Drawing from the review and summary of a body of knowledge regarding the development of technologies such as pottery, the use of external morphological features, ethoecological characteristics, toxicological properties of plant resources and the availability of metalliferous raw materials - such as copper ores in the south-central region of Chile we propose that the morphotype of smelted campaniform rings, identified at the Villa JMC-1 Labranza site, was produced locally. This constitutes indirect evidence in making the case that metalworking in the south-central area of Chile since the end of the Early Pottery period (c. 1000 BP) originated locally, as opposed to having a foreign origin.