Drift Iron In Pacific Northwest

In the centuries before European contact, Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest worked iron that came from Asian, particularly Japanese, shipwrecks carried across the North Pacific by the ocean currents. Archaeologists at the Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site have found iron chisels and knives made around 1613, and analyses show that this metal came from such drift iron. Researchers note that this tradition of working Asian drift iron was well developed among groups like the Chinookan peoples and the Tlingit, who even had their own word for the material.

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