Were there any examples of Iron working in pre-Colombian America?

by Hyo38
wotan_weevil

There are example of pre-Columbian iron working. There are also post-Columbian but pre-contact examples of iron-working by various American peoples. As far as I know, all of the known-to-be-pre-Columbian iron objects from the Americas are meteoric iron. The best-known group of these are associated with the Hopewell culture (one of the Mound Builder cultures of North America, c. 100BC-AD400), and have been found in multiple Hopewell sites, and also among other cultures (apparently acquired through trade with the Hopewell peoples).

There are objects made of telluric iron (naturally occurring metallic iron, of terrestrial origin) known from Greenland. It is quite possible that some of these are pre-Columbian. (Meteoric iron was also used in Greenland, probably also in pre-Columbian times since the main meteoric sources have been there and available for thousands of years.)

Iron recovered from driftwood from shipwrecks was also worked. Some examples are known to be as old as the early 17th century, but I know of no known pre-Columbian examples. Shipwreck iron was used on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

These iron objects are typically small (e.g., small beads, small blades), and have been worked by cold-forging and/or grinding. These are the same methods used for early Old World meteoric iron objects (many later Old World meteoric iron objects having been hot-forged). Cold-forging and grinding were also used to work native copper, in both the Old and New worlds (and also for bronze-working).

What is absent from pre-Columbian iron-working is the smelting of iron (i.e., the conversion of ore to metallic iron). Only naturally-occurring iron (meteoric iron and telluric iron), and found Old World iron (such as shipwreck iron) were used.

Some examples of such iron objects can be seen at:

(along with further info and some references for further reading). For further reading on the Hopewell iron objects, see