That is exactly what I mean by 'bits and pieces' and the need for a reliable, coherent picture. Spruce Hill is intriguing, but as the piece says, not quite the "smoking gun".
This is the way forward:
Science 28 May 1982:
Vol. 216. no. 4549, pp. 952 - 959
DOI: 10.1126/science.216.4549.952
Batan Grande: A Prehistoric Metallurgical Center in Peru
Izumi Shimada
1, Stephen Epstein
2, and Alan K. Craig
3
1 Assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
2 Graduate student in the Department of Anthropology and research assistant at the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104
3 Professor of geography at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton 33431
Recent archeological fieldwork on the north coast of Peru permits a preliminary reconstruction of a prill-extraction copper and copper alloy smelting process heretofore undocumented in the New World. The process was applied on a large scale during the late pre-Hispanic period. This study provides strong support for the claim that central Andean metallurgy constituted one of the major independent metallurgical traditions of the world.
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Intensive Pre-Incan Metallurgy Recorded by Lake Sediments from the Bolivian Andes.
M. B. Abbott and A. P. Wolfe (2003)
Science 301, 1893-1895
