Old Copper Phase

Associated primarily with the late Archaic period, 3000-1000 B.C., Old Copper habitation sites are generally found in the northern Great Lakes region of the U.S. The Old Copper Culture is named for the copper tools that are associated with the sites. Although, the Old Copper complex does not represent early metallurgical casting or forging techniques, archeologists have found that the Archaic people were the first to successfully exploit the naturally found metal. One of the more impressive prehistoric copper mining sites known is located on Isle Royale.

The Old Copper culture presents one of the most vexing archaeological problems of the northern United States. Several authors (see Griffin and Jennings) consider it a single archaeological unit which existed in Wisconsin and the surrounding areas during the preceramic period. To some the name is synonymous with the Archaic period of the western Great Lakes. The formal similarity of Old Copper implements is so great that it seems safe to assume they are products of a single cultural tradition. Excavations at several sites throughout the Great Lakes area have shown that Old Copper tools are associated with lithic artifacts which do not fit clearly into a single cultural unit. Some authors (Johnson and Griffin) have suggested that the term "Old Copper" should refer to a peculiar tool tradition or industry which was shared by several otherwise diverse Late Archaic cultures of the Great Lakes area. The diversity in the tool assemblages from excavated Old Copper sites, including Petaga Point, supports this interpretation.(Bleed, p. 35-6)

Copper was extracted from local glacial deposits and utilized in its natural form to manufacture tools and implements. Such sources have long been known in the Upper Michigan peninsula, on Isle Royale, and in glacial deposits where copper nuggets sometimes occur in the gravel transported by the glaciers from regions further north. A Minnesota source appears to lie in the basalt outcrops near the Upper St. Croix River. (Johnson, p. 11) . . . and along the north shore of Lake Superior, from Duluth, Minnesota to the Nipigon basin in Ontario, including Isle Royale. (Griffin, p. 34)

It is agreed that the difficulty of forming the sockets on the various artifacts would seem to require a casting technique or a high degree of artisianship to form by forging (hammering), but all metallurgical evidence to date indicates that the copper artifacts of the Old Copper culture of the Great Lakes Region were formed by a forging technique which included cold-working, and possibly some hot-working, and annealing or softening. The same is true of the artifacts without sockets. (Griffin, p. 147)

Copper was worked by annealing and hammering nuggets to a desired form. There exists a myth that the Indians possessed an ancient technique of making copper harder than steel. This was proven impossible through scientific analyses by a chemist, Henry Croft at University College, Toronto. He concluded that artifacts from the Old Copper culture contained no alloys, although minute traces of iron, and sometimes silver, were detected. He added that no process is known at present by which copper can be rendered harder, although its density may be increased to a small extent by pressure and hammering. (Griffin, p. 120) However, for an enterprising craftsman in the Archaic age, the latter characteristic would possibly have been enough to keep a fish hook from straightening so easily, or to make a harpoon point hold an edge better.

Some examples of copper ornaments found at the McCollum site, locus of an Old Copper cache on a bay of southeastern Lake Nipigon. Thirteen perforated copper discs about 1mm thick and are flat to slightly curved. Ten are circular, two are heart shaped, and one is almost diamond shaped. The discs had apparently been nested, beaten flat in a stack, for on the upper surface of some of them, areas match imperfections and discoloration’s of the lower surfaces of others. Four bracelets are paired, in that there are two small ones and two large ones. They are all made in the same way and are formed of thin strips of copper of the same thickness as the thirteen discs. Copper beads were also found. The bead sections were all rolled, thin sheet copper.(Griffin, p. 94)

Characteristic copper tools include crescent knives, gouges for woodworking, conical points for weapons, barbed harpoon heads for spearing fish, awls and needles. It appears that worked and unworked copper moved along the water routes out of the Upper Great Lakes region, as similar copper artifacts have been found from Manitoba to New England. Clearly, the ease with which copper could be utilized, made it important to all aspects of the Archaic period. It would have been very valuable as a trade item, and consequently escalated mutual exchanges of information and other technologies between otherwise isolated Archaic phases.

Bibliography

Bleed, Peter, The archaeology of Petaga Point, The Preceramic Component. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, 1969.

Caine, Christy A. H., The archaeology of the Snake River Region in Minnesota, Aspects of Upper Great Lakes Anthropology, Papers in honor of Lloyd A. Wilford; Edited by Elden Johnson, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, 1974.

Griffin, James B., Editor, Lake Superior Copper and the Indians: Miscellaneous Studies of Great Lakes Prehistory, Anthropological Papers, No. 17, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1961.

Jennings, Jesse D., Prehistory of North America, Second Edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974.

Johnson, Elden. State Archaeologist, The Prehistoric Peoples of Minnesota, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, 1969.

Wittry, Warren, and Robert Ritzenthaler. The Old Copper Complex: An Archaic Manifestation in Wisconsin," in Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 311-329, Milwaukee, 1957

Winchell, N. H., Ancient Copper Mines of Isle Royale, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 19, pp. 601-2, New York, 1881