structural:scholar_edition, quality:corruption, structural:expansion
Mesoamerica

The actual artifacts and then techniques were imported from the south, but west Mexican metallurgists worked ores from the abundant local deposits; the metal was not being imported. Even when the technology spread from West into north-eastern, central and southern Mexico, artifacts that can be traced back to West Mexican ores are abundant, if not exclusive. It is not always clear if the metal reached its final destination as an ingot, an ore or a finished artifact. Provenance studies on metal artifacts from southern Mesoamerica cast with the lost wax technique and dissimilar to west Mexican artifacts have shown that there might have been a second point of emergence of metallurgy into Mesoamerica there since no known source could be identified. In the Tarascan Empire, copper and bronze was used for chisels, punches, awls, tweezers, needles, axes, discs, and breastplates.