Amateur archaeologist in Switzerland unearths 2k-year-old Roman dagger
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeology-intern...
2. https://www.archaeology.org/news/8493-200302-germany-roman-d...
Every so often I stumble on images of various hoards, and the gold work in particular is just awesome. Gold ages well, so there is that, but the workmanship is just incredible. The Great Torc from Snettisham is a good example.
Any more-expert folks here, to have a sense for how big a deal that is (in the context)?
For an amateur but no less correct source, wikipedia provides a good quip for us:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Am...
Archaeological evidence has not revealed metal smelting or alloying of metals by pre-Columbian native peoples north of the Rio Grande; however, they did use native copper extensively.[32]
Which then further cites: George Rapp Jr, Guy Gibbon & Kenneth Ames (1998). Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: an Encyclopedia. New York: Taylor & Francis. p. 26.
I do not own this book, so I apologize I cannot verify the citation.
Keep in mind that you have to be wary of poisonous fumes - hopefully the elements giving their copper alloy a brassy appearance don't include lead, or worse, arsenic.
Moreover, purification from ores was done. The so-called copper bells of the southwest were mainly produced from ores rather than native copper and were often alloyed with arsenic or silver to modify the color. The main center of production was paquimé (~180mi west of the Rio Grande), but the cultural area extends well over the border into AZ, NM, and CO.
For particular lithics industries/tools and certain situations you might get some amount of reworking, but ultimately people were producing new tools very frequently. That means that any area in which you might find them on the surface will usually have some and a long term production site will have overwhelming artifact density. They can occasionally look like normal rocks, but once you train your eye the worked faces become visually distinct.
The "old world" had quite a head-start in digging up stuff and is also much more densely populated, so more people have been digging up old stuff for longer.
If VR becomes widespread, perhaps the first VR headset. Or perhaps niche, quaint items with great craftsmanship (no longer used at all in the future), like a high-quality metal mechanical pencil, fountain pen, or ballpoint pen.
Early commercial spacecraft (SpaceX) would also be a certainty, as the expansion of humanity across space is near-guaranteed (as long as humanity doesn't destroy itself). Perhaps also today's fashion (thinking of fashion museums).
Someone some day will perhaps dig up a completely buried Mars lander under windblown sand, or send their fast vehicle out to capture images of the Voyager probes.