Copper Casting In America (Trevelyan)
Greetings, all,
Here's a brief review of a new volume about Native American copper.
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_Miskwabik, metal of ritual: metallurgy in precontact Eastern North America_, Amelia M. Trevelyan. Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, c2004.
("Miskwabik" is an Ojibwa word for "copper".)
Description: Miskwabik, Metal of Ritual examines the thousands of beautiful and intricate ritual works of art?from ceremonial weaponry to delicate copper pendants and ear ornaments?created in eastern North America before the arrival of Europeans. The first comprehensive examination of this 3,000-year-old metallurgical tradition, the book provides unique insight into the motivation of the artisans and the significance of these objects, and highlights the brilliance and sophistication of the early civilizations of the Americas. Comparing the ritual architecture and metallurgy of the original Americans with the ethnological record, Amelia M. Trevelyan begins to unravel the mystery of the significance of the objects as well as their special functions within the societies that created them. The book includes dozens of striking color and black and white photographs.
Amelia M. Trevelyan is Professor and Chair of Art History at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois.
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And here's a revealing quote from the above volume, p. 15.
"Metallurgical testing and observation indicate that native copper was primarily cold-worked in precontact times and forged rather than cast. However, because the temperatures necessary for melting as well as smelting copper are comparatively low, the latter was probably a technical possibility."
So here we see the political bias in American archaeology laid out for all the world to see.
- She doesn't even mention any of the available scientific evidence indicating that, in precontact times, much copper was cast rather than cold-worked and forged.
It may simply be plain ignorance on her part, but we shouldn't also discount a possibility that she's deliberately excluding any evidence that is not in accord with her anti-Native political bias.
In any case, the name Mallory (a qualified engineer, and the leading researcher in this area) is not mentioned in her bibliography at all.
- Yet she admits these things "were probably a technical possibility". How generous of her!
So here we see the sort of an anti-Native bigotry that is still all too common within our professional archaeological establishment. These folks really still live in the middle ages!
What a dark snake-pit of racism and bigotry our academic establishment is... This never ceases to amaze me, I must say.
This is the Dumbing-Down Crew that is hard at work to deny the cultural achievements of Native Americans.
Regards,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=-