Ancient shipwreck has Michigan copper ore.

Off the coast of Turkey was discovered the remains of an ancient shipwreck.  It is known as the Uluburun shipwreck.  Among the cargo was about 10 tons of very pure but unrefined copper.  European copper was of much lower quality.  This copper came from Lake Superior.  This carving of a Phoenician ship was found in Copper Harbor, Michigan.  Based on the ashes in the firepits, largescale mining appears to have started about 2450 BC and stopped around 1200 BC.  

The Hill Cumorah

The only New World site that we know for sure, is the place where the stone box was found, that contained the gold plates and other artifacts. The stone box was found in a small nameless hill just north of Manchester, New York.

According to Oliver Cowdery, this was the place known in the Book of Mormon as the Hill Cumorah.  Today, it bears that name.  It is famous for the pageants that were held there from 1937 to 2019, celebrating the Book of Mormon.   However, there are strong reasons to believe that Oliver was mistaken. 

For his part, Joseph Smith never gave the local hill a name, and never associated it with the Hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon.  Nor was the hill important enough in 1827 to have a name.  Joseph called the hill sizable, and to a 14 year old boy, it probably was sizable and was certainly the most sizeable hill near his home.   

The man who presumably built the stone box and buried the plates inside is Moroni, the last prophet of the Book of Mormon and the son of Mormon.  In his own record, Moroni never mentions where he intends to hide the gold plates that contain the history of his people, the Nephites.   He only tells us that he isn't safe at the Hill Cumorah, because the Lamanites, having won the war of extermination, were searching for any remaining Christians to kill.  Had he been willing to renounce his religion, he would have been fine.   

The Book of Mormon tells us exactly where the Hill Cumorah is;  it is in the land of Cumorah.  Although we don't know for sure where the land of Cumorah is, it is reasonable to assume that it is named after it's most prominent feature, the large hill.  Unless the "land of Cumorah" is only about two miles square, it isn't just north of the city of Manchester, where Jospeh Smith uncovered the stone box.  Other more prominent hills are within a ten mile radius.  

Moroni was given this one hill to defend, with about 10,000 troops and other commanders where given other nearby outposts to defend.  All told, the Nephites had 230,000 troops.  If this is an indication of the size of the battlefield, then the battlefield was fairly large, and the nations at war were sizeable by ancient and modern standards.  This is roughly comparable to the US Civil War.  The casualties in the US Civil war were around 500,000, which may well represent the casualties of both the Nephites and the Lamanites at the last great battle.   Of course, the 500,000 lost in the US Civil war was from all the battles, not just one.  The territory of the Nephites, based on the size of their army, was at least thousands of square miles.  The entire state of Michigan, in contrast, is about 56,000 square miles and has a populaton of about 10 million today.  

Another fact to consider is whether Moroni would build a stone box in the middle of a battlefield, while being hunted by Lamanites, when he could have just deposited the gold plates with the other sacred records in the cave.  The Hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon has a cave where the sacred records of the Nephites were kept.  This is presumably why they chose this spot to protect down to the last man standing. 

Athough both stone boxes and cement have been found in North America, they are fairly rare.  It would be nice to know how the Nephites made cement. Traditionally, cement is a product of cooking limestone and clay, and then adding gypsum. Limestone and clay can both be found in the area, as well as large gypsum deposits. There is a suggestion that Moroni knew where to find these things, so perhaps he had a certain familiarity with the land.  Since Moroni did not bury the plates with the other sacred treasures of the Nephites, he was probably far away from the Hill Cumorah.  One has to wonder what the exact distance is, before making a stone box is easier than the journey and the risk of putting the Book of Mormon with the other Nephite treasures.