealth, often in the form of agricultural surpluses, had been accumulated by these elites such that it could be used in the production of luxury objects (V.G. Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient Near East, Praeger, New York, 1953, pp 123–147).

A carefully worked gold necklace found in a Peruvian burial site near Lake Titicaca dating to between 2155-1936 B.C., making it the earliest known gold artifacts in the America

However, the discovery of a gold necklace associated with a burial at Jiskairumoko (Jisk’a Iru Muqu, “a small hill of herbs”), a small site occupied by a hunting and gathering people in the Lake Titicaca basin of southeastern Peru, calls these elitist assumptions into question and suggests that status displays using gold artifacts in this region began long before the appearance of more complex societies capable of generating surpluses. In fact, what makes this discovery really unique, is that it was found in a site occupied by a population dedicated to hunting and gathering food.
    Artifacts of cold-hammered native gold have been discovered in a secure and undisturbed Terminal Archaic burial context at Jiskairumoko, a multicomponent Late Archaic–Early Formative period site in the southwestern Lake Titicaca basin, Peru. The burial dates to 3776 to 3690 carbon-14 years before the present (2155 to 1936 calendar years B.C.), making this the earliest worked gold recovered to date not only from the Andes, but from the Americas as well. This discovery lends support to the hypothesis that the earliest metalworking in the Andes was experimentation with native gold. The presence of gold in a society of low-level food producers undergoing social and economic transformations coincident with the onset of sedentary life is an indicator of possible early social inequality and aggrandizing behavior and further shows that hereditary elites and a societal capacity to create significant agricultural surpluses are not requisite for the emergence of metalworking traditions.
    The artifacts of cold-hammered native gold also supports the hypothesis of an early  advent of gold working in relatively simple societies, and was found in a secure and undisturbed Terminal Archaic burial context. Charcoal recovered from the burial dates the gold beads to 3776 to 3690 carbon-14 years before the present, or 2155 to 1936 calendar years B.C.), making this the earliest worked gold recovered to date not only from the Andes, but from the Americas as well—and contemporary with the Jaredite Kingdom.
    According to researchers Mark Aldenderfer, Nathan M. Craig, Robert J. Speakman and Rachel Popelka-Filcoff, this discovery lends support to the hypothesis that the earliest metalworking in the Andes was experimentation with native gold. The presence of gold in a society of low-level food producers undergoing social and economic transformations coincident with the onset of sedentary life is an indicator of possible early social inequality and aggrandizing behavior and further shows that hereditary elites and a societal capacity to create significant agricultural surpluses are not requisite for the emergence of metalworking traditions (M. Aldenderfer et.al., edited by Joyce Marcus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and approved February 11, 2008 (received for review November 19, 2007), “Four-thousand-year-old gold artifacts from the Lake Titicaca basin, southern Peru,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), Vol.105 (13) 2008, pp5002-5005).
(See the next post, “Metal Working in Ancient America – Part II,” regarding the development and possession of metallurgy in early cultures, including the Jaredites and Nephites)