[meteorite-list] Native American use of meteorites

From: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: 22 Nov 2010 19:08:59 UT
Message-ID: <DIIE.0000000C000052F4_at_paulinet.de>

Hello All,

"Has anyone ever done comparisons of the meteorites
 found in Hopewell mounds and existing collections?"

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Possible Sources of Meteoritic Material from Hopewell Indian Burial Mounds
(by J.T. WASSON and S.P. SEDWICK, Department of Chemistry and Institute of
Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Los Angeles, California 90024):

Pallasite Ni(%) Ga (ppm) Ge (ppm) Ir (ppm)

Anderson 11.3 24.8 65.6 0.045
Hopewell Mds 10.6 24.0 61.8 0.049
Admire 10.7 20.3 39.2 0.017
Ahumada 8.0 21.4 49.0 0.057
Albin 10.4 16.8 29.4 0.015
Brenham 10.6 26.1 70.8 0.037
Eagle Station 15.4 4.54 75.3 10.0
Glorieta Mtn. 12.0 13.2 10.7 0.014
Mount Vernon 11.5 21.5 49.1 0.14
Newport 10.7 17.5 31.2 0.16
South Bend 9.6 21.2 41.3 0.055
Springwater 12.6 14.8 31.9 0.069

Finmarken 10.7 18.7 43.7 1.8
Imilac 9.0 21.1 46.0 0.071
Krasnojarsk 8.9 22.0 56.6 0.18

"The compositions of the burial mound pallasites are more like that of Brenham than
that of any other pallasite which we have investigated. Among the North American
pallasites the next similar are Ahumada and Mount Vernon, but the Ge contents of
each of these objects are some 20 per cent lower, the Ni concentration of Ahumada
is 20 per cent lower, and the Ir concentration of Mount Vernon is a factor of three
higher than those of the burial mound objects."

"...we conclude that the Hopewellian pallasites are fragments from the Brenham fall."


ARNOLD J.R. and LIBBY W.F. (1951) Radiocarbon Dates: Havana, Hopewell
Mounds (Science 113, pp. 111-120):

"Charcoal from the Hopewell Mounds has a radiocarbon age of 1951 ? 200 years"


The American Journal of Science (1890), ART. XLII.
On five new American Meteorites; by George F. Kunz:


"In the spring of 1883, Professor F.W. Putnam found on the altar of mound No. 3 of
the Turner group of mounds, in the Little Miami Valley, Ohio, several ear-ornaments
made of iron, and several others overlaid with iron. With these were also found a
number of separate pieces that were thought to be iron. They were covered with
cinders, charcoal, pearls [two bushels were found in this group of mounds], and other
material, cemented by an oxide of iron, showing that the whole had been subjected
to a high temperature. On removing the scale, Dr. Kennicutt found that they were
made of iron of meteoric origin (Sixteenth and seventeenth reports of the Peabody
Museum of Archeology, p. 382)."
Received on Mon 22 Nov 2010 02:08:59 PM PST