Metallurgy

A molten/cast iron axe head,

STILL preserved within its “mold”

Found In The Woods Along Paint Creek's North Fork!

This artifact is a cast iron hand axe. The axe casting is still in the mold! The casting was found at a site now in Chillicothe park land, but was the site was part of the land of the former Garrett farm in Ross County.

--- Posted 4th November 2009 by William Conner

A flood during the winter of 1949-50 washed away enough of the bank of Deer Creek in Ross County, Ohio to expose the remains of an iron furnace pit. Arlington Mallery, second from left, insisted that this iron furnace resembled those last used in Europe before Columbus discovered America. The bisection of this furnace is listed as "Deer Creek No. 1"

This led Mallery to investigate reports of other possible furnace sites. Strange artifacts, such as glass covered stones, that Mallery found in this furnace site(s) have puzzled professional archaeologists

An iron sword was found in a North Carolina mound. Due to this item Cryus Thomas believed that the mounds were built after the Europeans arrived. We know the Hopewell mounds were built before Columbus

“The iron implements which are alluded to in the above-mentioned articles also in Science, as found in a North Carolina mound. “

(Cyrus Thomas 1889 pg. 31)

Dr. Clyde Keeler reaches for an iro bar in a pit iron furnace found in a mound in 1970 on the leroy Haskins property along Deer Creek just ahsourt distance north of Arlington Malery's Arledge furnace site.

Years later, Connor also uncovered is a 62 pound bar of iron that was formed within the air-duct of the iron furnace. It was also found in Deer Creek in Ross County Ohio (within the Arledge Mound – a Hopewell mound)

This furnace was dug into an existing hillside overlooking Salt Creek in southeast Pickaway County, Ohio. Bricks lined the air inlet and also areas of loose furnace wall soil.

In this Smithsonian dig, 92 copper and iron breast plates with

skeletons were found as shown in the picture.

Accounts of several of the men who actually dug the mounds...

“In digging the Louisville canal, nineteen feet below the surface, with the coals of the last domestic fire upon them, medals of copper and silver, swords and other implements of iron. Mr. Flint assures us that he has seen these strange ancient swords.”

(Conant, pg. 111, 1879)

“A few miles from the town of Columbia, in Maury county, in West Tennessee, and on Duck river, are a number of fortifications, … also, several fragments of earthen ware, and a sword about two feet long, differing from any in use since the white people visited the country, apparently once highly polished, but now much eaten with rust. Those who buried these articles there, could fashion the sword, and could make bricks, and use them by the masonic art.”

(Haywood 1823, pg. 179)

“The iron was considerably oxidated, and when exposed to the air, dissolved and fell into small particles of rust, leaving only the handle, which was thick, and central parts adhering together. There were four or five of these swords, if we may so call them. The handle was round and cylindrical, and encircled with ferules or rings of silver.”

(Haywood 1823 pg. 328)

map of know "Hopewell" Indian or "Mound builders" sites

There is obvious bias in this website, but it has a pretty good summary of many (not all) of the quotes...

p. 206 of the origional Squire/Davis Hopwell report

"These rocks are noticed by Dr. BARTON, Transactions of American Philosophical Society, vol. iv. p. 195. He regards them as “the work of a people acquainted with the use of iron instruments, or with hardened metallic instruments of some kind.”

Correction: figure 206, FOOTNOTE 188 TO CHAPTER XVIII.

In 1963 the elderly Mallery, age 86, returned to one of his Ohio furnace site in an attempt to obtain charcoal for carbon dating. Mallery asked William D. Connor to help him dig, and William invited photographer Jim Leisure to document their work.

This became the life work of William D. Connor, who's book "The Iron Age of America - Before Columbus" in which he documents ~800+ Hopewell/Andena smelting furnaces in the Great Lakes area, picking up where Arlington Mallery left off

Glass slag coated rock

Only this side of the artifact is glazed. The dark object on the lower right side of this "hand axe" is a droplet of glass that formed after the furnace cooled.