Archaeologica.org

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 051811.php

Archaeologists have discovered a 12,000-year-old iron oxide mine in Chile that marks the oldest evidence of organized mining ever found in the Americas, according to a report in the June issue of Current Anthropology.

A team of researchers led by Diego Salazar of the Universidad de Chile found the 40-meter trench near the coastal town of Taltal in northern Chile. It was dug by the Huentelauquen people—the first settlers in the region—who used iron oxide as pigment for painted stone and bone instruments, and probably also for clothing and body paint, the researchers say.

The remarkable duration and extent of the operation illustrate the surprising cultural complexity of these ancient people. "It shows that [mining] was a labor-intensive activity demanding specific technical skills and some level of social cooperation transmitted through generations," Salazar and his team write.

OK
The next question is….
Was it for local use…
Or was it a trade item?

The ”red ocher” culture is an open question at every coastal site.
(I guess inland as well.)

I don't know how you can tell the difference?

I would guess volume removed vs. local population?

It would be somewhat like the copper of Lake Superior.
There was a lot more removed than the local population used.
It had to be exported.

From the way it shows up everywhere, we know red ocher had a wide appeal.
A town with an abundant and easy to mine local supply would be in a good trade position.

http://www.ramtops.co.uk/copper.html

The Lake Superior copper industry seems a tad overblown....by an order of magnitude or two.

There are an awful lot of assumptions built in to a trading network/industrial mining complex in 10,000 BC South America that I'm not prepared to make without some evidence.

Well…
I don’t want to play ping pong with dueling “experts” on the copper trade.

My point is that if there was more removed than could be locally used, then is a good guess that it was a trade item.

It follows my distinction between gardening and farming.
A garden is for personal family use.
When you produce more than you need for the purpose of trading you become a farmer.

In this case, if you had a ceremony coming up and you went and dug up some red mud for decorating yourself, that is local use.
If you learned others would trade food, women, gold, whatever, for it and you went and dug it up for them, then it is for trade.

Same techniques, different scale, different motive.

Trade routes could be over the nearby hills or continent spanning long range.
In the latter case the product usually made short hops, changing hands along the way.
The Silk Road is a good example.
Few, if any, traders made the trip from China to Turkey.
That is why we have all those wonderful cities in the middle of nowhere along the way.

Used car dealers are a good current day example.
Jay Leno aside, not many guys have a need for 10, 15, 30 cars.
But if the think they can sell it for more than they have to pay for it then they will buy it.
The may "add value" by cleaning it up, putting on new tires, or just taking it to a different town.
But they are not users, they are traders.

With the silk road we have evidence of actual trade goods from one end turning up at the other end. We don't have that in Michigan or South America.

I mean you can speculate that they used credit cards and the internet to pay for and place orders that were shipped out. Without evidence what does it mean?

We have no idea what sort of land management concept these people may have had. Did they consider it part of their territory or could anyone who wanted it dig it up? Al Goodyear suggests that the Topper site was a quarry used by many ancient groups over a very long period of time.

I just don't know that modern...or even ancient...ideas of commerce can be grafted on to an ancient people as you are trying to do. We know nothing about them.