848 



METAL-WORK 



[b. a. e. 



The four metals, copper, gold, silver, and 

 iron (meteoric), were shaped mainly by 

 cold-hammering and grinding, but heat 

 no doubt was employed to facilitate the 

 hammering proce.«ses and in annealing. 

 It is believed that copper was sometimes 

 swedged, or in sheet form pressed into 

 molds. But the remarkable repousse fig- 

 ures representing elaborately costumed 



REPOUSSE FIGURE IN SHEET-COPPER, FROM A GEORGIA 

 MOUND. (thomas) 



and winged personages in sheet metal, 

 found in mounds in Georgia (Thomas), 

 and other more highly conventionalized 

 figures from Florida mounds (Moore), 

 give evidence of a degree of skill seem- 

 ingly outof keeping with what is known of 

 the general accomplishments of the north- 

 ern tribes. Gushing, however, has demon- 

 strated that repousse work of like char- 



COPPER EAR ORNAMENT, WITH COPY BY WILLOUGHBY, 

 USING ONLY STONE TOOLS; 1-2. (willOUGHBy) 



acter can be accomplished by simple 

 methods — the employment of pressure 

 with a bone or an antler point, the sheet 

 being placed upon a yielding surface, as 

 of buckskin; but some of this work, es- 

 pecially the Georgia specimens, shows a 

 degree of precision in execution appar- 

 ently beyond the reach of the methods 

 thus suggested. 



Examples of overlaying or plating with 

 thin sheets of copper, found by Moore in 



the mounds of Florida and Alabama, and 

 by Putnam, Moorehead, Mills, and others 

 in the mounds of Ohio, are hardly less re- 

 markable; but that these are well within 

 the range of workmen of intelligence em- 

 ploying only stone tools has been amply 

 proved by Willoughby. The thin sheets 

 of copper are readily produced by ham- 

 mering with stone tools with the aid of 

 annealing processes and the skilful use 

 of rivets (Moore). It can hardly be 

 doubted that copper, gold, and silver 

 were sometimes melted by aboriginal 

 metal-workers n. of Mexico, and that 



method of indenting and cutting copper plates, 

 (cusming) 



bits of native copper were freed from the 

 matrix of rock by this means. There 

 seems to be no satisfactory record, how- 

 ever, of casting the forms of objects even 

 in the rough, and there is no proof that 

 ores of any kind were reduced by means 

 of heat. It is a remarkable fact that 

 up to the present time no prehistoric 

 crucible, mold, pattern, or metal- 

 working tool of any kind whatsoever 

 has been identified. No metal-worker's 

 shop or furnace has been located, al- 

 though caches of implements and of the 

 blank forms of implements more or less 

 worked have been found in various places, 



