South, though: Jonathan Hall's post is quite extensive, and if he's correct it looks like Peru had an impressive metallurgical culture, which spread north into Mesoamerica; but apparently the trade in metal goods didn't go further north into the modern USA. The absence of tin would explain why nobody bothered to try to smelt bronze, and the easy availability of native copper removes the need to smelt copper, but why wouldn't there be some trade? Did the North have nothing the Mesoamericans wanted, or were the desert stretches that great a trade barrier? There's always the coastlines and raft-boats -- unless there really was nothing they wanted.
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