Andean Value Systems and the Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy

Abstract

The rich development of metallurgical technology that arose and was sustained in the New World prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century took place in the Andean zone of western South America in that area which is today Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. Although Andean peoples supported a highly sophisticated metallurgical tradition with the production of a broad range of metals and metal alloys, little interest or attention has been paid to Andean metallurgy, perhaps because archaeologists and historians cannot boast of a age or an iron age as characteristic of New World prehistory. Iron metallurgy was never developed in the Andes. Although both ancient varieties of bronze were invented there-the alloys of copper and arsenic and of copper and tin-and tin bronze was widely used and disseminated throughout its vast empire by the Inca dynasty, nevertheless these metals did not have the same impact on Andean civilization that they had among peoples of Europe and the ancient Near East.