Lower Central American and Columbian metallurgy centered on casting, particularly by the lost-wax method and other techniques. Tumbaga, the copper-gold alloy, was extremely common, and metalsmiths used it to cast elegant and intricate earrings, pendants, and nose rings worn by elites (figure 4.2). Other, larger objects were employed in ritual. Artisans fashioned relatively few tools and implements from metal.

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West Mexican metalsmiths chose the Central American and Colombian method of making bells, but they did not employ the materials used to cast those bells: commonly gold and copper-gold tumbaga allows. The RMG collection contains only a single gold bell in a corpus of 3,200 metal objects. Metalworkers did use gold extensively, particularly in the Tarascan zone in Period 2, but principally for sheet metal ornaments and ritual items used for which color and reflectivity were primary concerns.