Old Copper Culture: North America's Forgotten Metal Workers

when we think of metal working in the ancient americas we typically think of the famous gold and silver works of the high aztecan inca empires eastern north america isn't typically thought of as being the home of a metal working tradition but believe it or not the indigenous peoples of the eastern united states and canada used copper mined from the lake superior basin for thousands of years this history of copper usage is incredibly fascinating so let's get started [Music] [Music] on the shores of lake superior lies one of the greatest geological features in north america the kiwinot peninsula this little peninsula in the upper peninsula of michigan may not look like much on a map but it has a secret that you're probably not aware of unless you grew up there it is the richest source of native copper in the world in fact that giant deposit of copper runs through the kiwinot below the lake and through io royale this is the product of eons of geological and glacial forces forming moving and exposing this copper to the surface even today surface deposits of this native copper vein can still be seen now you may be wondering what i mean when i say native copper it's actually a geological term that refers to copper that naturally occurs in a near pure state most copper that is mined is combined with other minerals in the form of an ore and it has to be smelted to remove those other minerals before it can be fashioned native copper on the other hand is ready to be worked as soon as it's extracted you can find deposits of native copper in other areas of the world but they tend to be very small and aren't always easy to access in the kiwinaw it's extremely abundant and very easy to access besides being plentiful copper is easy to work copper is much softer than other metals like iron so it's not difficult to fashion on top of that copper is beautiful you may think of something like this when you think of copper but it's easy to forget that copper can also look like this when it's polished combine all this with the fact that the lake superior basin is deficient in high quality flint and chert the material of choice for tools in other regions and it's clear why copper quickly became a natural crafting material but when did this all start to find the origins of copper working in north america we have to go way way back to the archaic period the archaic period in north america lasted from around 7000 bce to 1000 bce it's in this period that archaeology can begin to detect different cultures that grow out of the paleo-indian traditions by 7 500 bce the glaciers had finally retreated from lake superior allowing paleo-indians to finally settle in the lake superior basin during the early archaic period this area was inhabited by various groups of hunter-gatherers who would seasonally migrate to different areas to exploit abundant resources such as migratory birds nuts berries fish and small and large game the only domesticated flora and fauna would have been the dog the perfect animal for hunting protection friendship and in a pinch food during this time new technology began to appear such as the atlatl or spear thrower the first archaeologically attested watercraft fishing nets and most important for us today copper tools as i mentioned earlier the only local stones in the area with which to craft are of rather poor quality so copper became the natural go-to crafting material these archaic societies of the upper great lakes that used copper to create tools and wares are loosely referred to as the old copper culture or sometimes the old copper complex it'd be misleading to think of this as a single unified culture but rather a group of related cultures and communities old copper culture shares many similarities with the subsequent red ochre culture and the glacial came culture all of which utilize copper and have similar mortuary practices now copper use was not a late archaic invention but an early one very recent studies from earlier this year actually have pushed back the earliest verifiable date we have for copper working in the kiwinot in all of north america for that matter to an astounding 8 500 years ago at almost 6 500 bce to put that in a global perspective that's the same time that people in the old world were just beginning to work copper that makes the old copper culture one of the oldest metalworking societies in the world these archaic people were on the same exact technological curve as the forerunners in eurasia and possibly even ahead of it so how was copper mined well i hope you like long answers because we're going to take a deep dive first the locals had to identify sources of copper that they could exploit although we have no indigenous accounts on how this was done we can speculate from other societies elsewhere in the world that have left us written records one thing that is very clear in these accounts is that copper can be detected by the careful observation of the surrounding environment patterns of frost and snow differences in vegetation and erosion can be tell-tale signs to the keen eye keep in mind that the archaic peoples of lake superior would have been naturally observant and inquisitive and they also would have had a deep knowledge of the landscape and environment that sustained them in other cases it may not have even required much work at all copper freed from veins by natural erosion can be found along river banks surface veins of copper would have also made sourcing very simple once a source of copper was found the copper had to be mined to extract the copper the ancient miners would have used hammer stones such as this one to expand natural cracks in the rock until the copper could be leveraged or gouged out once the copper was removed any unwanted rock inclusions were hammered out as needed another possible method to ease copper mining and extraction was heating and quenching this method was used all over the world in antiquity and it involved stacking wood or charcoal against the rock and igniting it after the copper was heated it would be rapidly cooled by cold water the expansion from the heat and subsequent sudden contraction from the cold water would lead to the rock fracturing unfortunately there's no scholarly consensus on whether or not this method was used to mine copper in the great lakes but it was certainly feasible and many academics do believe that it was employed one method that certainly was not used was deep tunneling and excavation ancient copper miners stuck to the abundance surface deposits that were easily reached they never had to resort to shaft mining some of you may have noticed that these methods are very similar to quarrying and that's a good observation it's very likely that the people of the old copper culture viewed copper not as a metal but as a stone and they approached its exploitation in a similar manner once the copper was mined it was ready to be fashioned the primary process for manufacturing copper goods was cold hammering copper is relatively soft and ductile as far as metals go and you can hammer it into a shape with some elbow grease and well-aimed blows again this is not unlike how other materials like stone would have been crafted so there's a consistent approach going on but ancient coppersmiths also recognized copper's unique properties as well they figured out like every other metal working culture how to use annealing to make the copper more malleable okay great what's annealing annealing is when you heat up the copper to make it more malleable when copper is heated above its recrystallization point at 600 degrees celsius it can be annealed at this temperature the copper is much more malleable and much more easy to work experimental replications of copper artifacts prove that these could have easily been made if they were annealed keep in mind that this is not the same as smelting and casting to melt native copper you need to heat it to 1083 degrees celsius and while creating fires at such temperatures was possible there's currently no evidence that any copper in north america was worked at these temperatures after this was completed copper pieces could be ground cut embossed perforated and polished to achieve the final design these methods would have been used not just by the old copper culture but by all subsequent copper working cultures in north america right until european contact this is admittedly a simple approach to copper working but we'll discuss why that is later on more advanced metallurgical techniques were developed in south america and from there spread to mesoamerica but that technology never penetrated eastern north america it makes one wonder how different history would have been had that happened so what was made with all this copper nearly any tool that could be made with copper was at some point arrowheads spear points knives spuds awls oolus harpoons fishhooks needles axes chisels and more have been recovered as you can see there's an incredible breadth and versatility to these tool sets these were used for a variety of trades such as hunting fishing woodworking sewing and crafting when you look at these you need to imagine that there would have been handles and shafts attached to these nearly all of which have long since decayed as you can see from these blades and points the people of the old copper culture had different means of securing them to their handles some have tangs that would have gone into the handle or shaft while others are socketed and would have gone over the shaft the variety that you can find is astounding if this kind of stuff interests you there's a link to a lecture given at the copper culture conference by an expert a few years back that goes into crazy detail about the typology of these copper artifacts but we're going to stick with a bird's eye view here basically if something needed doing the people of the old copper culture would craft a copper solution the only tools to my knowledge that were never made of copper and i could be wrong so don't quote me on this were the hammer stones that were used for mining if you ever see a museum exhibit loaded with native american copper artifacts they're almost certainly made with great lakes copper the archaic period can be seen as a golden age of copper tools and i haven't even mentioned the ornamental pieces like beads crescents bracelets pectorals and ceremonial headgear finding copper artifacts is not very difficult they're very numerous and archaeologists and locals alike have been recovering these for centuries there's many a farmer in wisconsin and michigan whose plow or shovel has pulled up a copper artifact inadvertently they're so common in fact that some people have made a hobby of combing the wilderness with metal detectors to search for copper artifacts which is actually a problem because when these pieces are looted from the ground their archaeological context is lost almost all copper artifacts that are known have not been recovered by archaeologists from archaeological sites but by laymen now i want to make an important point here even though copper artifacts are abundant and easy to find they can't really tell us much about the people that produce them unless they're discovered in an archaeological context this is key so for example let's say your old pawpaw gives you a copper knife that he found as a kid and polished up and kept as a keepsake and let's say that you want to know more about it so you bring that copper knife to an archaeologist well they can probably tell you that it resembles other copper knives of a specific period based on what features it has neat but not terribly insightful now let's say that that same blade was found by an archaeologist in a burial in that context they could probably tell you how old it was based on the other dateable material in the burial they could also identify what type of person the knife belonged to if it was recovered within the remains of someone who was killed they could identify it as a weapon and conclude that the people who used it practiced warfare there's even more that a copper artifact can tell you copper is particularly unique among minerals because when it oxidizes it can trap and preserve organic material oxidized copper wards off bacteria and microbes that would otherwise consume organic material in very fortunate cases it's possible to see exactly what the knife was used for if there are organic remains that are preserved within the copper oxide in other cases bits of string and textiles can be preserved as well with all that said i hope you can appreciate how important archaeological context is to understanding how artifacts fit into a larger cultural picture the sad truth is that even though we have a lot of copper artifacts probably less than one percent have a well-documented provenance in fact you'll be surprised to learn that there's only a small handful of old copper culture archaeological sites in this region that have been properly excavated the most notable being the osceola oconto and ray sites in wisconsin and the riverside cemetery site in menomonee michigan a small aside about the menomonee menominee and econto sites i was shocked to learn during my research that i've actually driven past these two sites several times in the course of my travels if you ever drive on us route 41 through wisconsin and up into michigan you'll pass very close to both sites the akanto site you can actually see from the highway and at the site is the copper culture state park which i actually debated driving up to go visit for this episode until i found out that it's only open during the summer so that wasn't going to happen definitely planning on stopping by the next time i drive through up in menomonee near the riverside site there's nothing noting the site i don't recall seeing a plaque or historical marker when i've driven by which is kind of crazy considering that the riverside cemetery is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the united states if i'm wrong and there is a marker let me know in the comments so i can check it out in the future again if you're ever on route 41 in wisconsin make a quick stop at the copper culture state park and give the copper culture some love all of these sites mentioned contained burials which had many copper goods interred one interesting thing that these sites show is that copper slowly evolved from a utilitarian good into a prestige item as time went on in fact nearly all those copper tools we saw earlier disappear from the archaeological record in time after the woodland period begins the people of the upper great lakes are making very few tools out of copper instead opting for tools made out of imported stone make no mistake copper working is still alive and well but production is focused on ornaments and decorations but why you may be asking would a culture give up metal tools for stone surely metal tools are superior to stone tools right it's complicated but it's interesting so there's two points to emphasize here first is that culture changed a lot during the archaic period remember the archaic period is 6 000 years long there's a lot that changes from beginning to end in the early archaic period there are no elite burials that we can detect which is a strong indication that these societies were smaller and egalitarian by the woodland period societies have gotten much bigger and more complex and we can see elite burials in social stratification for the community elites copper increasingly became a material with which to showcase their status and adorn themselves already by this point it had become a valuable trade commodity for centuries thus copper began to be viewed as a luxury material rather than a utilitarian one second copper was becoming less and less cost effective as a resource for tool production the fact is copper requires a lot of time and energy to mine in fashion by contrast creating tools out of stone requires a far smaller investment of time and energy now you may argue that sure copper tools take longer to produce but surely copper tools perform much better than stone tools and that that makes up for the larger investment and there is some truth to this copper arrowheads spear points knives and alls do perform better than stone tools but not by a large margin certainly not large enough to justify that investment the cost benefit just isn't there during the archaic period when food was abundant and populations were lower investing the time and energy to make copper tools was much easier because you didn't need to spend as much time and energy generating food by the late archaic resources are getting a bit scarce because the environment in the upper great lakes is drying out and while all that's going on competition from other communities is ramping up and so it takes a lot more time and energy to put food on the table also trade networks are making better stone more available than ever in this changed environment it became more economic for the indigenous people to create tools out of stone copper tools were likely seen as tools that were over engineered copper smiths weren't going to spend their precious time making knives and points instead they were going to make prestige goods that could easily be traded for other goods or used as gifts interestingly copper did continue to be the material of choice for one specific tool and that's the all but gone are the other tools that so characterize the old copper culture now after all that i imagine that there are some raised hands in the back of the room you're probably wondering if people in the america started working metal at the same time as people in the old world why did they never progress to bronze or iron working why was copper never smelted and cast especially when they clearly knew that heat made copper easier to work after all all other copper working cultures even in the americas eventually figure out how to smelt copper and how to combine it with other metals to create different alloys all fabulous questions with fascinating answers to answer this we need to go back to the source of all this copper remember what i said earlier about native copper native copper was naturally pure and ready to be crafted by contrast most copper and most metals in the world are mined in the form of ores to get the metal out of the ore so that it can be used it has to be smelted to get the unwanted minerals out of there well when your copper is naturally pure why would you even bother with all that smelting was the solution to a problem that the people of the upper great lakes never had because they never had to smelt copper ore there was never an opportunity to combine copper with other metals or to cast it from a technological perspective having easy access to native copper was a mixed blessing because native copper spoiled its children from a historical perspective it created a unique experience unlike any other in the world no other culture anywhere appears to have plateaued their copper technology even if copper working in eastern north america never developed to the technological heights of other cultures it was still very important not just to the people of the great lakes but to all people of eastern north america by 2000 bce copper goods were widespread all over the eastern woodlands copper trading was so prolific that cultures outside the lake superior basin traded for copper which they then used to create their own tools a great example of this is the morrisons island site near the ottawa river even though this is far from the copper producing areas of lake superior there's an abundance of copper tools and ornaments in the burials of the site very similar to the contemporary sites in wisconsin and the upper peninsula of michigan copper was typically traded along the saint lawrence ohio and mississippi waterways but it's also found in the northern plains as well copper ornaments abound in the great hopewell and mississippian burials of the lower midwest and even farther near the gulf coast those of you who remember our poverty point episode will recall that great lakes copper was recovered from that site as well and that's down in louisiana we know from chemical analysis that the copper found at these sites is from the great lakes and not another source during later woodland and mississippian times native copper from other eastern sources began to be exploited but in the archaic it's exclusively from the great lakes that's really impressive it's assumed that this trade took the form of small exchanges that slowly moved goods down the line via the eastern water routes establishing what was given in return for all this copper is not certain we do know that various lithics were being traded remember what i said earlier the copper country is rich in copper but poor and high quality stone for stone tools such as obsidian chert and pipestone fun fact i learned while researching this at the riverside site in menomonie that we mentioned earlier a woman was found buried with a huge chunk of obsidian when scientists did a chemical analysis on that it turned out that that chunk of obsidian came all the way from yellowstone over 1800 kilometers away that is some impressive long-distance trade another non-local material found in burials is galena found further south and west perhaps the most important material is marine shell from the atlantic coast this is commonly found not just in the lake superior basin but all over the east unfortunately the temperate climate of the great lakes does not preserve organics very well so it's difficult to speculate on perishables that might have made up this exchange regardless of what was being given for copper it was a very prized resource by everyone that came into contact with it now we get to everyone's favorite topic and the source of the most entertaining video comments the conspiracy theories north american copper has been at the center of some ludicrous theories for a long time for some reason european settlers throughout history were particularly gobsmacked that indigenous americans had copper working in the 19th century many people theorized that copper artifacts found in native burials were a foreign manufacturer in other words europeans brought over a bunch of copper that the indigenous people reworked in their own fashion thankfully other scholars and archaeologists pushed back against this poppycock most important was frank cushing who observed metalworking methods in zuni silversmithing in the american southwest and realized that their craft was wholly original and that coppersmithing in the great lakes most certainly was as well using those zuni methods he observed he was able to recreate any type of american copper artifact proving that these were indigenous creations not foreign imports on top of that as i mentioned earlier but we'll repeat again chemical analysis has proven that american copper comes from copper sources in america and not abroad the other fun theory that's been floating around that is admittedly much more colorful and only slightly less racist is that north american copper was traded to the mediterranean world as part of a great atlantic trading network this was made famous or infamous i guess by berryfell's pseudo-science books in the late 70s and 80s for the record fell was a scientist but he was a marine biologist rather than someone with an archaeological background according to fell ancient phoenician sailors made contact with pre-columbian america and traded for copper transported it back to the mediterranean and turned it into bronze with tin from the british isles the people who mined and traded the copper weren't native americans no no no don't ask me why but instead killed iberians who settled in the modern day united states and created much of the eastern woodland culture because i don't know now fell's argument rests on the fact that indeed some celtic artifacts have been recovered in the eastern united states by locals what any archaeologist will point out is that none of these have any archaeological context around them remember what i said earlier about how important archaeological context is these few artifacts have none for all we know someone could have brought one over from the old country as a keepsake or heirloom and lost it but there's actually a pretty good theory as to how they got to america these artifacts tend to be recovered near ports and landing sites and they're most likely the result of ballast that was dumped overboard by ships see when ships sailed from europe to the americas they'd often load their hulls with rocks junk dead weight that would keep the ship balanced during the atlantic crossing and then they would offload all that on arrival so that the ship could carry its cargo back to europe it's likely that a celtic artifact or two ended up in a ship's hold as ballast and got left behind there are actually more recent variations of this global copper trade conspiracy theory that are still making rounds on the internet that i could address but i'm not going to because nathaniel fossen has already addressed most of the problems with the transatlantic copper conspiracy in his video right here i'll also leave a link to the video in the description below if you haven't seen his videos i highly recommend giving them a watch because unlike me he actually studies ancient american cultures for a living and has archaeological experience that i don't his channel link will also be in the description check him out but enough of conspiracy theories let's get back to the facts copper was an integral resource of eastern north america that was prized for its qualities it's also important because copper preserves spectacularly and it can tell us a lot about a culture when it's recovered properly despite this copper working is often overlooked by the public at large there's a popular stereotype that native americans in the united states and canada didn't have metal and that they were a stone age people on the contrary the indigenous peoples of the great lakes exploited the natural metal around them in a manner that was practical elegant and efficient the next time you're in a museum keep your eyes peeled for copper artifacts and if you see them you can appreciate the incredible history behind copper working in north america well that's going to wrap us up for today special thanks to my patrons listed right here you guys are the best don't forget to like and subscribe and if you would like to support the channel you can do so on patreon the link will be in the description below you can also follow us on facebook until next time take care and we'll see you in our next episode [Music] you

Channel: Ancient Americas

Views: 417,920

Keywords: old, copper, copper culture, ancient, americas, archaic, north, america

Id: cpmMY_Rcbd8

Length: 28min 9sec (1689 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021