_Determining Geologic Sources of Artifact Copper: Source
Characterization Using Trace Element Patterns._ George (Rip) Rapp,
James Allert, Vanda Vitali, Zhichuan Jing, and Eiler Henrickson.
University Press of America, Lantham. 2000.

Greetings, all,

I have now examined this book, and found it to be quite disappointing.
As it turns out, this is primarily a book about geology, about the
laboratory testing methods, and statistical analysis. The actual
artifacts are almost non-existent in this study, however odd this may
sound...

Yes, to be sure, a couple of pages are devoted to Native copper
artifacts, as well (p. 93ff). These are the 21 artifacts from 3
archaeological sites in Minnesota, all from the same neighbourhood,
close to the Canadian border.

Sure seems to me like the authors of this study weren't really so sure
about their own methodology, because they didn't go any further than
these 3 sites -- out of the hundreds if not thousands of such sites.

Let's keep in mind here that there are reputed to be over 100,000
ancient copper objects, such as tools and ornaments, that have been
found all around North America. The authors made no attempt to look at
them as a whole, or to examine any other artefacts outside of that
very small area of northern Michigan.

Were any such artifacts cast?

Are these artifacts always made of pure copper, or perhaps some copper
alloy (bronze) artifacts can also be found in North America (north of
Mexico)?

Well, since pre-contact bronze artifacts _had_ been found in Mexico,
it is almost a certainty that at least a few of them had also been
traded to the US territory. But I guess we still don't know about any
of this basic and fundamental stuff... The subject seems to be off
limits for American archaeologists.

Shouldn't a researcher firsts ask a few natural questions such as the
ones above, before delving any deeper into classifying known
geological deposits, and into the highly technical questions such as
the Neutron Activation Analysis, and the Statistics and Discriminant
Analysis? Unfortunately, Rapp et al. only seem to be interested in the
rather technical and abstruse questions associated with geological
copper, and completely uninterested in the simple and natural
questions about the actual Native copper artefacts, that should
instantly come to mind.

The assumption among the American archaeological establishment seems
to be that the Native Americans are not very creative, and could never
figure out how to melt and cast copper.

And since they could never figure out how to melt copper, then
obviously they could never smelt it either. And, by the same
questionable reasoning, neither could they have ever produced any
bronze objects.

Now, obviously, in order to overturn these ridiculous ethno-centric
assumptions, all one needs is just one cast copper artefact, and/or
one bronze artefact with good archaeological context. Then this whole
racist pyramid of doublethink will come crashing down in a pile of
dust.

So I would guess that this is the main reason why this whole subject
area is so assiduously ignored by the professional archaeologists in
the US. Since it would be so easy to overturn these questionable
assumptions, therefore all professional archaeologists must look
elsewhere when determining the subjects to follow in their research.

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.trends.ca/~yuku

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the
death of knowledge -- Alfred North Whitehead