Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America

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Bronze Axe-money from Mexico at the Prehistory Museum of Valencia

South America[edit]


Unlike other metallurgy traditions where metals gained importance through practical use in weaponry and everyday utensils, metals in South America (and later Central America) were mainly valued as adornments and status objects. Though also functional objects were produced, even in the metallurgically advanced Andean cultures of the Inca era stone tools were never completely replaced by bronze items in everyday life.[10] During the Early horizon, advances in metal working produced spectacular and characteristic Andean gold objects made by the joining of smaller metal sheets, and also gold-silver alloy appeared.

Two traditions seem to have developed alongside each other – one in northern Peru and Ecuador, and another in the Altiplano region of southern Peru, Bolivia and Chile. There is evidence for smelting of copper sulphide in the Altiplano region around the Early horizon. Evidence for this comes from copper slag recovered at several sites,[11] with the ore itself possibly coming from the south Chilean-Bolivian border. Near Puma Punku, Bolivia, and at three additional sites in Peru and Bolivia, portable smelting kilns were used to manufacture I-beams in situ, to join large stone blocks during construction.[citation needed] Their chemical analysis shows 95.15% copper, 2.05% arsenic, 1.70% nickel, .84% silicon and .26% iron. The estimated date of these pours lies between 800 –500 BCE.

Evidence for fully developed smelting, however, only appears with the Moche culture (northern coast, 200 BCE–600 CE).[12] The ores were extracted from shallow deposits in the Andean foothills. They were probably smelted nearby, as pictorially depicted on the metal artifacts themselves and on ceramic vessels. Smelting was done in adobe brick furnaces with at least three blow pipes to provide the air flow needed to reach the high temperatures. The resulting ingots would then have been moved to coastal centers for shaping in specialised workshops.[13] Two workshops found and studied near the administrative sections of their towns, again showing the prestige of metal.

The objects themselves were still mainly adornments, now often being attached to beads. Some functional objects were fashioned, but they were elaborately decorated and often found in high-status burials, seemingly still used more for symbolic than for practical purposes. The appearance of gold or silver seems to have been important, with a high number of gilded or silvered objects as well as the appearance of Tumbaga, a alloy of copper and gold, and sometimes also silver. Arsenic bronze[14] was also smelted from sulphidic ores, a practice either independently developed or learned from the southern tradition. The earliest known powder metallurgy, and earliest working of platinum in the world, was apparently developed by the cultures of Esmeraldas (NW Ecuador) before the Spanish Conquest [15] Beginning with the La Tolita culture (600 bc - 200 ad), Ecuadorian cultures mastered the soldering of platinum grains through alloying with copper, gold and silver, producing platinum-surfaced rings, handles, ornaments and utensils. This technology was eventually noticed and adopted by the Spanish c.1730.[16]

The gold Muisca raft in the Museo del Oro, Bogotá

Muisca goldworking, from modern Colombia, made a wide variety of small ornamental and religious objects from about 600 CE onwards. The gold Muisca raft is probably the best-known single object. This is in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, the largest of the six "gold museums" owned by the Central Bank of Colombia displaying gold from the Musica and other pre-Columbian cultures in the country.




Iron was never smelted by Native Americans, thus the New World never entered a proper ‘Iron Age’ before European discovery, and the term is not used of the Americas. But there was limited use of ‘native’ (unsmelted) iron ore, from magnetite, iron pyrite and ilmenite (iron-titanium), especially in the Andes (Chavin and Moche cultures) and Mesoamerica, after 900 BCE and until c.500 CE. Various forms of iron ore were mined,[18] drilled and highly polished. There is considerable evidence that this technology, its raw materials and end products were widely traded in Mesoamerica throughout the Formative era (2000-200 BCE).[19]

Lumps of iron pyrite, magnetite and other materials were mostly shaped into mirrors, pendants, medallions and headdress ornaments for decorative and ceremonial effect.[20] However, convex iron ore mirrors were apparently used for firing and optical purposes by the Olmec (1500-400 BCE) and Chavin (900-300 BCE) cultures, [21]and ilmenite ‘beads’ may have served as ‘hammers’ for fine work.[22] The Olmec and Izapa (300 BCE – 100 CE) also seem to have used iron magnetism to align and position monuments.[23] They may have developed a zeroth-order compass using a magnetite bar.[24]

Some Mesoamerican uses of ‘native’ iron seem to have been military. Steven Jones proposed that the Olmec sewed ilmenite ‘beads’ into protective ‘mail armour’ or helmets.[25] Iron pyrite mosaics and ‘plates’ formed protective tezcacuitlapalli (mirrored back flap shields) and breastplate ornaments in the military attire of the Teotihuacan (100 BCE – 600 CE), Toltec (800-1150 CE) and Chichen Itza (800-1200 CE) cultures.[26]

Central America and Caribbean[edit]

Gold double pendant, Panama, Veraguas, 11th-16th century CED, gold.










Northern America[edit]

Hopewell copper falcon, ca. 200 BCE–1 CE, Ohio[31]
Plates from Malden, Etowah and Spiro


As widely accepted as this statement might be it should not be considered synonymous with a lack of metal objects, as it points out native copper was relatively abundant, particularly in the Great Lakes region.[33] The latest glacial period had resulted in the scouring of copper bearing rocks. Once the ice retreated, these were readily available for use in a variety of sizes.[33] Copper was shaped via cold hammering into objects from very early dates (Archaic period in the Great Lakes region: 8000–1000 BCE). There is also evidence of actual mining of copper veins (Old Copper Complex), but disagreement exists as to the dates.[33]



Mace shaped copper headdress ornaments from Moundville




This Old Copper Culture never became particularity advanced, and never discovered the principle of creating alloys. This means that many, though they could make metal objects and weapons, continued to use their flint tools, which could maintain a sharper edge for much longer. The unalloyed copper could simply not compete, and in the later days of the Old Copper Culture the metal was almost exclusively used for ceremonial items.[34]




Iron in the Pacific Northwest[edit]

Inuit lance made from a narwhal tusk with an iron head made from the Cape York meteorite.


The tradition of working with Asian drift iron was well-developed in the Northwest before European contact, and was present among several native peoples from the region, including the Chinookan peoples and the Tlingit, who seem to have had their own specific word for the metallic material, which was transcribed by Frederica De Laguna as gayES.[40] The wrecking of Japanese and Chinese vessels in the North Pacific basin was fairly common, and the iron tools and weaponry they carried provided the necessary materials for the development of the local ironwork traditions among the Northwestern Pacific Coast peoples,[41] although there were also other sources of iron, like that from meteorites, which was occasionally worked using stone anvils.[40]

Local Inuit extracted iron from the large Cape York meteorite, various fragments of which landed off Greenland and on the surrounding area at an unknown date.

See also[edit]


  8. ^ A. Eichler, G. Gramlich, T. Kellerhals, L. Tobler, Th. Rehren & M. Schwikowski (2017). "Ice-core evidence of earliest extensive copper metallurgy in the Andes 2700 years ago". Nature. 7: 41855. Bibcode:2017NatSR...741855E. doi:10.1038/srep41855. PMC 5282569. PMID 28139760.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ^ D’Altroy, Terence N. (2015). The Incas. Second edition. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 318–319.
  16. ^ McDonald, Donald (1959). "The Platinum of New Granada: Mining and Metallurgy in the Spanish Colonial Empire". Platinum Metals Review. 3 (4): 140.
  17. ^ Megan Gannon (27 September 2017). "Rose Gold Jewelry Was All the Rage with Ancient Colombians". Livescience.
  18. ^
  19. ^ WHEELER PIRES-FERREIRA, JANE and EVANS, BILLY JOE. "Mössbauer Spectral Analysis of Olmec Iron Ore Mirrors: New Evidence of Formative Period Exchange Networks in Mesoamerica: ". Cultural Continuity in Mesoamerica, edited by David L. Browman, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011, pp. 101-154.
  20. ^[1992]2018a.pdf
  21. ^
  22. ^
  23. ^
  24. ^ John B. Carlson, "Lodestone Compass: Chinese or Olmec Primacy? Multidisciplinary Analysis of an Olmec Hematite Artifact from San Lorenzo, Veracruz, Mexico," Science 189, No. 4205 (5 September 1975): 753-760.
  25. ^
  26. ^[1992]2018a.pdf
  30. ^ Hosler, D. (1999). "Recent insights into the metallurgical technologies of ancient mesoamerica". JOM Journal of the Minerals. 51 (5): 11–14. Bibcode:1999JOM....51e..11H. doi:10.1007/s11837-999-0034-6. S2CID 135626853.

Further reading[edit]
