yakut weapons?

[Tim Simmons]

ausjulius, makes a good point about Chinese and other eastern trade before Russian. These pictures are from " The Asch Collection Gottingen, Siberia and Russian America Culture and Art from the 1700s" Note the Chinese drug pipe. There are some extrats from early letters in German for those who can read it.

This thread brings me back to trans-continental Bering sea trade. Soap stone was traded widely including Siberia, research is easily found. Soap stone was important for pots and lamps where the prodution of pottery would have been not a sensible use of resources. I would like to suggest the same for metals like iron. It has been noted from a similar thread that sparcity of population, resourses to work iron and transport would all have an effect on the supply and demand for iron. But like pottery it was used. It may have had limited appeal {especially cold worked forms} over other material more siuted to the conditions. So iron may well have been in the American arctic for many hundreds of years ie before the Russian and Cook.