On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:47:18 +0100, Martyn Harrison wrote:
Apparently on date Wed, 30 Jun 2004 04:08:35 -0400, Gary Coffman
said:

shown to have the characteristic porosity caused by
atmospheric melting, and that one may have been the result
of an accidental exposure at some point to temperatures in
excess of 1877F (a forest fire is a scenario I suggested to
produce that high temperature).

We did come up with the idea that you might get this sort of temperature in a
funeral pyre, because you need that sort of temperature to turn the body to
ash.

Perhaps. I know nothing about the funeral practices of the
Native Americans of Michigan. Modern crematory practice
uses a temperature between 1400F and 1800F in a gas
fueled oven. The upper end of that range is just below the
melting point of copper. An ideally laid large wood fueled
pyre might produce enough draft to reach a higher temperature.

Gary

Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:

Gary Coffman wrote:

[snip]


The apparent fact that the Native Americans *didn't* cast native
copper


This is a "fact" only if you disregard all evidence to the
contrary, as you appear to be doing.

Yuri,

Please elaborate.

Tom McDonald

Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:

Gary Coffman wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:


Isn't it just possible that you focus too strongly on perfect casting
- the imperfections resulting from casting may not have been a real
big deal to the ancient people.

But the imperfections due to casting pure copper *would* produce the
characteristic porosity which is *not* seen in any of the pieces other
than R666. As I have remarked in other posts, it is possible that this
single sample may have been melted due to a cause other than
deliberate casting,


Not everything that is possible is probable.

Wishing won't make it so.

Yuri,

Exactly. So why are you clinging to your wishful thinking,
instead of researching the issue?

Tom McDonald

Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:


On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 09:04:49 +1200, Eric Stevens wrote:


On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 03:03:50 -0400, Gary Coffman
wrote:


On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 23:46:01 -0500, Tom McDonald wrote:


Eric Stevens wrote:


On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 22:57:04 GMT, (Gary Coffman)
wrote:


But that said, casting pure copper is a bitch.


This from the guy who has just written that the task can be undertaken
by low-skilled workers?

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.

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.

Just as well the ancient egyptians didn't know that they couldn't do
what they were doing. :-)

So, are you claiming to have evidence that the ancient Egyptians
successfully cast pure native copper?

The metallurgical references I have say that native copper was
extremely rare in Egypt. Almost all of the copper they had was
refined from ores (smelted), and the results were *not* pure
copper. Rather, they were alloys, whether intentional or not,
of copper, arsenic, zinc, iron, or tin. These alloys behave *very*
differently from pure native copper when casting is attempted.

Gary


Well, Gary, the folowing sure seems to imply that the
ancient Egyptian did some copper casting.

[quote]

Ancient Egyptian raw materials: metals - copper, bronze,
iron, gold, silver, lead
http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/trades/metals.htm


copper objects [rather than bronze]:

The objects were generally cast, which is quite difficult to
do with copper because of the formation of gas bubbles
during the pouring of the metal and its shrinking when it
cooled down. Then they were hammered cold to give them their
final form.

[unquote]

Yuri,

Your site tells us that copper ore was what was available, not
native copper; and that it had to be smelted before use. IOW,
it's not clear whether the Egyptians ever had copper of the
purity of the native copper in the upper Great Lakes area. In
addition, the smelting and melting of that copper would more
than likely have resulted in a copper alloy, not pure copper.

Of course, if you have better evidence that shows Egyptians
cast 99+% pure copper, you are welcome to present it here. I
for one would be very interested in that evidence.

Tom McDonald


My main point here is that Gary Coffman is wrong with his
speculations that copper casting was too difficult for
ancient peoples to do.

I'm merely trying to teach Mr. Coffman a few things about
metalworking, as it applies to ancient peoples.

Yuri,

I've been boggled by things you've written before, but this
takes the cake. *You* teaching *Gary* anything about
metalworking by the ancients. Priceless!

Gary hasn't written that casting was too difficult for ancient
peoples to do. Clearly, they did. But in the case of copper in
the upper Great Lakes area, copper casting was totally
unnecessary. Also, with any even remotely likely technology
available to the Indians here, the resulting pure copper casts
would be very inferior to the same artifacts made by smithing.

You are trying to tell us that Indians in the Great Lakes
Archaic period cast pure copper with techniques that not only
perfectly mimicked smith work, but also of such quality that
even today it is hard to do so well. You also want us to
believe that this technology left no trace other than the
artifacts. You finally want to tell us that the Indians,
obviously very savvy folks, developed this technology that looks
precisely like smithing for no reason whatsoever.

As Gary and Paul have pointed out, the intelligent thing for
folks to do with the kind and quality of copper available to
them would be to hammer it, using cold hammering and annealing.

If you have evidence of archaeological sites in the upper Great
Lakes that show evidence of the technology required (re-read
Gary and Paul's posts, and follow the links to the Neubauer
Process for what to look for), present it.

Teaching Gary about metalwork :-). Priceless, just priceless.

Tom McDonald

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:47:18 +0100, Martyn Harrison
wrote:

Apparently on date Wed, 30 Jun 2004 04:08:35 -0400, Gary Coffman
said:

shown to have the characteristic porosity caused by
atmospheric melting, and that one may have been the result
of an accidental exposure at some point to temperatures in
excess of 1877F (a forest fire is a scenario I suggested to
produce that high temperature).

We did come up with the idea that you might get this sort of temperature in a
funeral pyre, because you need that sort of temperature to turn the body to
ash.

You might GET that temperature but you don't NEED that temperature.
See
http://www.funeralplan.com/funeralpl...rocessing.html
"1,400 and 1,800 degrees fahrenheit" - approx 760C - 982C which is
less than the 1083C needed to melt copper. Even the formation of deep
copper oxides requires about 1060C.



Eric Stevens

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:53:00 -0400, Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:

[snip]

The apparent fact that the Native Americans *didn't* cast native
copper

This is a "fact" only if you disregard all evidence to the
contrary, as you appear to be doing.

Virtually all of the evidence presented to date in this thread is
against casting of ancient Michigan native copper artifacts. If
you have conclusive evidence showing characteristic porosity
in all the items claimed to be cast, if you have evidence showing
a chemical analysis of true alloying between the native copper
and other metals (mainly silver) found with it in the halfbreed
ore matrix, if you have evidence of large numbers of identically
dimensioned artifacts representative of a casting provenance,
etc, then present it. Otherwise you have no case.

What we do know is that ancient Michigan artifacts have been
found with silver inclusions. That precludes the possibility that
they were ever melted. We do know that of the artifacts which
have been put forward as evidence of copper casting, all but
one do *not* show the characteristic porosity of atmospheric
melting of copper, and that one does not appear to be a deliberate
casting.

We do know that there is no need to invoke casting as the
manufacturing method of any of the artifacts, ie it has been
demonstrated that any of them could have been smithed
from native copper without casting using tools and techniques
known to have been available to the Native Americans of
Northern Michigan. And we have the testimony of an experienced
coppersmith that casting would have been a greatly inferior
method of producing them.

The burden of proof is on you to present incontrovertible
evidence that any of the Michigan artifacts were in fact cast.
So far, you have not done so.

Gary

Eric Stevens wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:47:18 +0100, Martyn Harrison
wrote:


We did come up with the idea that you might get this sort of temperature
in a
funeral pyre, because you need that sort of temperature to turn the body
to
ash.

You might GET that temperature but you don't NEED that temperature.
See
http://www.funeralplan.com/funeralpl...rocessing.html
"1,400 and 1,800 degrees fahrenheit" - approx 760C - 982C which is
less than the 1083C needed to melt copper. Even the formation of deep
copper oxides requires about 1060C.



Eric Stevens


Even they don't completely reduce the body to ash. The teeth and several
large pieces of bone are left behind, they get run through a ball mill
before they return the ashes.

Paul K. Dickman

Even they don't completely reduce the body to ash. The teeth and several
large pieces of bone are left behind, they get run through a ball mill
before they return the ashes.

Funny, I was talking to our local cemetry trustee today about cremation.

They run the burned remains through a magnet and metal detector before the ball
mill to take out things like titanium hip joints and other replacement parts.
Batteries for pacemakers have to be removed before cremation to eliminate
explosions in the furnace.

Earle Rich
Mont Vernon, NH

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:29:10 -0400, Gary Coffman
wrote:

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:53:00 -0400, Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:

[snip]

The apparent fact that the Native Americans *didn't* cast native
copper

This is a "fact" only if you disregard all evidence to the
contrary, as you appear to be doing.

Virtually all of the evidence presented to date in this thread is
against casting of ancient Michigan native copper artifacts.

I presume that you regard evidence 'against' as different from lack of
evidence 'for'.

What is the evidence 'against' to which you are referring?

If
you have conclusive evidence showing characteristic porosity
in all the items claimed to be cast, if you have evidence showing
a chemical analysis of true alloying between the native copper
and other metals (mainly silver) found with it in the halfbreed
ore matrix, if you have evidence of large numbers of identically
dimensioned artifacts representative of a casting provenance,
etc, then present it. Otherwise you have no case.

What we do know is that ancient Michigan artifacts have been
found with silver inclusions. That precludes the possibility that
they were ever melted. We do know that of the artifacts which
have been put forward as evidence of copper casting, all but
one do *not* show the characteristic porosity of atmospheric
melting of copper, and that one does not appear to be a deliberate
casting.

We do know that there is no need to invoke casting as the
manufacturing method of any of the artifacts, ie it has been
demonstrated that any of them could have been smithed
from native copper without casting using tools and techniques
known to have been available to the Native Americans of
Northern Michigan. And we have the testimony of an experienced
coppersmith that casting would have been a greatly inferior
method of producing them.

The burden of proof is on you to present incontrovertible
evidence that any of the Michigan artifacts were in fact cast.
So far, you have not done so.

What about radiographs cited by Mallery? These have been mentioned
several times.



Eric Stevens

Eric Stevens wrote:

snip


What about radiographs cited by Mallery? These have been mentioned
several times.

Eric,

Gary has discussed this several times. In essence, the
radiographs on Connor's web site cited by Mallery were
apparently not cast. What Mallery considered bubbles
characteristic of cast copper appear to be, with one exception,
*not* the type of bubbles one finds in casts of copper of the
purity seen in the artifacts.

The sole exception, the artifact labeled R666 (Riverside site
artifact number), or 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum catalog
number--where the artifact is curated), does show the typical
porosity. However, I don't think anyone thinks that the
artifact is an example of intentional casting, but rather of
accidental or natural (e.g.: forest fire) melting of a bit of
copper.

OTOH, some of the radiographs clearly show annealing twins, and
linear voids characteristic of smithing.

This has been discussed before in this thread, perhaps before
you returned. If any of this seems new to you, you might want
to read the thread in Google groups.

Tom McDonald

Tom,
it seems as if you and Gary aren't aware of anything but what's on Connor's
website in this question.
I know for a fact that Eric has had some of the information Mallery gained
by letting Keeler help him to the best metallurgic specialist there was,
actually still much more credited than most today.
I know also for a fact that Mallery's analysereports aren't in Connor's
website, no matter that it contain a lot of other interesting details.
As some reading this already knows Mallery's papers are preserved in
Keeler's deposit in a private Museum. Lot's of documentation as well as some
of the most discussed findings of Mallery and testresults showing beyond any
reasonable doubts that we are discussing casting and nothing else what so
ever.

I rest there for the moment. Eric hasn't had all information but some
essential parts of it.(not sent by me) I will go thru my discs looking for
an indexlist I know I have re. the deposit.
More later.

Inger E


"Tom McDonald" skrev i meddelandet
...
Eric Stevens wrote:

snip


What about radiographs cited by Mallery? These have been mentioned
several times.

Eric,

Gary has discussed this several times. In essence, the
radiographs on Connor's web site cited by Mallery were
apparently not cast. What Mallery considered bubbles
characteristic of cast copper appear to be, with one exception,
*not* the type of bubbles one finds in casts of copper of the
purity seen in the artifacts.

The sole exception, the artifact labeled R666 (Riverside site
artifact number), or 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum catalog
number--where the artifact is curated), does show the typical
porosity. However, I don't think anyone thinks that the
artifact is an example of intentional casting, but rather of
accidental or natural (e.g.: forest fire) melting of a bit of
copper.

OTOH, some of the radiographs clearly show annealing twins, and
linear voids characteristic of smithing.

This has been discussed before in this thread, perhaps before
you returned. If any of this seems new to you, you might want
to read the thread in Google groups.

Tom McDonald

Gary Coffman wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:

[..]
Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."

The single large surface
bubble is a blister, common when the surface of a wrought piece
is overheated. Compare it to the radiograph of R666. The latter
does show the characteristic deep pattern of porosity of an at least
partially melted copper object.

In my experience of examples of all kinds - no two are ever identical.

I believe we are agreed that only atmospheric casting was within
reach of the ancient Native Americans (or ancient Old World
founders for that matter), so we *should* see characteristic
porosity in any pure copper items they attempted to cast. Now
of course the Old Worlders had the advantage of ores which
did contain suitable deoxidizers. They weren't actually casting
pure copper. But the Michigan copper was essentially pure
native copper.


Isn't it just possible that you focus too strongly on perfect casting
- the imperfections resulting from casting may not have been a real
big deal to the ancient people.

But the imperfections due to casting pure copper *would* produce the
characteristic porosity which is *not* seen in any of the pieces other
than R666.

Again, I point to the fact they disagree.


As I have remarked in other posts, it is possible that this
single sample may have been melted due to a cause other than
deliberate casting, so by itself it is not conclusive evidence for a
copper casting technology, though it is suggestive.

One cant make that claim without investigation, there hasn't been any
undertaking by others do examine artefacts for casting. Again I point
to the article:

Neiburger said "Further xeroradiographic surveys and analysis of the
25,000 existing copper artifacts from that period (Archic Midwestern
United States) are necessary for the determination of how extensively
early Native Americans had used melted metal."

It doesn't look like any real studies has been done to say casting was
NOT practised - or that it was. Personally I don't expect a hell of a
lot of casting due to the pure copper being available (even if not
always in large lumps) - but I cannot dismiss the evidence, limited as
it is, considering the LACK of research undertaken so far.

In any event, none of the other objects show the porosity signature
of atmospheric casting. So even if the ancient people found flawed
castings acceptable (and such castings would be weak and brittle),
the lack of porosity is strong evidence that none of these particular
items, with the possible exception of R666, were cast.

Gary

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]

As I mentioned previously, surface blisters are not what we're
looking for in terms of the porosity characteristic of pure copper
casting. What we need to see is a foam of microscopic bubbles,
and clusters of tiny visible bubbles deep in the metal on the
radiographs. That's absent from the other radiographs on the
site.

Yes, that's why I was interested in your take on R666/55786.
If there were other good examples of melted copper, I'd have
expected that the web site would have presented them.


IT DOES!! It has been pointed to several times already. Your recent
posting is regurgitating what you have posted before. An apparent
casual visual inspection by the Museum curator, nothing more. Here is
the URL again - and don't forget to scroll down a bit!!

http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm


Seppo,

As Gary has pointed out, only the item R666 (site report
artifact number), 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum designation)
shows the characteristic porosity of melted copper; the other
copper artifacts on that page do not.

Are you ignoring completely what is written on that site? I refer you
to my reply to Gary for more details.


My purpose in mentioning
Alex Barker's observation was merely to have an eye witness to
the artifact in question, to verify that it indeed does look
like a lump of accidentally melted or discarded copper, as
opposed to something that might have been, for instance, trimmed
off the cast after cooling. The other relevant facts about it
seem to have been adequately presented on Connor's web site.

I see..... so now you are actually editorialising about the
information given to you. You claim "accidentally melted" contrary to
what has been said. First of all "accidental" heating in a fire is not
possible as it doesn't get hot enough. So it requires a forced draught
for it to melt, and how the hell do you generate something
specifically built for melting as "accidental"?


As it is,
it looks as though I'll have to dig for other examples that
might show casting.


Listen if the seriousness of your "looking" is equal to your looking
on the web site - give it a miss. You wouldn't see anything anyway.


So far, at least as presented on this ng, the only copper
artifact that was certainly the result of melting is R666/55786.

But only if you ignore claims made on that web site. There is a
considerable amount of common sense totally discarded as well - see
message by Dickman:


It is actually unlikely any melted copper is actually "pure", but in
reality is an alloy - most probably of silver. I have pointed out
these problems previously. They are ignored, and a make believe of a
cliff of pure copper exists that people come and hack a piece as big
as they want from it. See also:



This deals with what I said above. Again this point has been ignored
including by yourself - I have noted your replies still harping on
pure copper.

The other artifacts Mallery (and Connor) seem to think were
cast either weren't, or don't have sufficient diagnostic
information presented to decide.

Your "don't have sufficient diagnostic" does NOT eliminate one single
artefact from potentially being cast. Yet what I see is claims made by
researchers being discarded in favour of ignorance, and by the use of
ignorance, as that IS what rejecting something as cast on the basis of
"don't have sufficient diagnostic" amounts to.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]


As I mentioned previously, surface blisters are not what we're
looking for in terms of the porosity characteristic of pure copper
casting. What we need to see is a foam of microscopic bubbles,
and clusters of tiny visible bubbles deep in the metal on the
radiographs. That's absent from the other radiographs on the
site.

Yes, that's why I was interested in your take on R666/55786.
If there were other good examples of melted copper, I'd have
expected that the web site would have presented them.


IT DOES!! It has been pointed to several times already. Your recent
posting is regurgitating what you have posted before. An apparent
casual visual inspection by the Museum curator, nothing more. Here is
the URL again - and don't forget to scroll down a bit!!

http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm


Seppo,

As Gary has pointed out, only the item R666 (site report
artifact number), 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum designation)
shows the characteristic porosity of melted copper; the other
copper artifacts on that page do not.


Are you ignoring completely what is written on that site? I refer you
to my reply to Gary for more details.



My purpose in mentioning
Alex Barker's observation was merely to have an eye witness to
the artifact in question, to verify that it indeed does look
like a lump of accidentally melted or discarded copper, as
opposed to something that might have been, for instance, trimmed
off the cast after cooling. The other relevant facts about it
seem to have been adequately presented on Connor's web site.


I see..... so now you are actually editorialising about the
information given to you. You claim "accidentally melted" contrary to
what has been said. First of all "accidental" heating in a fire is not
possible as it doesn't get hot enough. So it requires a forced draught
for it to melt, and how the hell do you generate something
specifically built for melting as "accidental"?

As it is,
it looks as though I'll have to dig for other examples that
might show casting.


Listen if the seriousness of your "looking" is equal to your looking
on the web site - give it a miss. You wouldn't see anything anyway.


So far, at least as presented on this ng, the only copper
artifact that was certainly the result of melting is R666/55786.


But only if you ignore claims made on that web site. There is a
considerable amount of common sense totally discarded as well - see
message by Dickman:


It is actually unlikely any melted copper is actually "pure", but in
reality is an alloy - most probably of silver. I have pointed out
these problems previously. They are ignored, and a make believe of a
cliff of pure copper exists that people come and hack a piece as big
as they want from it. See also:



This deals with what I said above. Again this point has been ignored
including by yourself - I have noted your replies still harping on
pure copper.


The other artifacts Mallery (and Connor) seem to think were
cast either weren't, or don't have sufficient diagnostic
information presented to decide.


Your "don't have sufficient diagnostic" does NOT eliminate one single
artefact from potentially being cast. Yet what I see is claims made by
researchers being discarded in favour of ignorance, and by the use of
ignorance, as that IS what rejecting something as cast on the basis of
"don't have sufficient diagnostic" amounts to.


You're funny, Seppo. Don't ever change.

Tom McDonald

Gary Coffman wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:05:25 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Tom McDonald wrote:
In the context of this thread, at least its original context,
the copper was native copper in the upper Great Lakes area of
the US and Canada. That copper is typically well over 99% pure
out of the ground, and does not have to be smelted to remove
impurities. If another context is in evidence, then a
definition of the term 'pure' is needed.

http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

The copper may well be 99% pure - what about the rest? It isn't every
day people find huge lumps of pure copper without impurities embedded
within it. This is the dilemma that people bypass and ignore.

This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

As that article notes, 14 billion pounds of copper have been removed
from the area since the ancients were working copper there. Let the
enormity of that number sink in. There was an *awful lot* of copper
there in ancient times, much of it easily accessible from the surface.

My main interest was to show the formation of the copper deposits -
the volcanic activity that melted it (and other minerals with it).
Silver is/was found in fair quantities alongside the copper. What
isn't known - because nobody cares to find out, is the composition of
the metal used in the artefacts. It is ASSUMED to be pure copper.

The knowledge of the size of excavations by the ancients suggests vast
quantities had already been mined. Only a very small fraction of it
has ever been found. The question has been posed, what happened to the
rest of it?

Note also, as Neubauer does, that they didn't want "huge lumps".
Copper is difficult to cut with primitive tools (isn't all that much fun
with modern steel chisels).

One thing we always do is under estimate the ancient people's
abilities. How the hell they ever managed to get vast stone slabs dead
level and polished to a mirror finish, is hard to comprehend, but they
did. The huge stone blocks for the pyramids, cut with copper saws. The
fine detail on gold necklaces we would need magnification to see and a
brain surgeon's steady hand and modern tools to achieve.....

Neubauer suggests that the ancients
would want to start with a piece of about the right size for the
object they wanted to make. At most that would be a lump weighing
a few pounds, in the vast majority of cases it would be a lump smaller
than a hen's egg. Even today, such lumps are relatively plentiful in
the copper belt. They were vastly more so 6,000 years ago before
modern industrial man started extracting copper from the region.

Knowing that mining was done by the ancient, including under ground
mining, then if the above was the case - where are all the piles of
copper not found to be suitable?

I don't deny lumps existed - merely that they were rare in comparison
to other copper in many forms, oxidised or thin as paper in cracks or
embedded in other rock as per the first URL. An axe head requires to
be a bit bigger than a chook egg size - more like an Emu egg size!

At village sites there should exist copper scraps in considerable
quantities if such was simply discarded as "useless" if not big enough
for the task at hand. Nobody has pointed to such as yet at least.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Gary Coffman wrote:

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:53:00 -0400, Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:

[snip]

The apparent fact that the Native Americans *didn't* cast native
copper

This is a "fact" only if you disregard all evidence to the
contrary, as you appear to be doing.

Virtually all of the evidence presented to date in this thread is
against casting of ancient Michigan native copper artifacts. If
you have conclusive evidence showing characteristic porosity
in all the items claimed to be cast, if you have evidence showing
a chemical analysis of true alloying between the native copper
and other metals (mainly silver) found with it in the halfbreed
ore matrix, if you have evidence of large numbers of identically
dimensioned artifacts representative of a casting provenance,
etc, then present it. Otherwise you have no case.

You cannot claim "you have no case" UNLESS you prove there is no "true
alloying between the native copper and other metals" and that takes an
analysis of the metals in the artefacts found. It works both ways you
know.

What we do know is that ancient Michigan artifacts have been
found with silver inclusions. That precludes the possibility that
they were ever melted.

No, it precludes that item from having been melted only. You cannot
extrapolate that beyond the artefact itself.

We do know that of the artifacts which
have been put forward as evidence of copper casting, all but
one do *not* show the characteristic porosity of atmospheric
melting of copper, and that one does not appear to be a deliberate
casting.

We see TWO artefacts being claimed as being cast - one being conceded
as being cast. We don't know the composition of the metal of the
second artefact to be able to discard it as "not cast".

You have claimed it is the sign of "copper" being overheated - ie to
melting point else bubbles cannot form. At the same time you have also
stated the heat source has to be forced air type to get it hot enough
to melt copper.

I see those two statements as being inconsistent with each other. If
the Copper was simply hammered and annealed, the temp should NOT be
able to get high enough to cause any bubbling.

ON the other hand in the event the fire was of the type for melting
copper.... well.... then it would be for melting copper, why else
would it be like it?

We do know that there is no need to invoke casting as the
manufacturing method of any of the artifacts, ie it has been
demonstrated that any of them could have been smithed
from native copper without casting using tools and techniques
known to have been available to the Native Americans of
Northern Michigan. And we have the testimony of an experienced
coppersmith that casting would have been a greatly inferior
method of producing them.

The burden of proof is on you to present incontrovertible
evidence that any of the Michigan artifacts were in fact cast.
So far, you have not done so.

No, I don't see it like it at all. The alternative is to argue that;
without any research we can definitely say none were cast, barring one
exception. That of course is illogical as all hell. NO such thing can
be claimed at all.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Tom McDonald wrote:

Eric Stevens wrote:


On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:22:35 -0400, Gary Coffman
wrote:



On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 17:38:04 +1200, Eric Stevens wrote:


[..]


While not directly addressing the point, you may be interested in
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inarcmet/papers/jfa022002.pdf

While not Egyptian, and the artifacts analyzed show evidence of
being wrought rather than cast, the chemical analysis does back
my position. The metals being worked were alloys, not pure native
copper.


As I said, it all depends upon what you mean by 'pure'.

Eric,

In the context of this thread, at least its original context,
the copper was native copper in the upper Great Lakes area of
the US and Canada. That copper is typically well over 99% pure
out of the ground, and does not have to be smelted to remove
impurities. If another context is in evidence, then a
definition of the term 'pure' is needed.


http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

The copper may well be 99% pure - what about the rest? It isn't every
day people find huge lumps of pure copper without impurities embedded
within it. This is the dilemma that people bypass and ignore.

This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

[..]


Seppo,

Thank you for the urls.

From the second link:


Hang on a sec. What about the first? After all it is THE more
important one.

http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

You tell me how the hell you can make an axe head out of that! You are
in total denial about this problem.


"Michigan’s copper deposits were remarkable for their quality
and purity. Bands of native copper were contained in outcrops 2
to 8 miles wide and of varying depth. The surface deposits first
attracted the notice of Native Americans who dug out the easily
accessible chunks and fashioned copper tools and adornments from
them."

Do you REALLY believe they were cliffs of PURE copper? Note the words
"were contained in". Then see the Networks.JPG and you will get an
idea of the meaning of the words.

I am aware of one piece of copper 17 ton of it (Yank ton presumably -
a short measure). It was found on the bottom of Lake Superior. I'm
also aware of another large find of several tons, but a VERY long way
underground in a modern mine. Neither kind of find was available to
the native people.

So mining appears to have *begun* where copper deposits were on
the surface. This makes sense, as there was also drift copper
(over a wider area than just the UP mining areas), and folks
early on seem to have selectively used lumps of copper that
needed no processing. While this might not have been an every
day event, it clearly was common enough to produce many of the
copper artifacts in the region.

As to mining the copper:

"They [Indians] dug pits in the ground and separated the copper
from the stone by hammering, by the use of wedges, and,
possibly, by the use of heat. Thousands of hammers have been
found in and about the old pits."

The claimed method is not fact - only assumption. The "fact" is the
finding a lot of "hammers". They are only proof of pounding or
hammering - which can mean crushing of rock containing the copper.

It seems that these folks picked the visible copper out of the
debitage after beating the bejesus out of the rock. That seems
reasonable to me, as there seems to have been quite enough such
copper available to make other methods of extraction unnecessary.

The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist.


THAT is nonsense. I have provided you with a good example of the
nature of it. It isn't the first time I have done it either - and
haven't even had to use the same pictures.


Indian people
developed the technology they needed to extract the resource
they wanted.

Obviously, only you don't know what method they used. Nobody has
bothered to find out.

They may have developed copper casting technology
as well. Since smelting wasn't necessary, casting would have
been a stand-alone technology. It wasn't beyond the capacity of
the Indians of the upper Great Lakes; but it also wasn't necessary.

Then you can perhaps point to the huge piles of discarded copper that
was useless because it looked like that stuff in the first URL. There
have been vast amounts mined by the native people - where are the
rejected copper piles?

If the copper is pure is not known because nobody has bothered to find
out. Silver does exist with/alongside/embedded in with copper in that
area - as are other minerals, including arsenic.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

snip

http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

The copper may well be 99% pure - what about the rest? It isn't every
day people find huge lumps of pure copper without impurities embedded
within it. This is the dilemma that people bypass and ignore.

This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

[..]



Seppo,

Thank you for the urls.

From the second link:



Hang on a sec. What about the first? After all it is THE more
important one.

Seppo,

I don't think so. That's why I focused on the other url.


http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

You tell me how the hell you can make an axe head out of that! You are
in total denial about this problem.

I don't know the matrix enclosing the copper in this sample.
However, as you note below, stone hammers would work fine to
crush rock containing the copper. Then the copper bits could be
picked out of the debitage.

What is the problem? No one has maintained that all the copper
used was in the form of pure copper nuggets.



"Michigan’s copper deposits were remarkable for their quality
and purity. Bands of native copper were contained in outcrops 2
to 8 miles wide and of varying depth. The surface deposits first
attracted the notice of Native Americans who dug out the easily
accessible chunks and fashioned copper tools and adornments from
them."


Do you REALLY believe they were cliffs of PURE copper?

No, of course not. Don't be silly.

Note the words
"were contained in". Then see the Networks.JPG and you will get an
idea of the meaning of the words.

What is your point? We know that the folks back then
eventually had to mine the copper. We know the tools they used
to do so. Had most of the copper been in large lumps, the tools
used for mining would not have been large stone hammers, wedges,
fire, etc.

As Gary has pointed out, it's a bitch to cut pure copper, even
with steel tools. Smart folks, like the Indians of those days
were (still are, BTW), would most likely have preferred to
extract the copper in more manageable sizes.


I am aware of one piece of copper 17 ton of it (Yank ton presumably -
a short measure). It was found on the bottom of Lake Superior. I'm
also aware of another large find of several tons, but a VERY long way
underground in a modern mine. Neither kind of find was available to
the native people.


And nor would they have preferred them if they were available.
There is a huge chunk of copper still in a mine, which the
ancient Indians tried to extract, but appear to have given up as
a bad job. Still, they seemed to do OK without it.

BTW, what is your fascination with size here? It's not really
relevant.

So mining appears to have *begun* where copper deposits were on
the surface. This makes sense, as there was also drift copper
(over a wider area than just the UP mining areas), and folks
early on seem to have selectively used lumps of copper that
needed no processing. While this might not have been an every
day event, it clearly was common enough to produce many of the
copper artifacts in the region.

As to mining the copper:

"They [Indians] dug pits in the ground and separated the copper
from the stone by hammering, by the use of wedges, and,
possibly, by the use of heat. Thousands of hammers have been
found in and about the old pits."


The claimed method is not fact - only assumption. The "fact" is the
finding a lot of "hammers". They are only proof of pounding or
hammering - which can mean crushing of rock containing the copper.

Yes, that too. Or do you imagine that the hammers were
single-purpose tools?


It seems that these folks picked the visible copper out of the
debitage after beating the bejesus out of the rock. That seems
reasonable to me, as there seems to have been quite enough such
copper available to make other methods of extraction unnecessary.

The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist.



THAT is nonsense. I have provided you with a good example of the
nature of it. It isn't the first time I have done it either - and
haven't even had to use the same pictures.

Re-read (read?) what I wrote directly above the bit you went
off on.




Indian people
developed the technology they needed to extract the resource
they wanted.


Obviously, only you don't know what method they used. Nobody has
bothered to find out.

Ever heard of 'archaeology'? Or haven't *you* bothered to find
that out?



They may have developed copper casting technology
as well. Since smelting wasn't necessary, casting would have
been a stand-alone technology. It wasn't beyond the capacity of
the Indians of the upper Great Lakes; but it also wasn't necessary.


Then you can perhaps point to the huge piles of discarded copper that
was useless because it looked like that stuff in the first URL. There
have been vast amounts mined by the native people - where are the
rejected copper piles?


Some is still there. I assume, but do not know, that modern
prospectors and miners would have processed such piles, as they
would probably have been a good source of copper for smelting.
Or do you think that respect for the past would have prevented
the modern copper industry from utilizing that resource?

If the copper is pure is not known because nobody has bothered to find
out.

And yet, they did. If you aren't going to read this thread any
better than you appear to have done in this sentence, why post?

Silver does exist with/alongside/embedded in with copper in that
area - as are other minerals, including arsenic.

Sure. Copper artifacts have been found with just those
inclusions. However, silver isn't found in them as an alloy
(which might happen if the material were cast), but as
inclusions (which would happen if the copper-silver cobble were
worked by smithing).

Tom McDonald

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:

Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]

Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.


They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."


Gary showed that the porosity typical of pure cast copper is
not present in that artifact. He even explained in just below.


The single large surface
bubble is a blister, common when the surface of a wrought piece
is overheated. Compare it to the radiograph of R666. The latter
does show the characteristic deep pattern of porosity of an at least
partially melted copper object.


In my experience of examples of all kinds - no two are ever identical.

Do you know what 'characteristic' means in this application?


I believe we are agreed that only atmospheric casting was within
reach of the ancient Native Americans (or ancient Old World
founders for that matter), so we *should* see characteristic
porosity in any pure copper items they attempted to cast. Now
of course the Old Worlders had the advantage of ores which
did contain suitable deoxidizers. They weren't actually casting
pure copper. But the Michigan copper was essentially pure
native copper.


Isn't it just possible that you focus too strongly on perfect casting
- the imperfections resulting from casting may not have been a real
big deal to the ancient people.

But the imperfections due to casting pure copper *would* produce the
characteristic porosity which is *not* seen in any of the pieces other
than R666.


Again, I point to the fact they disagree.

It appears 'they' were mistaken.




As I have remarked in other posts, it is possible that this
single sample may have been melted due to a cause other than
deliberate casting, so by itself it is not conclusive evidence for a
copper casting technology, though it is suggestive.


One cant make that claim without investigation, there hasn't been any
undertaking by others do examine artefacts for casting.

Yes, there has. Please note that every artifact that does not
show the internal characteristics of melted copper is evidence
against that item being cast. And, as Gary and Paul have
pointed out, when an artifact shows clear evidence of having
been made by smithing, that is evidence against it having been
cast.

Again I point
to the article:

Neiburger said "Further xeroradiographic surveys and analysis of the
25,000 existing copper artifacts from that period (Archic Midwestern
United States) are necessary for the determination of how extensively
early Native Americans had used melted metal."

I fully agree, and hope that more such studies are done.


It doesn't look like any real studies has been done to say casting was
NOT practised - or that it was. Personally I don't expect a hell of a
lot of casting due to the pure copper being available (even if not
always in large lumps) - but I cannot dismiss the evidence, limited as
it is, considering the LACK of research undertaken so far.

We've been looking at the evidence for a bit now, on this
thread. The evidence for casting that's been presented so far
appears to have suffered in the course of examination. That
said, I would very much like to see more investigation done on
this subject.



In any event, none of the other objects show the porosity signature
of atmospheric casting. So even if the ancient people found flawed
castings acceptable (and such castings would be weak and brittle),
the lack of porosity is strong evidence that none of these particular
items, with the possible exception of R666, were cast.

Gary

Seppo, would you care to comment on this last by Gary?

Tom McDonald

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 08:26:52 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
[..]
Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."

And as I note below, they are quite wrong. It is rather obvious that
they have little practical experience or knowledge about working
native copper. It behaves significantly differently from other metals
when melted or cast.

Your authorities are a dentist, an engineer whose expertise is with
iron and steel, and one chemist (who disagrees with 4 others at his
school). Frankly, not a very impressive collection of authorities on
the metallurgy of native copper.

The single large surface
bubble is a blister, common when the surface of a wrought piece
is overheated. Compare it to the radiograph of R666. The latter
does show the characteristic deep pattern of porosity of an at least
partially melted copper object.

In my experience of examples of all kinds - no two are ever identical.

There's a huge gap between "not identical" and grossly dissimilar.
The physical chemistry of atmospheric melting of pure copper isn't
something you can just wave away, or class as a dispute between
quoted sources. It is a physical fact. Anyone who actually works
with the metal is well aware of the forms the characteristic porosity
take.

The blister they're claiming as evidence of casting simply isn't an
example of the characteristic porosity you get when melting copper,
which always is a collection of foam-like tiny bubbles deep in the
metal. It *is* an example of what happens when you anneal native
copper after it has been cold worked.

Pictures of just such blisters are on the pages Tom referenced,
where Neubauer used cold work and annealing to produce artifacts
like those the ancients produced. In the photos, you see blisters
very similar to those being claimed to be evidence of casting on
work which has provably not been melted or cast.

Isn't it just possible that you focus too strongly on perfect casting
- the imperfections resulting from casting may not have been a real
big deal to the ancient people.

But the imperfections due to casting pure copper *would* produce the
characteristic porosity which is *not* seen in any of the pieces other
than R666.

Again, I point to the fact they disagree.

Again, I point to the fact that they're simply wrong.

Gary

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 12:10:10 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:05:25 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

As that article notes, 14 billion pounds of copper have been removed
from the area since the ancients were working copper there. Let the
enormity of that number sink in. There was an *awful lot* of copper
there in ancient times, much of it easily accessible from the surface.

My main interest was to show the formation of the copper deposits -
the volcanic activity that melted it (and other minerals with it).
Silver is/was found in fair quantities alongside the copper. What
isn't known - because nobody cares to find out, is the composition of
the metal used in the artefacts. It is ASSUMED to be pure copper.

The presence of silver inclusions *proves* the native copper was not
melted after being deposited. Native copper is deposited by chemical
means, not volcanic melting and extrusion. This naturally chemically
refined material is extremely pure copper. Here's a quote from the
Caladonia Native Copper Mine literature;

" The term "native" as used by mining men is synonymous with "pure",
"unadulterated" or "virgin". Keweenaw copper was found in a state of
such purity that a piece brought from underground could immediately
be beaten into pots and pans without smelting or refining."

Neubauer suggests that the ancients
would want to start with a piece of about the right size for the
object they wanted to make. At most that would be a lump weighing
a few pounds, in the vast majority of cases it would be a lump smaller
than a hen's egg. Even today, such lumps are relatively plentiful in
the copper belt. They were vastly more so 6,000 years ago before
modern industrial man started extracting copper from the region.

Knowing that mining was done by the ancient, including under ground
mining, then if the above was the case - where are all the piles of
copper not found to be suitable?

Some of the ancient mine tailings are still there, for example at the sites
on the Snake River near Pine City, Minnesota (Minnesota historical site
21PN11), or near Beroun, Minnesota (21PN86). But most of the tailings
at Keweenaw were reworked by 19th and 20th century miners. The tailings
were rich and easily accessable, so it should be no surprise that miners
using more modern methods would have done this. 20th century miners
even reworked the tailings of 19th century mining operations as recovery
techniques, and power machinery, made it profitable to do so.

At village sites there should exist copper scraps in considerable
quantities if such was simply discarded as "useless" if not big enough
for the task at hand. Nobody has pointed to such as yet at least.

Do you have evidence of the existence of such villages in the area?
From what I can gather, ancient native copper mining in the UP was
seasonal work, done from temporary encampments at the mine sites.
This is not a subject where I can claim any expertise, so I don't hold
that as absolute fact. Any hard evidence of permanent habitations
near the mines would be welcome.

Gary

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 01:33:16 -0500, Tom McDonald
wrote:

Eric Stevens wrote:

snip


What about radiographs cited by Mallery? These have been mentioned
several times.

Eric,

Gary has discussed this several times. In essence, the
radiographs on Connor's web site cited by Mallery were
apparently not cast. What Mallery considered bubbles
characteristic of cast copper appear to be, with one exception,
*not* the type of bubbles one finds in casts of copper of the
purity seen in the artifacts.

Apart from the fact that the radiographs on Connors site are by no
means the only evidence, the presence of one exception should not be
ignored.

The sole exception, the artifact labeled R666 (Riverside site
artifact number), or 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum catalog
number--where the artifact is curated), does show the typical
porosity. However, I don't think anyone thinks that the
artifact is an example of intentional casting, but rather of
accidental or natural (e.g.: forest fire) melting of a bit of
copper.

I don't for one minute expect that an ordinary forest fire would melt
a copper artifact of that size.

OTOH, some of the radiographs clearly show annealing twins, and
linear voids characteristic of smithing.

This has been discussed before in this thread, perhaps before
you returned. If any of this seems new to you, you might want
to read the thread in Google groups.

How about the several times I posted the reference to the reports of
New York Testing Laboratories and the National Bureax of Standards. I
quoted Mallery in Message-ID:
. Yuri Kuchinski later
picked it up and requoted it in message
om... and I cited my
original article again in Message-ID:
.

Important words from the quote from Mallery include:

"X-RAY EXAMINATION:—The tools were radiographed using
standard techniques. A review of the radiographs led to the
following observations:— # I—The three tools were originally cast."

"The specimens are originally cast but apparently have been
reheated and worked to some extent."

"Following this report, six leading American museums furnished
tools from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and
Peru for testing. Various metallurgists who have examined the
micrographs of these tools concur in the findings of the New
York Testing Laboratories, Inc. that many of the specimens
examined have been cast. Dr. George P. Ellinger, metallurgist
for the National Bureau of Standards, said, after examining the
submitted specimens, "The presence of cuprous oxide in the
interior of the tools tested and the concavity caused by
shrinking justify the conclusion that the vast majority of the
ancient tools were cast."


These words are unambiguous and do not depend solely on the
interpretation of the information posted on Connor's site.




Eric Stevens

Eric Stevens says in
:

These words are unambiguous and do not depend solely on the
interpretation of the information posted on Connor's site.

This is not so hard to see, copper comals made in Guerrero and
Xoahaca are made in much the same way they were previous, the
comal being the primary 'tool' made in the region. These comals
are not cast, they are pounded. I am by no means a leading
expert on the totality of tools, but the comal appears to be
something that was large and consumed alot of the copper
generated for non-ornamental purposes.
Maybe it is difficult for a person in New Zealand to have
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.

I would not be surprised if the Andeans and Mesoamericans cast
copper, they certainly has made many advances in metallurgy,
however I think, with regard to tool use, one has to question
the utility of casting when hammering out the metal requires
less heat and is amicable to all kinds of transformations
without need of a mold.

BTW, this whole conversation is repetitious and boring. We
start this whole thing by some idiot argueing that copper
smelting technology came from europe, when in fact the
technology in the new world clearly initiated independently in
south america and spread in the opposite direction. Of course if
the eurasians can invent copper smelting and then casting, gee
it seems like someone who knows enough to smelt copper could, if
he so desired, to cast it also, a minor variation in a well
advanced technology. Thus the cultural connection of either to
eurasian influence is dubious even if it did exist. By the fact
you have some expert pointing to a number of cultures in which
we KNOW that copper smelting developed independently of eurasia,
as evidence for copper casting is not the way to 'cast' an
argument for the diffusion of casting technology from europe.
More or less its a way to disprove that any artifacts that were
cast in the new world were the result of european influences.

Are you arguing for the sake of arguing or is there a point and
direction to your argument?

BTW, Now that we have decided to dabble south. Consider the
obsidian knives and decorative glasswares of the mesoamericans.
What kind of parallels do these have in the old world. This was
a fairly advanced technology.



--
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/

Gary Coffman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 08:26:52 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
[..]
Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."

And as I note below, they are quite wrong. It is rather obvious that
they have little practical experience or knowledge about working
native copper. It behaves significantly differently from other metals
when melted or cast.

Copper is copper no matter what part of the world it is in. ALLOYS
vary from place to place. So I find it hard to accept Michigan "native
copper" is much different from that here in Australia.

I would also direct your attention to this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

There is little question this has been melted - and where are the
obvious faults?

Your authorities are a dentist, an engineer whose expertise is with
iron and steel, and one chemist (who disagrees with 4 others at his
school). Frankly, not a very impressive collection of authorities on
the metallurgy of native copper.

If you go to purchase a bottle of wine, which is the most important -
the label on the bottle or the taste of the content? The above is
pointing to the label, ignoring the content.

The single large surface
bubble is a blister, common when the surface of a wrought piece
is overheated. Compare it to the radiograph of R666. The latter
does show the characteristic deep pattern of porosity of an at least
partially melted copper object.

[..]

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

snip

http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

The copper may well be 99% pure - what about the rest? It isn't every
day people find huge lumps of pure copper without impurities embedded
within it. This is the dilemma that people bypass and ignore.

This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

[..]



Seppo,

Thank you for the urls.

From the second link:



Hang on a sec. What about the first? After all it is THE more
important one.

Seppo,

I don't think so. That's why I focused on the other url.

THAT or similar and worse are the condition of the copper you will
find frequently.

http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

You tell me how the hell you can make an axe head out of that! You are
in total denial about this problem.

I don't know the matrix enclosing the copper in this sample.

It is enough to know it exists.

However, as you note below, stone hammers would work fine to
crush rock containing the copper. Then the copper bits could be
picked out of the debitage.

....and how do you think it is made into one large lump -eg to make an
axe head? Spit on it an hope it glues it together?

What is the problem? No one has maintained that all the copper
used was in the form of pure copper nuggets.

Oh but that IS the implication.

"Michigan’s copper deposits were remarkable for their quality
and purity. Bands of native copper were contained in outcrops 2
to 8 miles wide and of varying depth. The surface deposits first
attracted the notice of Native Americans who dug out the easily
accessible chunks and fashioned copper tools and adornments from
them."


Do you REALLY believe they were cliffs of PURE copper?

No, of course not. Don't be silly.

Note the words
"were contained in". Then see the Networks.JPG and you will get an
idea of the meaning of the words.

What is your point? We know that the folks back then
eventually had to mine the copper. We know the tools they used
to do so. Had most of the copper been in large lumps, the tools
used for mining would not have been large stone hammers, wedges,
fire, etc.

As Gary has pointed out, it's a bitch to cut pure copper, even
with steel tools. Smart folks, like the Indians of those days
were (still are, BTW), would most likely have preferred to
extract the copper in more manageable sizes.

So mining involves exactly the type finds (and worse) I pointed to
with the URL.

I am aware of one piece of copper 17 ton of it (Yank ton presumably -
a short measure). It was found on the bottom of Lake Superior. I'm
also aware of another large find of several tons, but a VERY long way
underground in a modern mine. Neither kind of find was available to
the native people.


And nor would they have preferred them if they were available.
There is a huge chunk of copper still in a mine, which the
ancient Indians tried to extract, but appear to have given up as
a bad job. Still, they seemed to do OK without it.

BTW, what is your fascination with size here? It's not really
relevant.

Isn't it? Why else do claims of "more manageable sizes" get made? Also
mentions of "egg sized" etc... etc... indicating a contiguous piece of
pure copper of the required size. This right size lump message has run
right through the thread by the naysayers.

So mining appears to have *begun* where copper deposits were on
the surface. This makes sense, as there was also drift copper
(over a wider area than just the UP mining areas), and folks
early on seem to have selectively used lumps of copper that
needed no processing. While this might not have been an every
day event, it clearly was common enough to produce many of the
copper artifacts in the region.

As to mining the copper:

"They [Indians] dug pits in the ground and separated the copper
from the stone by hammering, by the use of wedges, and,
possibly, by the use of heat. Thousands of hammers have been
found in and about the old pits."


The claimed method is not fact - only assumption. The "fact" is the
finding a lot of "hammers". They are only proof of pounding or
hammering - which can mean crushing of rock containing the copper.

Yes, that too. Or do you imagine that the hammers were
single-purpose tools?

Indeed they are. A hammer is properly described as a "hand percussion
instrument" - a single purpose tool.

It seems that these folks picked the visible copper out of the
debitage after beating the bejesus out of the rock. That seems
reasonable to me, as there seems to have been quite enough such
copper available to make other methods of extraction unnecessary.

The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist.

THAT is nonsense. I have provided you with a good example of the
nature of it. It isn't the first time I have done it either - and
haven't even had to use the same pictures.

Re-read (read?) what I wrote directly above the bit you went
off on.

"The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist." - does exist - I
have provided evidence of it in the URL above.

Indian people
developed the technology they needed to extract the resource
they wanted.

Obviously, only you don't know what method they used. Nobody has
bothered to find out.

Ever heard of 'archaeology'? Or haven't *you* bothered to find
that out?

You are rejecting some methods, and still only recognise your own
unsubstantiated version that suits your view. You do not accept
crushing and melting to separate the copper from rubbish - to make it
into "more manageable sizes"!

http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/crucible.htm

"Neiburger says these bubbles are caused by hot gas in molten metal
and as such are solid evidence of copper melting and casting."

....not to mention other claims made on that site.

They may have developed copper casting technology
as well. Since smelting wasn't necessary, casting would have
been a stand-alone technology. It wasn't beyond the capacity of
the Indians of the upper Great Lakes; but it also wasn't necessary.


Then you can perhaps point to the huge piles of discarded copper that
was useless because it looked like that stuff in the first URL. There
have been vast amounts mined by the native people - where are the
rejected copper piles?


Some is still there.

Where?

I assume, but do not know, that modern
prospectors and miners would have processed such piles, as they
would probably have been a good source of copper for smelting.
Or do you think that respect for the past would have prevented
the modern copper industry from utilizing that resource?

I did anticipate this answer already :-)

Where is the evidence they did so? Remember "not knowing" means
"doesn't exist", in your methodology of argument. The ancient mining
sites are numerous - therefor scrap copper sites would be at least as
numerous - but more likely far more numerous as village sites don't
have them either. Therefor the recording of the use of these piles of
"copper rubbish" by early colonials is that much more likely to exist
in multiple places - IF it happened at all. Now all you have to do is
support your "what if" with facts or see it disappear - without even
so much as a puff of smoke.

"No large pieces of scrap copper were found, and this could be an
indication that the Cahokia copper craftsmen "had learned to smelt
copper scrap"." - ibid

"Perino noted that while it is known that many copper objects were
made at Cahokia, "nowhere in the area has anyone found any copper
scrap"." - ibid

A broader look for copper s/melting.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/assem/2/2dung2.html

(Review of book)
Early Metal Mining and Production - Edinburgh University Press 1995
ISBN 0 7486 0498 7
"The use of native copper in North America is explored in some detail
but the smelting and alloying technology of South America is barely
mentioned."

http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/lamanai.htm

"Copper and bronze (copper-tin and copper-arsenic) began to arrive at
Lamanai during the 13th century AD. Provenience studies conducted by
Dr. Dorothy Hosler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
revealed that the copper used to produce many of these items was
obtained from West Mexican ore fields."

Note specially this:

http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

Where is the "obvious" evidence of it being cast?

There is a section on metals (pp.183-350) in the volume edited by
David A. Scott and Pieter Meyers, "Archaeometry of Pre-Columbian Sites
and Artifacts". What is says I have no idea

See this for an idea - not yet implemented?
http://www.socarchsci.org/ARK96.htm
LASER ION MASS SPECTROSCOPY AS A TOOL FOR ARCHAEOMETRY


If the copper is pure is not known because nobody has bothered to find
out.

And yet, they did. If you aren't going to read this thread any
better than you appear to have done in this sentence, why post?

Are you now claiming an extensive analysis of artefact has indeed been
done? I'm sure you would be eager to point to them -if they exist. So
where are they? As far as I know, only those few artefacts under
discussion have been analysed to any degree.

Silver does exist with/alongside/embedded in with copper in that
area - as are other minerals, including arsenic.

Sure. Copper artifacts have been found with just those
inclusions. However, silver isn't found in them as an alloy
(which might happen if the material were cast), but as
inclusions (which would happen if the copper-silver cobble were
worked by smithing).

How do you know that when the analysis hasn't been done?


--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Eric Stevens wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 01:33:16 -0500, Tom McDonald
wrote:


Eric Stevens wrote:

snip

What about radiographs cited by Mallery? These have been mentioned
several times.

Eric,

Gary has discussed this several times. In essence, the
radiographs on Connor's web site cited by Mallery were
apparently not cast. What Mallery considered bubbles
characteristic of cast copper appear to be, with one exception,
*not* the type of bubbles one finds in casts of copper of the
purity seen in the artifacts.


Apart from the fact that the radiographs on Connors site are by no
means the only evidence, the presence of one exception should not be
ignored.

Eric,

It isn't being ignored. It has been, and continues to be,
discussed. It would be a stronger candidate for evidence of
intentional casting if it were not a shapeless blob that somehow
got melted.


The sole exception, the artifact labeled R666 (Riverside site
artifact number), or 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum catalog
number--where the artifact is curated), does show the typical
porosity. However, I don't think anyone thinks that the
artifact is an example of intentional casting, but rather of
accidental or natural (e.g.: forest fire) melting of a bit of
copper.


I don't for one minute expect that an ordinary forest fire would melt
a copper artifact of that size.

First, what do you mean by "of that size"? The dimensions
noted are about the size of a little girl's palm (about 2.4" x
1.6" x .3"), with a weight of about one pound. (The weight
given in grams seems to have misplaced the decimal; I doubt that
such a hunk of copper would weigh 12 pounds.)

Second, what do you mean by 'ordinary forest fire'? Forest
fires can range from about 700 C to about 1200 C. The high end
of that scale is well over the melting point of copper, at 1084
C. It does not appear that your incredulity can rule out forest
fire here. I found this on a site about satellite detection of
forest fires:

"For temperatures associated with fires (eg 1,000k-1,500K) the
peak wavelength will be considerably shorter (a few µm)."

http://ceos.cnes.fr:8100/cdrom-00b2/...t/firedet1.htm

or

http://makeashorterlink.com/?N156324B8




OTOH, some of the radiographs clearly show annealing twins, and
linear voids characteristic of smithing.

This has been discussed before in this thread, perhaps before
you returned. If any of this seems new to you, you might want
to read the thread in Google groups.


How about the several times I posted the reference to the reports of
New York Testing Laboratories and the National Bureax of Standards. I
quoted Mallery in Message-ID:
. Yuri Kuchinski later
picked it up and requoted it in message
om... and I cited my
original article again in Message-ID:
.

You've told me that you haven't been able to find the report
from the NYTL, and (correct me if I'm wrong), from the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (the successor to the
National Bureau of Standards). Thus, we don't know what the the
full reports state, and don't know whether the results might be
interpreted differently today.

I've just emailed both the NYTL and the NIST about these
reports. Probably a lost cause, but what the hell.

However, please note that the NBS report Mallery cites on page
223, Letter-Circular 444, July 13, 1935, is _not_ the source of
the quotation by Dr. George P. Ellinger on page 225, quoted by
you below. The quotation by Ellinger has to have been made
_after_ the NYTL report; and as I note below, the NYTL testing
had to have been done at least a decade after NBS L-C 444.

We don't know whether Ellinger is being quoted from a report, a
letter, a conversation, or what. We can't follow up on this to
see whether Mallery got it right.



Important words from the quote from Mallery include:

"X-RAY EXAMINATION:—The tools were radiographed using
standard techniques. A review of the radiographs led to the
following observations:— # I—The three tools were originally cast."

"The specimens are originally cast but apparently have been
reheated and worked to some extent."

This was the testing done at the behest of James A. Ford of the
American Museum of Natural History, per Mallery. Ford began his
tenure at the Museum sometime in 1946:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/informat...ord_james.html

or

http://makeashorterlink.com/?J567224B8


"Following this report, six leading American museums furnished
tools from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and
Peru for testing. Various metallurgists who have examined the
micrographs of these tools concur in the findings of the New
York Testing Laboratories, Inc. that many of the specimens
examined have been cast. Dr. George P. Ellinger, metallurgist
for the National Bureau of Standards, said, after examining the
submitted specimens, "The presence of cuprous oxide in the
interior of the tools tested and the concavity caused by
shrinking justify the conclusion that the vast majority of the
ancient tools were cast."

Even if Mallery quoted accurately from the NYTL and George
Ellinger, we are still left with the problem that neither the
NYTL report, or the statement by Ellinger, state what Gary and
Paul assure us would have been obvious from the radiographs;
characteristic porosities. Internal small bubbles. Many.

Instead, the NYTL report talks about 'course-grained copper and
.... several annealing twins' for the axe and chisel; and 'pure
copper crystals or grains' for the spearhead. These were from
100x magnifications of sections taken from the artifacts. No
bubbles mentioned. As for the radiographs, the NYTL only says
'[t]he specimens were originally cast....' No mention of
bubbles; no details as to how they arrived at that verdict.

The later testing of other artifacts Mallery mentions is
entirely unsupported by even the details given for the NYTL
report, with the exception of Ellinger's mention of cuprous
oxide in the interior of the tools tested, and the gross
observation of concavities in the tools (all of them? some of
them? which?). Again, we don't seem to have any way of
tracking down the source of the Ellinger quotation.

None of these tools appear to have been radiographed. Mention
is made only of micrographs. And no mention whatsoever of
small-bubble porosities.



These words are unambiguous and do not depend solely on the
interpretation of the information posted on Connor's site.

For sufficiently small values of 'unambiguous', perhaps.

Tom McDonald

Gary Coffman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 12:10:10 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:05:25 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

As that article notes, 14 billion pounds of copper have been removed
from the area since the ancients were working copper there. Let the
enormity of that number sink in. There was an *awful lot* of copper
there in ancient times, much of it easily accessible from the surface.

My main interest was to show the formation of the copper deposits -
the volcanic activity that melted it (and other minerals with it).
Silver is/was found in fair quantities alongside the copper. What
isn't known - because nobody cares to find out, is the composition of
the metal used in the artefacts. It is ASSUMED to be pure copper.

The presence of silver inclusions *proves* the native copper was not
melted after being deposited.

....but only for that piece - not for any other piece. Further more
IIRC there is a method of laminating copper and silver sheet and
carving through one into the other. It is a Japanese technique IIRC.
It requires being heated under pressure, to the point the silver just
starts "sweating" and it brazes the sheets together. So silver in
copper can also be deliberate - as decoration.


Native copper is deposited by chemical
means, not volcanic melting and extrusion.

I already posted this earlier. It disagrees with you:

http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

"chemical" doesn't get a single mention.

This naturally chemically
refined material is extremely pure copper. Here's a quote from the
Caladonia Native Copper Mine literature;

" The term "native" as used by mining men is synonymous with "pure",
"unadulterated" or "virgin". Keweenaw copper was found in a state of
such purity that a piece brought from underground could immediately
be beaten into pots and pans without smelting or refining."

This does not make a claim of "chemical" anything. Copper Sulfate
(Bluestone; blue, Roman or Salzburg vitriol) is soluble in water - but
dries to a blue crystal or powder. There are just nowhere near the
amount of acids or ammonia to it to be dissolved in!

Neubauer suggests that the ancients
would want to start with a piece of about the right size for the
object they wanted to make. At most that would be a lump weighing
a few pounds, in the vast majority of cases it would be a lump smaller
than a hen's egg. Even today, such lumps are relatively plentiful in
the copper belt. They were vastly more so 6,000 years ago before
modern industrial man started extracting copper from the region.

Knowing that mining was done by the ancient, including under ground
mining, then if the above was the case - where are all the piles of
copper not found to be suitable?

Some of the ancient mine tailings are still there, for example at the sites
on the Snake River near Pine City, Minnesota (Minnesota historical site
21PN11), or near Beroun, Minnesota (21PN86).

Interesting - I find only one ref to 21PN11, and it mentions nothing
about tailings. Nor do I see mentions of prehistoric tailings
anywhere. What is known of these tailings piles -do they contain a lot
of pure copper?

But most of the tailings
at Keweenaw were reworked by 19th and 20th century miners. The tailings
were rich and easily accessable, so it should be no surprise that miners
using more modern methods would have done this. 20th century miners
even reworked the tailings of 19th century mining operations as recovery
techniques, and power machinery, made it profitable to do so.

Again I can find no reference to prehistoric tailings having been
reworked. Modern ones have been:

http://www.atthecreation.com/wis.anc/%20cu.mines.html
http://www.scripophily.net/quinmincom18.html


At village sites there should exist copper scraps in considerable
quantities if such was simply discarded as "useless" if not big enough
for the task at hand. Nobody has pointed to such as yet at least.

Do you have evidence of the existence of such villages in the area?

I posted information of this in a reply to Tom.

From what I can gather, ancient native copper mining in the UP was
seasonal work, done from temporary encampments at the mine sites.
This is not a subject where I can claim any expertise, so I don't hold
that as absolute fact. Any hard evidence of permanent habitations
near the mines would be welcome.

I'm not certain of their "permanency", but villages they did have.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:


Seppo Renfors wrote:

snip

http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

The copper may well be 99% pure - what about the rest? It isn't every
day people find huge lumps of pure copper without impurities embedded
within it. This is the dilemma that people bypass and ignore.

This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

[..]



Seppo,

Thank you for the urls.

From the second link:



Hang on a sec. What about the first? After all it is THE more
important one.

Seppo,

I don't think so. That's why I focused on the other url.


THAT or similar and worse are the condition of the copper you will
find frequently.


http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG

You tell me how the hell you can make an axe head out of that! You are
in total denial about this problem.

I don't know the matrix enclosing the copper in this sample.


It is enough to know it exists.


However, as you note below, stone hammers would work fine to
crush rock containing the copper. Then the copper bits could be
picked out of the debitage.


...and how do you think it is made into one large lump -eg to make an
axe head? Spit on it an hope it glues it together?


What is the problem? No one has maintained that all the copper
used was in the form of pure copper nuggets.


Oh but that IS the implication.


"Michigan’s copper deposits were remarkable for their quality
and purity. Bands of native copper were contained in outcrops 2
to 8 miles wide and of varying depth. The surface deposits first
attracted the notice of Native Americans who dug out the easily
accessible chunks and fashioned copper tools and adornments from
them."


Do you REALLY believe they were cliffs of PURE copper?

No, of course not. Don't be silly.



Note the words

"were contained in". Then see the Networks.JPG and you will get an
idea of the meaning of the words.

What is your point? We know that the folks back then
eventually had to mine the copper. We know the tools they used
to do so. Had most of the copper been in large lumps, the tools
used for mining would not have been large stone hammers, wedges,
fire, etc.

As Gary has pointed out, it's a bitch to cut pure copper, even
with steel tools. Smart folks, like the Indians of those days
were (still are, BTW), would most likely have preferred to
extract the copper in more manageable sizes.


So mining involves exactly the type finds (and worse) I pointed to
with the URL.


I am aware of one piece of copper 17 ton of it (Yank ton presumably -
a short measure). It was found on the bottom of Lake Superior. I'm
also aware of another large find of several tons, but a VERY long way
underground in a modern mine. Neither kind of find was available to
the native people.


And nor would they have preferred them if they were available.
There is a huge chunk of copper still in a mine, which the
ancient Indians tried to extract, but appear to have given up as
a bad job. Still, they seemed to do OK without it.

BTW, what is your fascination with size here? It's not really
relevant.


Isn't it? Why else do claims of "more manageable sizes" get made? Also
mentions of "egg sized" etc... etc... indicating a contiguous piece of
pure copper of the required size. This right size lump message has run
right through the thread by the naysayers.


So mining appears to have *begun* where copper deposits were on
the surface. This makes sense, as there was also drift copper
(over a wider area than just the UP mining areas), and folks
early on seem to have selectively used lumps of copper that
needed no processing. While this might not have been an every
day event, it clearly was common enough to produce many of the
copper artifacts in the region.

As to mining the copper:

"They [Indians] dug pits in the ground and separated the copper

from the stone by hammering, by the use of wedges, and,

possibly, by the use of heat. Thousands of hammers have been
found in and about the old pits."


The claimed method is not fact - only assumption. The "fact" is the
finding a lot of "hammers". They are only proof of pounding or
hammering - which can mean crushing of rock containing the copper.

Yes, that too. Or do you imagine that the hammers were
single-purpose tools?


Indeed they are. A hammer is properly described as a "hand percussion
instrument" - a single purpose tool.


It seems that these folks picked the visible copper out of the
debitage after beating the bejesus out of the rock. That seems
reasonable to me, as there seems to have been quite enough such
copper available to make other methods of extraction unnecessary.

The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist.

THAT is nonsense. I have provided you with a good example of the
nature of it. It isn't the first time I have done it either - and
haven't even had to use the same pictures.

Re-read (read?) what I wrote directly above the bit you went
off on.


"The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist." - does exist - I
have provided evidence of it in the URL above.


Indian people
developed the technology they needed to extract the resource
they wanted.

Obviously, only you don't know what method they used. Nobody has
bothered to find out.

Ever heard of 'archaeology'? Or haven't *you* bothered to find
that out?


You are rejecting some methods, and still only recognise your own
unsubstantiated version that suits your view. You do not accept
crushing and melting to separate the copper from rubbish - to make it
into "more manageable sizes"!

http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/crucible.htm

"Neiburger says these bubbles are caused by hot gas in molten metal
and as such are solid evidence of copper melting and casting."

...not to mention other claims made on that site.


They may have developed copper casting technology
as well. Since smelting wasn't necessary, casting would have
been a stand-alone technology. It wasn't beyond the capacity of
the Indians of the upper Great Lakes; but it also wasn't necessary.


Then you can perhaps point to the huge piles of discarded copper that
was useless because it looked like that stuff in the first URL. There
have been vast amounts mined by the native people - where are the
rejected copper piles?


Some is still there.


Where?


I assume, but do not know, that modern
prospectors and miners would have processed such piles, as they
would probably have been a good source of copper for smelting.
Or do you think that respect for the past would have prevented
the modern copper industry from utilizing that resource?


I did anticipate this answer already :-)

Where is the evidence they did so? Remember "not knowing" means
"doesn't exist", in your methodology of argument. The ancient mining
sites are numerous - therefor scrap copper sites would be at least as
numerous - but more likely far more numerous as village sites don't
have them either. Therefor the recording of the use of these piles of
"copper rubbish" by early colonials is that much more likely to exist
in multiple places - IF it happened at all. Now all you have to do is
support your "what if" with facts or see it disappear - without even
so much as a puff of smoke.

"No large pieces of scrap copper were found, and this could be an
indication that the Cahokia copper craftsmen "had learned to smelt
copper scrap"." - ibid

"Perino noted that while it is known that many copper objects were
made at Cahokia, "nowhere in the area has anyone found any copper
scrap"." - ibid

A broader look for copper s/melting.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/assem/2/2dung2.html

(Review of book)
Early Metal Mining and Production - Edinburgh University Press 1995
ISBN 0 7486 0498 7
"The use of native copper in North America is explored in some detail
but the smelting and alloying technology of South America is barely
mentioned."

http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/lamanai.htm

"Copper and bronze (copper-tin and copper-arsenic) began to arrive at
Lamanai during the 13th century AD. Provenience studies conducted by
Dr. Dorothy Hosler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
revealed that the copper used to produce many of these items was
obtained from West Mexican ore fields."

Note specially this:

http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

Where is the "obvious" evidence of it being cast?

There is a section on metals (pp.183-350) in the volume edited by
David A. Scott and Pieter Meyers, "Archaeometry of Pre-Columbian Sites
and Artifacts". What is says I have no idea

See this for an idea - not yet implemented?
http://www.socarchsci.org/ARK96.htm
LASER ION MASS SPECTROSCOPY AS A TOOL FOR ARCHAEOMETRY



If the copper is pure is not known because nobody has bothered to find
out.

And yet, they did. If you aren't going to read this thread any
better than you appear to have done in this sentence, why post?


Are you now claiming an extensive analysis of artefact has indeed been
done? I'm sure you would be eager to point to them -if they exist. So
where are they? As far as I know, only those few artefacts under
discussion have been analysed to any degree.


Silver does exist with/alongside/embedded in with copper in that
area - as are other minerals, including arsenic.

Sure. Copper artifacts have been found with just those
inclusions. However, silver isn't found in them as an alloy
(which might happen if the material were cast), but as
inclusions (which would happen if the copper-silver cobble were
worked by smithing).


How do you know that when the analysis hasn't been done?



You're funny, Seppo. Don't ever change.

Tom McDonald

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:

snip

Do you have evidence of the existence of such villages in the area?


I posted information of this in a reply to Tom.

Seppo,

I don't recall that. Could you re-post it?



From what I can gather, ancient native copper mining in the UP was
seasonal work, done from temporary encampments at the mine sites.
This is not a subject where I can claim any expertise, so I don't hold
that as absolute fact. Any hard evidence of permanent habitations
near the mines would be welcome.


I'm not certain of their "permanency", but villages they did have.

Again, for the main time period and region under discussion
(Middle and Late Archaic), what evidence of villages do you
have? These folks were hunter-gatherers, and villages in the
sense we tend to use the term weren't typical. In addition, we
don't have a lot of habitation sites from this period. I'd
appreciate any evidence you have of same.

Tom McDonald

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 07:53:30 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 12:10:10 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:05:25 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

As that article notes, 14 billion pounds of copper have been removed
from the area since the ancients were working copper there. Let the
enormity of that number sink in. There was an *awful lot* of copper
there in ancient times, much of it easily accessible from the surface.

My main interest was to show the formation of the copper deposits -
the volcanic activity that melted it (and other minerals with it).
Silver is/was found in fair quantities alongside the copper. What
isn't known - because nobody cares to find out, is the composition of
the metal used in the artefacts. It is ASSUMED to be pure copper.

The presence of silver inclusions *proves* the native copper was not
melted after being deposited.

...but only for that piece - not for any other piece. Further more
IIRC there is a method of laminating copper and silver sheet and
carving through one into the other. It is a Japanese technique IIRC.
It requires being heated under pressure, to the point the silver just
starts "sweating" and it brazes the sheets together. So silver in
copper can also be deliberate - as decoration.

It is called silver brazing (or more commonly, but incorrectly, called
silver soldering). It is a common technique used to join pieces of
copper. Pressure is not required. A temperature in excess of 800F
is required for brazing to occur (by ASTM definition).

Native copper is deposited by chemical
means, not volcanic melting and extrusion.

I already posted this earlier. It disagrees with you:

http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html

"chemical" doesn't get a single mention.

Actually, it doesn't disagree with me. It says the copper
was carried in an aqueus solution from great depths
and deposited in the vents, fissures, and voids of the
iron bearing rocks above. The pertinent chemical
reaction involved is

CuSO4 + Fe(Metal) = FeSO4 + Cu (Metal)

If you were knowledgeable of the chemistry of copper, this
would have been obvious to you. If you had read any of the
many geochemical references in the links already provided
in this thread, it would have been spelled out for you in
excruciating detail.

This naturally chemically
refined material is extremely pure copper. Here's a quote from the
Caladonia Native Copper Mine literature;

" The term "native" as used by mining men is synonymous with "pure",
"unadulterated" or "virgin". Keweenaw copper was found in a state of
such purity that a piece brought from underground could immediately
be beaten into pots and pans without smelting or refining."

This does not make a claim of "chemical" anything. Copper Sulfate
(Bluestone; blue, Roman or Salzburg vitriol) is soluble in water - but
dries to a blue crystal or powder. There are just nowhere near the
amount of acids or ammonia to it to be dissolved in!

Again, I suggest you consult a good text on geochemistry. If you
feel such a text would be too daunting, then just look for descriptions
of the production of Ziment Copper, or how the leaching ponds at
Parys mountain operated. These processes mimic the natural
geochemical processes at work at Keweenaw.

Gary

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:

Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]

Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.


They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."


Gary showed that the porosity typical of pure cast copper is
not present in that artifact. He even explained in just below.

Please point out the "porosity" in this sample:

Two copper pigs:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

The casting is obvious in this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/LA_1240-1.4.jpg

Both pictures show melted copper - pre Colombian melted copper! It
leaves Gary's statements hanging in the air.

However if one considers that "bubbling" has been claimed to be caused
by "overheating" in a annealing process - then it is saying "melted"
at the same time, as it cannot bubble UNLESS a portion of it is
melted. Also "welding" requires the melting of the metal - or so
goddamned close to it that the friction heat generated by a blow on it
does melt the metal.

Those are two logical examples of melting occurring - the knowledge of
melting copper existed. It beggars belief that scraps and off cuts
were NOT melted when the process must have been known to them. That
people suggest they would rather go and do hard manual labour another
day to find a piece "just right" for the job, when it is right there,
right now, right before them. All they have to do is melt it into one
lump.

The implied suggestion they would rather do the hard labour, and not
proceed with the easier option available immediately to them, isn't
consistent with known human behaviour.

[..]


SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:


On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]


Again, porosity is the problem, and that should
show up on radiographs, as it does for R666 (which
certainly shows evidence of being melted in
atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence of
being cast), but none of the other artifacts
presented show that sort of porosity.

See: http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the
characteristic porosity copper casting would produce.


They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble
can clearly been seen...."


Gary showed that the porosity typical of pure cast copper
is not present in that artifact. He even explained in just
below.


Please point out the "porosity" in this sample:

Two copper pigs: http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG



The casting is obvious in this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/LA_1240-1.4.jpg

Both pictures show melted copper - pre Colombian melted
copper! It leaves Gary's statements hanging in the air.

Seppo,

First, the porosity would be most likely visible on
radiographs, or in a section through the bubbles. You haven't
given me the information necessary to determine this for these
copper pieces.

Second, no one argues that no copper was ever melted in
pre-Columbian North America. The question, especially for the
upper Great Lakes area, is whether this was done by humans; and
if so, whether it was done on purpose to make tools or ornaments.

Third, the artifacts shown are from Lamanai, Belize, and
date from after about 1200 AD. They have el zippo to do with
copper work in the Upper Great Lakes area in the Archaic. Is
that why you posted links to the photos, but not to the web page
they're on? That page specifies all this:

"Copper and bronze (copper-tin and copper-arsenic) began to
arrive at Lamanai during the 13th century AD. Provenience
studies conducted by Dr. Dorothy Hosler at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology revealed that the copper used to produce
many of these items was obtained from West Mexican ore fields."

http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/lamanai.htm


However if one considers that "bubbling" has been claimed to
be caused by "overheating" in a annealing process - then it
is saying "melted" at the same time, as it cannot bubble
UNLESS a portion of it is melted. Also "welding" requires the
melting of the metal - or so goddamned close to it that the
friction heat generated by a blow on it does melt the metal.

This is grasping at straws, Seppo.


Those are two logical examples of melting occurring - the
knowledge of melting copper existed. It beggars belief that
scraps and off cuts were NOT melted when the process must
have been known to them. That people suggest they would
rather go and do hard manual labour another day to find a
piece "just right" for the job, when it is right there, right
now, right before them. All they have to do is melt it into
one lump.

Woulda coulda shoulda. As Inger what value to place on
'what-if's'.


The implied suggestion they would rather do the hard labour,
and not proceed with the easier option available immediately
to them, isn't consistent with known human behaviour.


The implied suggestion is that the Indians wisely used the
techniques that produced the best tools and ornaments for them.

As Gary has pointed out, often, and you seem not to have
grasped, casting pure copper is very inferior to forging pure
copper in terms of the quality of the finished product.
Choosing to use a process that produces a lower quality result
over a well-known process that produces a higher quality result
is not consistent with known human behavior.

Tom McDonald

[..]

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 05:04:17 GMT, Philip Deitiker
wrote:

Eric Stevens says in
:


These words are unambiguous and do not depend solely on the
interpretation of the information posted on Connor's site.

This is not so hard to see, copper comals made in Guerrero and
Xoahaca are made in much the same way they were previous, the
comal being the primary 'tool' made in the region. These comals
are not cast, they are pounded. I am by no means a leading
expert on the totality of tools, but the comal appears to be
something that was large and consumed alot of the copper
generated for non-ornamental purposes.
Maybe it is difficult for a person in New Zealand to have
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?

I would not be surprised if the Andeans and Mesoamericans cast
copper, they certainly has made many advances in metallurgy,
however I think, with regard to tool use, one has to question
the utility of casting when hammering out the metal requires
less heat and is amicable to all kinds of transformations
without need of a mold.

BTW, this whole conversation is repetitious and boring. We
start this whole thing by some idiot argueing that copper
smelting technology came from europe, when in fact the
technology in the new world clearly initiated independently in
south america and spread in the opposite direction. Of course if
the eurasians can invent copper smelting and then casting, gee
it seems like someone who knows enough to smelt copper could, if
he so desired, to cast it also, a minor variation in a well
advanced technology. Thus the cultural connection of either to
eurasian influence is dubious even if it did exist. By the fact
you have some expert pointing to a number of cultures in which
we KNOW that copper smelting developed independently of eurasia,
as evidence for copper casting is not the way to 'cast' an
argument for the diffusion of casting technology from europe.
More or less its a way to disprove that any artifacts that were
cast in the new world were the result of european influences.

Are you arguing for the sake of arguing or is there a point and
direction to your argument?

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

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.

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

BTW, Now that we have decided to dabble south.

That's news to me.

Consider the
obsidian knives and decorative glasswares of the mesoamericans.
What kind of parallels do these have in the old world. This was
a fairly advanced technology.




Eric Stevens

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 13:37:36 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:



Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:

Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]

Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.


They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."


Gary showed that the porosity typical of pure cast copper is
not present in that artifact. He even explained in just below.

Please point out the "porosity" in this sample:

Two copper pigs:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

The casting is obvious in this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/LA_1240-1.4.jpg

Both pictures show melted copper - pre Colombian melted copper! It
leaves Gary's statements hanging in the air.

However if one considers that "bubbling" has been claimed to be caused
by "overheating" in a annealing process - then it is saying "melted"
at the same time, as it cannot bubble UNLESS a portion of it is
melted. Also "welding" requires the melting of the metal - or so
goddamned close to it that the friction heat generated by a blow on it
does melt the metal.

Reasonably pure copper can be welded at ambient temperatures merely by
pressure. MIllions of electrical connections rely on this property.


Those are two logical examples of melting occurring - the knowledge of
melting copper existed. It beggars belief that scraps and off cuts
were NOT melted when the process must have been known to them. That
people suggest they would rather go and do hard manual labour another
day to find a piece "just right" for the job, when it is right there,
right now, right before them. All they have to do is melt it into one
lump.

The implied suggestion they would rather do the hard labour, and not
proceed with the easier option available immediately to them, isn't
consistent with known human behaviour.

[..]


SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------




Eric Stevens

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 06:02:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:



Gary Coffman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 08:26:52 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
[..]
Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."

And as I note below, they are quite wrong. It is rather obvious that
they have little practical experience or knowledge about working
native copper. It behaves significantly differently from other metals
when melted or cast.

Copper is copper no matter what part of the world it is in. ALLOYS
vary from place to place. So I find it hard to accept Michigan "native
copper" is much different from that here in Australia.

Michigan native copper is 'meteoric' copper. Australia does have some
meteoric copper (see
http://www.econs.ecel.uwa.edu.au/AMH...ett/news21.htm) but it is
accessible in quantitities very much smaller than in NA.


I would also direct your attention to this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

There is little question this has been melted - and where are the
obvious faults?

Your authorities are a dentist, an engineer whose expertise is with
iron and steel, and one chemist (who disagrees with 4 others at his
school). Frankly, not a very impressive collection of authorities on
the metallurgy of native copper.

If you go to purchase a bottle of wine, which is the most important -
the label on the bottle or the taste of the content? The above is
pointing to the label, ignoring the content.

The single large surface
bubble is a blister, common when the surface of a wrought piece
is overheated. Compare it to the radiograph of R666. The latter
does show the characteristic deep pattern of porosity of an at least
partially melted copper object.

[..]




Eric Stevens

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 02:50:07 -0500, Tom McDonald
wrote:

Eric Stevens wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 01:33:16 -0500, Tom McDonald
wrote:


Eric Stevens wrote:

snip

What about radiographs cited by Mallery? These have been mentioned
several times.

Eric,

Gary has discussed this several times. In essence, the
radiographs on Connor's web site cited by Mallery were
apparently not cast. What Mallery considered bubbles
characteristic of cast copper appear to be, with one exception,
*not* the type of bubbles one finds in casts of copper of the
purity seen in the artifacts.


Apart from the fact that the radiographs on Connors site are by no
means the only evidence, the presence of one exception should not be
ignored.

Eric,

It isn't being ignored. It has been, and continues to be,
discussed. It would be a stronger candidate for evidence of
intentional casting if it were not a shapeless blob that somehow
got melted.


The sole exception, the artifact labeled R666 (Riverside site
artifact number), or 55786 (Milwaukee Public Museum catalog
number--where the artifact is curated), does show the typical
porosity. However, I don't think anyone thinks that the
artifact is an example of intentional casting, but rather of
accidental or natural (e.g.: forest fire) melting of a bit of
copper.


I don't for one minute expect that an ordinary forest fire would melt
a copper artifact of that size.

First, what do you mean by "of that size"? The dimensions
noted are about the size of a little girl's palm (about 2.4" x
1.6" x .3"), with a weight of about one pound. (The weight
given in grams seems to have misplaced the decimal; I doubt that
such a hunk of copper would weigh 12 pounds.)

That's what I meant.

Second, what do you mean by 'ordinary forest fire'? Forest
fires can range from about 700 C to about 1200 C. The high end
of that scale is well over the melting point of copper, at 1084
C. It does not appear that your incredulity can rule out forest
fire here. I found this on a site about satellite detection of
forest fires:

Flame temperatures of up to 1440C have been recorded but these occur
in midair. These are the flames your satellite (see below) is looking
for. 1200C at or near ground level is exceptional and occurs only in a
burning bed of well ventilated char. Unless the artifact was placed up
a tree it is very unlikely to be exposed to the conditions necessary
for melting. Temperatures at ground level are usually much lower and
it is common to find uncharred or only mildly scorched vegetation
under fire debris.

"For temperatures associated with fires (eg 1,000k-1,500K) the
peak wavelength will be considerably shorter (a few µm)."

http://ceos.cnes.fr:8100/cdrom-00b2/...t/firedet1.htm

or

http://makeashorterlink.com/?N156324B8




OTOH, some of the radiographs clearly show annealing twins, and
linear voids characteristic of smithing.

This has been discussed before in this thread, perhaps before
you returned. If any of this seems new to you, you might want
to read the thread in Google groups.


How about the several times I posted the reference to the reports of
New York Testing Laboratories and the National Bureax of Standards. I
quoted Mallery in Message-ID:
. Yuri Kuchinski later
picked it up and requoted it in message
om... and I cited my
original article again in Message-ID:
.

You've told me that you haven't been able to find the report
from the NYTL, and (correct me if I'm wrong), from the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (the successor to the
National Bureau of Standards). Thus, we don't know what the the
full reports state, and don't know whether the results might be
interpreted differently today.

I haven't been able to track down Mallery's papers. As to whether or
not they would be interpreted differently today - I very much doubt
it. The text quoted by Mallery is most basic metallurgy.

I've just emailed both the NYTL and the NIST about these
reports. Probably a lost cause, but what the hell.

Good idea. I was tempted to do that but never got around to it. I
would be surprised if they had the relevant files after all these
years.

However, please note that the NBS report Mallery cites on page
223, Letter-Circular 444, July 13, 1935, is _not_ the source of
the quotation by Dr. George P. Ellinger on page 225, quoted by
you below. The quotation by Ellinger has to have been made
_after_ the NYTL report; and as I note below, the NYTL testing
had to have been done at least a decade after NBS L-C 444.

We don't know whether Ellinger is being quoted from a report, a
letter, a conversation, or what. We can't follow up on this to
see whether Mallery got it right.

I agree. I'm trying to use Mallery as incontestable proof of copper
casting. I was merely disputing the implication that Gary Coffman had
settled the matter.



Important words from the quote from Mallery include:

"X-RAY EXAMINATION:—The tools were radiographed using
standard techniques. A review of the radiographs led to the
following observations:— # I—The three tools were originally cast."

"The specimens are originally cast but apparently have been
reheated and worked to some extent."

This was the testing done at the behest of James A. Ford of the
American Museum of Natural History, per Mallery. Ford began his
tenure at the Museum sometime in 1946:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/informat...ord_james.html

or

http://makeashorterlink.com/?J567224B8


"Following this report, six leading American museums furnished
tools from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and
Peru for testing. Various metallurgists who have examined the
micrographs of these tools concur in the findings of the New
York Testing Laboratories, Inc. that many of the specimens
examined have been cast. Dr. George P. Ellinger, metallurgist
for the National Bureau of Standards, said, after examining the
submitted specimens, "The presence of cuprous oxide in the
interior of the tools tested and the concavity caused by
shrinking justify the conclusion that the vast majority of the
ancient tools were cast."

Even if Mallery quoted accurately from the NYTL and George
Ellinger, we are still left with the problem that neither the
NYTL report, or the statement by Ellinger, state what Gary and
Paul assure us would have been obvious from the radiographs;
characteristic porosities. Internal small bubbles. Many.

With respect to Gary, the fact that he did not know of the use of coal
or carbon to deoxidise molten copper suggests that his is not the
final word on the subject.


Instead, the NYTL report talks about 'course-grained copper and
... several annealing twins' for the axe and chisel; and 'pure
copper crystals or grains' for the spearhead. These were from
100x magnifications of sections taken from the artifacts. No
bubbles mentioned. As for the radiographs, the NYTL only says
'[t]he specimens were originally cast....' No mention of
bubbles; no details as to how they arrived at that verdict.

The later testing of other artifacts Mallery mentions is
entirely unsupported by even the details given for the NYTL
report, with the exception of Ellinger's mention of cuprous
oxide in the interior of the tools tested, and the gross
observation of concavities in the tools (all of them? some of
them? which?). Again, we don't seem to have any way of
tracking down the source of the Ellinger quotation.

None of these tools appear to have been radiographed. Mention
is made only of micrographs. And no mention whatsoever of
small-bubble porosities.



These words are unambiguous and do not depend solely on the
interpretation of the information posted on Connor's site.

For sufficiently small values of 'unambiguous', perhaps.

Tom McDonald




Eric Stevens

In order to illustrate the nature of the porosity in melted copper I put a
few
pictures up.

http://tinyurl.com/3cw7p

The first labeled Casting is a small ingot cast of ca110 copper It started
out
essentially 99.9% fine. The casting method was about as simple as you can
get.
It was melted with an oxy-acetylene torch and poured into an open mold, made
by
scraping a depression into some foundry sand.

The "cocks comb" sticking out in the upper left is not a sprue. When the
pour
was finished the ingot was shaped like a little loaf. As it solidified,
dissolved gasses came out of solution with the metal. As they did they were
trapped by the solidified metal on the outside of the ingot and built up
pressure. Eventually a weaker spot in the surface of the metal gave way and
metal and gas squirted out. Like stepping on a ketchup packet in the
McDonalds
parking lot.

The size of this is indicative of how much gas was dissolved in the metal.
It is
approximately 10% of the original volume of the ingot.

The rough area in the lower left is not indicative of porosity, It is where
the
metal first struck the sand. When it did, it's surface tension was
sufficiently
disturbed to allow it to flow into the spaces between the sand grains.

The second picture, labeled section, shows what this looked in a cross
section
cut at about the base of the "cocks comb"
You can easily see the large bubbles. It also has a large amount of small
bubbles that are visible under a 10 power loupe.
You can see that it looks very similar to the R666 radiograph. However that
piece looks more like a mistake than a deliberate casting.
You can also see that it is not a single round bubble but a miriad of
amorphous
blobs.

The third picture, labeled forgings, shows it's workability.
The lower shot is from the pure copper ingot, You can see it is full of
fractures and tears.
The upper forging is made from an ingot cast from approx. 4% silver-96%
copper.
This ingot exhibited no cocks comb and the forging was made from the entire
ingot, with no waste removed.

The two metals are visually identical, but one casts like crap and the other
doesn't.

If they were casting on any scale, it is not just inevitable that alloying
occurs, it is pretty much a necessity.

If you want to prove casting, stop stroking around with radiographs and look
for alloying.

Paul K. Dickman

I'm fascinated by the "meteoric copper" idea.

I'm ok with the notion that elements up to Iron are formed by gradual fusion
processes inside stars.

But as far as I know, that's where these fusion processes stop.

Copper isn't formed in that way.

So I can't see how a lump of space debris could reasonably be copper. It could
reasonably include a *bit* of copper, but not easily *be* a copper lump. Iron
yes, you certainly get lumps of iron when, e.g. a supernova goes whomp, but
copper, no I don't see how that's going to happen.

So I find it enormously unlikely that a lump made predominantly of copper might
end up as a meteor. Does anyone know if there is any credibility in this claim
in practice?


Apparently on date Sat, 03 Jul 2004 10:44:05 +1200, Eric Stevens
said:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 06:02:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:



Gary Coffman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 08:26:52 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
[..]
Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."

And as I note below, they are quite wrong. It is rather obvious that
they have little practical experience or knowledge about working
native copper. It behaves significantly differently from other metals
when melted or cast.

Copper is copper no matter what part of the world it is in. ALLOYS
vary from place to place. So I find it hard to accept Michigan "native
copper" is much different from that here in Australia.

Michigan native copper is 'meteoric' copper. Australia does have some
meteoric copper (see
http://www.econs.ecel.uwa.edu.au/AMH...ett/news21.htm) but it is
accessible in quantitities very much smaller than in NA.


I would also direct your attention to this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

There is little question this has been melted - and where are the
obvious faults?

Your authorities are a dentist, an engineer whose expertise is with
iron and steel, and one chemist (who disagrees with 4 others at his
school). Frankly, not a very impressive collection of authorities on
the metallurgy of native copper.

If you go to purchase a bottle of wine, which is the most important -
the label on the bottle or the taste of the content? The above is
pointing to the label, ignoring the content.

The single large surface
bubble is a blister, common when the surface of a wrought piece
is overheated. Compare it to the radiograph of R666. The latter
does show the characteristic deep pattern of porosity of an at least
partially melted copper object.

[..]




Eric Stevens

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:

Tom McDonald wrote:

Seppo Renfors wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:


On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:


Gary Coffman wrote:


[..]


Again, porosity is the problem, and that should
show up on radiographs, as it does for R666 (which
certainly shows evidence of being melted in
atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence of
being cast), but none of the other artifacts
presented show that sort of porosity.

See: http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the
characteristic porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble
can clearly been seen...."

Gary showed that the porosity typical of pure cast copper
is not present in that artifact. He even explained in just
below.

Please point out the "porosity" in this sample:

Two copper pigs: http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG

The casting is obvious in this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/LA_1240-1.4.jpg

Both pictures show melted copper - pre Colombian melted
copper! It leaves Gary's statements hanging in the air.

Seppo,

First, the porosity would be most likely visible on
radiographs, or in a section through the bubbles. You haven't
given me the information necessary to determine this for these
copper pieces.

Indeed. The fact of "bubbles" doesn't necessarily point to of
"overheating" while annealing. That radiographs are needed to
determine casting means it cannot be determined from a visual
inspection unless a un-worked piece eg like the small pigs in the
picture. This work hasn't been done for the artefacts that I can find
- therefor I cannot give it - nor can you then claim "not cast" for
them.

Second, no one argues that no copper was ever melted in
pre-Columbian North America.

You certainly could have fooled me. I has seen a number of instances
where it is claimed no s/melting was needed the copper was worked by
hammering. That embeds the statement "no s/melting".


The question, especially for the
upper Great Lakes area, is whether this was done by humans; and
if so, whether it was done on purpose to make tools or ornaments.

I highly recommend you withdraw that and rephrase it - lest you want
to be seen saying "native people are not humans"!!

Third, the artifacts shown are from Lamanai, Belize, and
date from after about 1200 AD. They have el zippo to do with
copper work in the Upper Great Lakes area in the Archaic. Is
that why you posted links to the photos, but not to the web page
they're on?

The web site URL is posted in another message. The pictures were the
relevant part for this issue of "obvious porosity". Again you are
wanting to look at the label, ignoring the content!


That page specifies all this:

"Copper and bronze (copper-tin and copper-arsenic) began to
arrive at Lamanai during the 13th century AD. Provenience
studies conducted by Dr. Dorothy Hosler at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology revealed that the copper used to produce
many of these items was obtained from West Mexican ore fields."

http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/lamanai.htm

I just take the opportunity to remind you that West Mexico is in
"North America".

However if one considers that "bubbling" has been claimed to
be caused by "overheating" in a annealing process - then it
is saying "melted" at the same time, as it cannot bubble
UNLESS a portion of it is melted. Also "welding" requires the
melting of the metal - or so goddamned close to it that the
friction heat generated by a blow on it does melt the metal.

This is grasping at straws, Seppo.

What "straws"? Is the above right or wrong? Where is your common
sense? Note the picture again where I point to casting is obvious -
that picture suggests a considerable overheating of the metal to have
that result. This simple fact points to problems with temperature
control - it would be no different when annealing something -
temperature can (and is so claimed) get too high so the material
melts. Them not noting this is suggesting people are (A) blind (B)
stupid. I say they were aware of the method required to melt copper.
Why do you disagree considering your earlier statement "no one argues
that no copper was ever melted" - but yet you do exactly that right
here.

Those are two logical examples of melting occurring - the
knowledge of melting copper existed. It beggars belief that
scraps and off cuts were NOT melted when the process must
have been known to them. That people suggest they would
rather go and do hard manual labour another day to find a
piece "just right" for the job, when it is right there, right
now, right before them. All they have to do is melt it into
one lump.

Woulda coulda shoulda. As Inger what value to place on
'what-if's'.

None of the above applies at all Tom - you are operating with a closed
mind at present, and doing your damnedest to contradict your claim "no
one argues that no copper was ever melted"!!

The implied suggestion they would rather do the hard labour,
and not proceed with the easier option available immediately
to them, isn't consistent with known human behaviour.


The implied suggestion is that the Indians wisely used the
techniques that produced the best tools and ornaments for them.

You would further argue that they elect doing something that is much
harder in favour of something that is easier. This is unrealistic. It
is a very modern notion to make bikes that go absolutely nowhere, even
when pedalled for hours!


As Gary has pointed out, often, and you seem not to have
grasped, casting pure copper is very inferior to forging pure
copper in terms of the quality of the finished product.

I suggest you look at Paul's message, and follow the links therein:



Choosing to use a process that produces a lower quality result
over a well-known process that produces a higher quality result
is not consistent with known human behavior.

Again, as it almost always is, there is more to this than meets the
eye - the simple claim "casting makes poorer quality - therefor it
wasn't done" is far, far too simplistic.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Eric Stevens wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 06:02:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors
wrote:



Gary Coffman wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 08:26:52 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:48:01 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote:
[..]
Again, porosity is the problem, and that should show up on
radiographs, as it does for R666 (which certainly shows evidence
of being melted in atmosphere, though not necessarily evidence
of being cast), but none of the other artifacts presented show
that sort of porosity.

See:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/copper.htm

The 4th and 5th pictures down.

Those pictures do not show any evidence of the characteristic
porosity copper casting would produce.

They disagree with you as it states "The casting bubble can clearly
been seen...."

And as I note below, they are quite wrong. It is rather obvious that
they have little practical experience or knowledge about working
native copper. It behaves significantly differently from other metals
when melted or cast.

Copper is copper no matter what part of the world it is in. ALLOYS
vary from place to place. So I find it hard to accept Michigan "native
copper" is much different from that here in Australia.

Michigan native copper is 'meteoric' copper.

I really hate these poncy misleading terms like "meteoric" copper and
"native" copper when perfectly good clear terms are available to use
like "pure", "nugget", "vein"......

Hmmmm.... does that then meant that "meteoric iron" isn't really
"meteoric" or extraterrestrial at all?

Australia does have some
meteoric copper (see
http://www.econs.ecel.uwa.edu.au/AMH...ett/news21.htm) but it is
accessible in quantitities very much smaller than in NA.

Yes, this is virtually my "back yard". There has been copper mining
all along the Flinders Ranges, from North to South as well as on York
Peninsular (Moonta - Wallaroo - Kadina districts, the "copper
triangle"). A few kilometres from here is a perfectly good diamond
pipe as well..... only they built a town over it, and the centre of
the pipe is under the local footy oval... can't disrupt the footy you
know!

The fact that they are lesser quantities doesn't really alter their
composition. CU is CU wherever it is, irrespective of quantities.

[..]
--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
-----------------------------------------------------------------