My main interest in all this is to investigate Native American history.
There are apparently hundreds if not thousands of pre-historic metal furnaces that have been described all over northern US. So it sure looks like the Native Americans must have been smelting or melting something. Probably copper, iron, maybe bronze.
Some non-professional archaeologists have investigated these things, and published their findings.
I find these things quite fascinating. And yet professional American archaeologists don't seem to show any interest at all. They insist on looking the other way. Why do you think this is so?
Regards,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=-
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Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away -=O=- Philip K. Dick
I agree that is most likely to have been the procedure. On the other hand what we don't really know is if the porosity was a problem for them.
I suspect you are using modern ideas as a guide, knowing of other techniques etc. Back then in learning about melting copper, they must observe it melt. Learning annealing they again need to observe the effects, thereby also learning to heat to just below melting point and lend itself to the "hammer welding" you refer to below.
....and it would also eliminate porosity, would it not? So the small bit could well be melted and cast into a small ingot - to later "hammer weld" the porosity out of it.
I'm aware of the difficulty - as well as the evidence it provides of casting. As such evidence does exist, even if not widely, it indicates the ability to melt copper.
Try the old 3 cent piece - it was silver + copper alloy. Nor does it need to be "fit for casting" in the modern sense, as all I see it used for is to generate a larger lump of material to work with as a smith would.
A copper alloy is in general called "bronze" irrespective of the mix (eg arsenic + copper) except when it is called "brass" (nickle + copper?).
No, it has been done a lot of the time. In Sweden (damn I lost the info tag..) they have something they call "malm" (ore) that is a bronze, but a far redder colour than normal bronze. I can't tell you the mix of it as I lost the info. However there is a lot of arsenic + copper bronze around in Asia Minor. It was mined in the Ural mountains as a ready mixed ore.
It does if you heat it to the melting point of copper.
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Tin is indeed the most common, but not the sole mix.
It is still called "bronze" as the "bronze age" term itself says.
Ahhh.... but irrespective of the fact that artisans may get their nose out of joint, melting/smelting metals IS called a "technology". So having that technology under ones belt in addition to the smithing, is indeed one up on the smithing alone :-)
Not suggesting modern people do cast copper - I am saying ancient people did.
While there is/was almost pure copper available at the time, much of it had impurities embedded within it. Large hunks of pure copper were relatively rare. The vast amounts that are indicated to have been mined must include copper with much impurities or copper embedded in other material. This had to be refined somehow, melting is the simplest way of refining it - unless you know of another technique available to the ancients.
Nobody is suggesting that smithing isn't an extremely skilled occupation..... but then so is flint knapping in my view. The casting was not used to manufacture anything much apparently. I see it as a refining process to later be hammered at near melting temperatures, thereby producing fine artefacts.
As I said mastering one technology, is less than mastering TWO technologies.... if you want to call smithing a "technology" in favour of Art :-)
I don't know what if any testing of composition of artefacts has been done. Some bronzes only contain 3 -> 5% tin elsewhere. If none are done then a claim that bronze doesn't exist can't be made. Testing the metals would also finger print them for origin, which hasn't been done either to my knowledge.
copper yes, bronze yes, silver yes(to pour in forms) but not iron. That they didn't do until they began trading silver, furs and eagles with the Norse according to the oral tradition I have had from respected Indians I spoken to.
build one hot fire - continue burning and increase coal / charcoal contents.
add copper or ore - perhaps using glass technology of the time - pit glass ? more melted stone that is glassy and use this slab as a cookie sheet . :-)
cover the top with more fuel and then cap it off - perhaps air vent on the side of the wind...
A reduction fire - and when cooled off it might have metal in the sheet...
With respect, that is nonsense. Casting is a technique which is used to make shapes and structures which cannot be easily made any other way.
You do them a disservice to describe them as "low skilled". The work is difficult and dnagerous, and it took centuries to develop the techniques.
Which is why the people who know how to melt and cast copper use that technique rather than straight smith-work.
I think you are missing the point, and so too may be the art historian. There seems to be evidence that some copper items were cast. From what I have read, the cast products would not generally qualify as 'art' and for that reason have understandably been ignored by art historians.
This from the guy who has just written that the task can be undertaken by low-skilled workers?
Neither. The claim merely is that some copper items have been cast.
Eric, In the case of the copper artifacts in the upper Great Lakes area, all of the shapes and structures have been shown to have been made via cold and hot-working techniques. (Note that I am not saying that all the copper artifacts were so made; only that casting was not necessary.) As for whether certain types of tools and ornaments might be more easily made by casting, this is only true if the technology for casting has been developed. That is what is at issue.
Yes, especially wrt copper (see Gary's discussion of copper casting problems below). So far as I can see at this point, there isn't good evidence for such a period of development in the archaeological record.
OTOH, at least for the Old Copper and Red Ochre complexes in the Upper Great Lakes region, there don't seem to be many well-documented sites from that period (ca. 3000-1000 BC); and stratified sites are even more rare. Most of the copper artifacts were surface finds, and many came from collectors whose documentation of their finds generally ranged from fair to non-existent.
Again, I don't know that that is true wrt copper, given the difficulty the technique appears to have in creating strong, high-quality results. OTOH, cold and hot working were known by the Native peoples in the Great Lakes ares to produce that very strong, high-quality result.
Eric, I read that to mean that casting, in general (as with iron, silver, bronze, gold, etc.) can be done by folks with fewer skills than smiths. However, copper appears to present particular problems with casting that are not so pronounced with other metals, and which require higher skill levels than would be required by those who cast other metals.
This should be taken into consideration along with the fact that Great Lakes copper, and drift copper, don't need to be smelted to use. In other areas, where smelting ore _is_ required, the technology for melting metal is a given; here, it isn't.
Eric, Yuri was making the claim that to say Indians of the Great Lakes area didn't cast copper was to express bigotry towards the First Nations of the area. Gary's argument flows from Yuri's standard 'mainstreamers are racists' rap, with its particular application in the cast vs. worked copper issue.
I'm still agnostic, and am reading up on the archaeological references I can find. If you, or other folks, have suggestions for reading, I'm all eyes.
BTW, I've just gotten Mallery's book (the 1979 version, revised and extended by Mary Roberts Harrison). I've only skimmed a bit of it, so I don't have an informed opinion on it yet. Will advise.
This is not my understanding. Metallurgical examination has shown that some of the artifacts have been cast.
That seems to be a different topic. Are you saying that even if they were found to be cast, it wasn't necessary for them to be cast?
I think you and I are approaching the question from opposite ends. You seem to be saying that no artifacts can have been cast, in the absence of direct evidence for casting techniques. I am saying that cast artifacts are evidence for the existence of casting techniques, even if direct evidence for such techniques is not known.
I don't read 'low skilled' as meaning 'lower skilled'.
There is a difference between 'smelted' as in refinining and 'melted' as for casting. I am not aware of evidence for the for the former in NA but there may be evidence for the latter in the form of cast artifacts.
My point here is that at least two researchers have done experiments using only cold and hot working, without casting, making all of the major types of artifacts found in the Great Lakes area. This is not to say that some might not have been cast. That's the issue. Contrary to what you write above, I have not yet completed my own look into whether some might have been cast. I'm not willing to take at face value reports of research the originals of which I haven't yet found.
It's the same topic. I was trying to avoid just this confusion by stating frankly that the research I mentioned does not rule out casting. And to your question, yes. I'm saying that it seems to me at this point that both casting and smithing could have produced the tools we find. The issue is whether both techniques were used, and if so over what time period and what places within the region.
You mistake my meaning. I am saying that casting and smithing both could have been used. If there are artifacts that were cast, then that fact should inform future archaeological work.
I'm not sure that you know this, but the main copper-using cultures of the upper Great Lakes areas are very poorly represented by habitation sites. In Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan, there are only a few such sites that have been found and studied from this period (Late Archaic to the transition to Early Woodland--ca. 3-4000 to ca. 100 BC).
There are a great many sites with copper artifacts, but they are mostly either surface finds, or are in mortuary contexts; not where the ancient smiths/foundryfolk might have been expected to ply their trades
I am less sanguine than you that old reports for which we have only second-hand sources, and for which we don't know the caveats and limitations of the researchers, can be accepted uncritically in the face of nearly unanimous statement from those who have studied the copper artifacts intensively that they haven't found convincing evidence of casting. However, I take offense at the suggestion that I've ruled out casting when I am actually looking into the issue with an open mind.
Read it again. No mention of 'low skilled'. Merely that a smith needs 'higher level of skill' than a foundryman. A neurosurgeon may need a 'higher level of skill' than a dermatologist. Does this make the dermatologist 'low skilled'?q
Of course smelting ore and melting for casting are different. However, if one needs and has the technology for smelting, melting for casting is not a technological leap. If one does not need to smelt ore, then melting it for casting requires that technological leap. The issue is whether that leap was made in this case. If cast artifacts are found, then looking for evidence of the development of that technology would be a higher archaeological priority than it is now.
I'm not familiar with that. Will you explain for me?
Fair enough. You may remember that some years ago I reported that I had tried to track down Mallery's papers (left to the Smithsonian on his death) to obtain copies of the originals upon which he relied, but all the papers seem to have vanished into a black hole. It might be worth another try.
Only if your assessment is based on simplistic visual examination. Appropriate metallurgical tests are unambiguous.
I didn't say, or even imply, that you have unconditionally ruled out the possibility of cast artifacts.
Gary Coffman originally wrote of casting "It allows relatively low skilled workers to produce ... " and it was to this which I originally repsonded. My point was that casting is not a low skilled technique.
But is the fundamental proposition correct, that a dermatologist is necessarily of lower skill than a neurosurgeon? My observation is that while the disciplines are different, the skill levels are equally high in each.
The discovery of either smelting or melting would initially be accidental. I could think of circumstances in which melting could still occur when working with pure meteoric copper.
I do not share your certainty. Cast artifacts do seem to have been found. I am not aware that the reports cited by Mallery have been followed up in any way. As far as I can tell, nobody has even followed them up for the purpose of showing that they were wrong or that Mallery has misinterpreted them. The whole subject seems to have been treated as a non-issue.
A 19th century 'Punch' cartoon. The very new curate is having breakfast with his bishop and finds the boiled egg he has been served is rotten. The curate lacks the courage to complain about the bishop's breakfast fodder but the expression on his face alerts the bishop to the fact that all is not well. The bishop then asks ' ... and how is your egg?' The curate still too nervous to say the egg is rotten replies "Parts of it are excellent, my lord". That last is the comment I applied to Mallery's book.
"Eric Stevens" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Eric, I thought I told you last summer that Mallery's paper is found in a Private Museum? Didn't you get any of the files I have from the Keller deposit? I am sure we discussed photos taken of the artifacts.
All that I can find which might possibly relate to that is "Shipley, Marie A. [Brown]. The Norse Colonization in America by the Light of the Vatican Finds. Lucerne: H. Keller's Foreign Printing Office, [1899]."
"Eric Stevens" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
It must either have been eaten of your computer when it was sent to service or been sent via the one of telia's servers which has had problems sending files to Australia and New Zealand.
I do have a lot of info. I am writing on a thriller for the moment, together with an old friend of mine. Thus I can't put it in my computer before midnight Swedish time when I am home after we have gone thru some of the chapters in the book. You will have the first files tomorrow.
No, it couldn't. Porosity isn't just little bubbles in the metal. Those bubbles contain air, and at molten temperatures, the oxygen in that air would oxidize the inside of the bubble. So what you wind up with is a mass of copper with a lot of oxidized holes in it. You can't weld copper that is oxidized. If this happens when a modern TIG welder is welding copper (gas shield failure), the only thing he can do is grind out all the porosity and start over.
No trick to melting copper. Doing something intelligent with the molten metal in an atmospheric environment is a different matter. As I noted previously, casting pure copper is difficult, even today. For a people without inert gas shielded continuous casting furnaces, it would be nothing but frustration.
Exactly, and further, skill alone isn't sufficient to make sound castings of pure copper. The proper equipment is also required. Specifically, an inert atmosphere furnace. That technology didn't exist until the late 19th century.
The evidence brought out in this thread is that *one* copper artifact shows radiographic evidence (characteristic porosity) for part of it being heated above the melting point in atmosphere at some point. That is in no way conclusive evidence of casting technology. The piece may have been an attempt at casting, or it may simply have been overheated while being worked.
Are you referring to the sort of amorphous, three-cornered blob listed in Conner's web site as 'R666', and in the Milwaukee Public Museum (where it's curated) as '55786':
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If so, I have found additional information about that piece.
I corresponded with Dr. Alex Barker of the Milwaukee Public Museum about this artifact, since they are curating it there. His response about the description of the artifact was as follows:
"As to why one might wonder if it had been cast, it's relatively dense for its size, and one surface is fairly smooth and rounded--not like the upper surface of cast metal, however, but one might perhaps imagine it as the bottom of an irregular puddle of metal."
It sounded to me as though he had just looked at it; he was more than generous with me, running around and looking for the artifact and associated documentation for me. Unfortunately, he says he couldn't find a record of any radiograph, but that that didn't mean it wasn't there. They are changing their records over to computer files, and the integration of those files won't start for several months yet. I for one don't doubt the radiographs shown on Connor's web site, though.
The description he gave seems to fit the photo on Connor's site. It doesn't look like any purpose-made artifact; but it does look as one might expect a bit of accidentally melted copper to look, if it just fell into the ashes of the fire and cooled there. To my untutored eye, at least.
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