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We see your loyalty to the ideals of archaeology, but surely you know that the realities are quite different. The first place where the two collide is in sampling. Probably no more than 200 ancient Mesoamerican sites have been seriously excavated, and those excavations have rarely dug into more than a small portion of the area of those sites. It would be surprising if as much as one-ten-thousandth of the information potentially obtainable by studying the material remains has so far been obtained. Sure, much of the rest would no doubt yield data mainly duplicative of what is already known, but some things could be new and even potentially revolutionary. Furthermore a large proportion of what has already been excavated has not been studied by contemporary methods or is not accessible for study.

So ancient remains of metals may “leave traces.” But can anybody name even a single site where “chemical remains” have been widely sought by modern methods? I doubt it.

An example of the sampling problem is evident at the site of Utatlan. Fox, Wallace and Brown (1992) reported finding by chance a location, “outside the site” proper where 200 molds for the manufacture of copper on an industrial scale came to light. The facility would have been far larger than needed for the city’s requirements. What is the chance that such an isolated facility outside the central ceremonial centers where excavation usually goes on would be discovered at other places?

Then there is the problem of accessing the information that does exist. I have spent considerable time searching site reports for mentions of metal objects that have been found that apparently date before the “metal curtain” of about 900 A.D. in Mesoamerica but are conventionally ignored in discussions of the history of metallurgy. Several hundred such specimens date from ca. 400 B.C. to A.D. 900, 153 of which were excavated by professional archaeologists (see my Metals and Metallurgy Relating to the Book of Mormon Text {Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992}). So why bother to seek “chemical traces” of metal when actual specimens are totally ignored? This incidence of metal objects would be very surprising were it not for the fact that terms have been reconstructed in five major Mesoamerican language families (Proto-Mayan, Proto-Mixtecan, Proto-Mixe-Zoquean, Proto-Huavean, and Proto-Otomanguean) that mean “metal” or “(metal) bell,” all those words referring to times prior to 1000 B.C.

Obviously excavational archaeology has a long way to go in reconstructing an accurate history of Mesoamerican metallurgy, including both terrestrial and meteoric iron among over a dozen known metals and alloys. Eminent metallurgical expert Dudley Easby commented regarding the general problem, “the relative [apparent] absence of metals in the early Americas constitutes one of the most infuriatingly enigmatic subjects in the history of technology” (1966), and Gordon Willey of Harvard said much the same thing: the question of the use of metals constitutes “the [Mesoamerican] anthropologist’s sorest dilemma” (1966).

The question of the presence of the horse in civilized Mesoamerica further illustrates the problem of what is acceptable archaeological documentation. C. E. Ray’s report (1957. "Pre-Columbian horses from Yucatan," Journal of Mammalogy 38: 278) of finding horse bones in deep layers of the water hole at Mayapan (Yucatan) raised anew an issue that Mercer (1896) and Hatt (1953) had earlier raised with their finds of horse bones on the surface in Yucatan caves. The matter was compounded by Peter Schmidt’s 1988 work in Loltun Cave that found horse bones scattered through a number of layers of early pottery-bearing debris; he observed, “something went on here that is still difficult to explain.” (Interestingly, he was not aware of the finds Ray reported.) There are also further evidences for pre-1500 A.D. dates of other horse bones (including three radiocarbon-dated finds from North America). This, like the metals, is an “unfinished” archaeological story, in this case defying the dictum that “there were no horses” for the last ten thousand years in America. Simultaneously it shows the limits of the data revealed by excavations about which so much is said.

Yet another possibility is that some other species was counted as a “horse,” by the Nephites, for example. The Aztecs upon seeing Spanish horses referred to them as “the deer that people ride,” and there are pre-Columbian artistic representations of riders-ondeer. So what “was” a “horse” to ancient Mesoamericans?

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