Hopewell Smelting

Smelting

Archeologist have not confirmed smelting by Hopewell Indians they have only speculated. Early settlers found ancient Indian furnaces and iron swords and tools that could have only been made by smelting. The Hopewell Mann site has given anthropologist another look of ancient smelting. The furnaces that anthropologist have found are believed to have been tampered with. It is no doubt the Hopewell and Adena Indians were excellent metal smiths  to include the use meteoric iron, copper, silver and gold. Its also a known fact that the Hopewell used high heat to manipulated metal into tools and weapons. The metalsmith were so skilled that modern scientist cannot reproduce the copper breastplates even modern presses without smelting. The idea that Hopewell used rivets to make large breastplates has been unproven only speculated. I believe that smelting is the only answer to account for the large breastplates and excellent craftsmanship of many of the meteoric iron and plates of copper.

"The researchers also tested theories that some archeologists had made about the coppersmiths’ techniques. One idea was that they made large copper pieces, like ceremonial breastplates, by “laminating” sheets of copper together through a hammering technique. Deymier-Black said that the lamination could not be reproduced, even with much greater weights achievable with a modern press."


“That may be answered in the last, and perhaps the most remarkable discovery at Mann. Linderman says scientists are starting tests on what appears to be evidence of lead smelting. The practice of melting metals at a very high temperature is just one of the many questions archaeologists will be confronting.”

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/03/132412112/the-prehistoric-treasure-in-the-fields-of-indiana

Early settlers found Hopewell furnaces and smith shops.

(In reference to Hopewell ruins)

“There appears to have been a row of furnaces or smiths’ shops, where the cinders now lie many feet in depth. The remains are four or five feet in depth even now in many places.”
(Haywood 1823 pg. 349)

Arlington Mallery excavated a long tube of iron slag from an Adena site in the Ohio Valley.