Along similar lines, there's the whole Mesoamerican tradition of burning and abandoning formerly great cities never to return due to bad vibes (for want of a better word) as seen in Teotihuacan, Tollan, Quemada, many Mayan sites etc. This might be going too far but perhaps the same "once bitten, twice shy" thinking could apply to iron smelting as a practice (for whatever reason). I know art and craft traditions tend to carry on irrespective of culture, but iron smelting would seem a much, much, much bigger deal than stone carving, making paper, painting murals etc.AD wrote:While "argumentation from absence" is a usually unconvincing hallmark of academic archaeological rhetoric, there is the rather awkward fact that there is no recorded observation of iron smelting by Native Americans at the time of the Europeans' arrival here, and this does require some explaining on our part. After some head scratching, I came up with this tentative hypothesis, related at least to the time line here in Ohio: The iron artifacts here have little or no apparent practical utility, being mainly symbolic in nature. Around the time of the nominal transition from Middle to Late Woodland (roughly 1500 years ago), there was a marked cultural decline for whatever reason, characterized by ceasing to build large ceremonial centers, consolidating into relatively isolated communities, and greatly reducing the production of art. Assuming that, again for whatever reason, people were reacting to the stress of having to concentrate on survival-related activities, perhaps iron working, which apparently was only for the production of symbolic objects - obviously time-consuming and labor-intensive - fell by the wayside, and the technology was simply forgotten and lost over time. Just an idea...
Regards, Alan
Just an idea.
), I forget which, dropped on me.