iron/ metal [and other loans and calques]

[Henning Garvin]

>Precontact artifacts made from copper occur with some frequency in the
>Midwest.  As far as I know they are all ornamental an/or religious, i.e.,
>not pots or weapons.  Anyway, copper is the most likely original reference
>of the "metal" term set.  Meteoritic iron is another possibility, as Bob
>suggests, and silver and gold were certainly worked in Mesoamerica, and if
>any small samples found their way into the Midwest they may or may not
>have been considered as "metal."  Plainly various metals acquired later in
>trade were plainly considered so and today the "metal term" is usually
>considered to mean "iron."
>

Sorry, but the archaeologist in me is about to come out.  It is true that
copper artifacts occur quite frequently in pre-contact times.  But if you
look at the Old Copper Complex, you see a wide range of utilitarian goods
being made from copper, so the distribution was not solely restricted to
personal adornment and items of a spiritual nature.  There is actually a
number of weapon types that came from this period which have been
identified.  I really only know this because my capstone class for
anthrolopogy focused on pre-historic warfare in the midwest region.

As far as Hocank is concerned, the form ' maNaNs' refers to metal, mainly
iron,  and my informants have told me that the word for copper is 'maNaNs
shuuc' or red metal.  I'm not sure this helps the discussion, but I thought
I'd share.

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