Eric Stevens says in
news
access to this information; however I have seen at least 2
video reports on the manufacturing of the comal, and they
are not cast. The most similar cultural item I have seen is
the hammered woks created from iron in china (which you can
buy on the home shopping network if you are lucky). Woks
being more sophisticated with handles, whereas the comal is
just a large concave piece of copper.

Why are you telling me about things that are not cast when
I'm telling you about things which are?

Eric, Inger logic doesn't work well even when she uses it, why
would you think it would work better when you use it. You quoted
a source that claimed that copper tool casting was prevelant
from south american all the way to north america. That was your
qoute. What I was doing was expanding upon the types of tools
that the most prevalant copper cultures in the New World had
made, aka not cast copper. IOW, I was descrediting your source
and your quote, however obvious that was you failed to see it.
My opinion is that, fundimentally, you're unfamiliar with
mesoamerican culture. [Despite lengthy number of references I
have given last year to educate you guys on the primary research
on the evolution on New World metallurgy]

I must ask you that question about your almost totally
irrelevant and unhelpful response.

That is, again, because you are unfamiliar with meso and south
american culture.

For my part, if you read that part of my previous article
which you snipped, you will see that I was responding to
Tom McDonalds reliance on Gary Coffman's comments on the
Connor site quoting Mallery - as an adequate refutaion of
Mallery's claims that some North American artifacts were
cast. I quoted at length because Tom seemed unaware of the
material inspite of it having been posted twice before in
this (or a related) thread.

And what I demonstrated was that casting was not the primary
form of copper tool formation. IOW I am discrediting Mallory's
claim by questioning whether casting was used for tools as
ubiguitously as believed or was it for more experimental or
recreational activities. The tool manufactoring industry in
mesoamerica is no secret, what appears to be is the use of
casting in that industry.

Gary Coffman has not dealt with all of Mallery's claims.

The claim of Mallery is self-discrediting, who needs to deal
with it, Mallery.

That's news to me.

Mallery went south. You failed to get the point.

I am by no means an expert on all metallurgy over all of the
precolumbian americas (PCA) but I have yet to have seen a form
or mold used in PCA to cast any metal object. If copper was
routinely cast to form even trinkets, one would expect the molds
for such object to be present somewhere. I am sure such molds
probably exist somewhere; however I don't think that casting was
a common practiced and was probably practiced amoung the elite
metalurgist in the larger civilizations.

What I have seen is pretty much what we talked about earlier
with iron, in that partially smelted copper was fused by many
men with mallets banging slag into comals.

--
Philip
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mol. Anth. Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DNAanthro/
Mol. Evol. Hominids http://home.att.net/~DNAPaleoAnth/
Evol. of Xchrom.
http://home.att.net/~DNAPaleoAnth/xlinked.htm
Pal. Anth. Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleoanthro/
Sci. Arch. Aux
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sciarchauxilliary/