Old Copper complex

Old Copper complex

Copper knife, spearpoints, awls, and spud (adze), from the Late Archaic period, Wisconsin, 3000 BC-1000 BCE.
Geographical range	Great Lakes
Period	Archaic
Dates	6500 – 1000 BCE
Type site	Copper Culture State Park

The Old Copper complex or Old Copper culture is an archaeological culture from the Archaic period of North America's Great Lakes region. Artifacts from some of these sites have been dated from 6500 to 1580 BCE. It is characterized by widespread copper artifacts, including tools and weapons, as well as ornamental objects.

Western Great Lakes

The Old Copper complex of the Western Great Lakes is the best known, and can be dated to around 6,500 BCE. Great Lakes natives of the Archaic period located 99% pure copper near Lake Superior, in veins touching the surface and in nuggets from gravel beds. Major quarries were located on Isle Royale, the Keweenaw Peninsula, and the Brule River, and copper was deposited elsewhere by glaciation as well.

By heating, annealing and hammering, these cultures worked the copper into shape and produced a variety of spearpoints, tools and decorative objects. In addition to their own use, the Copper Complex peoples traded copper goods for other exotic materials. By about 1,000 BCE, copper was increasingly restricted to jewelry and other status-related items, rather than tools. This is thought to represent the development of more complex social hierarchies in the area.

The Copper Culture State Park, in Oconto, northeastern Wisconsin, contains an ancient burial ground used by the Old Copper complex culture between around 4,000 and 2,000 BCE.. It was rediscovered in June 1952 by a 13-year-old boy who unearthed human bones while playing in an old quarry. By July the first archaeological dig was started by the Wisconsin Archaeological Survey.

See also

• Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America

References

Sources

• Emerson, Thomas E.; McElrath, Dale L.; Fortier, Andrew C. (2009). Archaic Societies: Diversity and Complexity Across the Midcontinent. New York: SUNY Press. ISBN 9781441607850.
• Gibbon, Guy (February 1998). "Old Copper in Minnesota: A Review". Plains Anthropologist. 43 (163): 27–50. doi:10.1080/2052546.1998.11931881. JSTOR 25669519.
• Marder, William (2005). Indians in the Americas: The Untold Story. San Diego: Book Tree. ISBN 9781585091041.
• Neiburger, E. J. (April 1987). "Did Midwest Pre-Columbian Indians Cast Metal? A New Look". Central States Archaeological Journal. 34 (2): 60–74. JSTOR 43138520.
• Pleger, Thomas C. (Fall 2000). "Old copper and red ocher social complexity". Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. 25 (2): 169–190. JSTOR 20708133.
• Pleger, Thomas C. (2003). "A Brief Introduction to the Old Copper Complex of the Western Great Lakes: 4000-1000 BC". Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin. Oconto. pp. 10–18.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Pompeani, David P.; Steinman, Byron A.; Abbott, Mark B.; et al. (April 2021). "On the timing of the Old Copper complex in North America: A comparison of radiocarbon dates from different archaeological contexts". Radiocarbon. 63 (2): 513–531. Bibcode:2021Radcb..63..513P. doi:10.1017/RDC.2021.7.

Further reading

• Byers, A. Martin (April 1999). "Intentionality, Symbolic Pragmatics, and Material Culture: Revisiting Binford's View of the Old Copper Complex". American Antiquity. 64 (2): 265–287. doi:10.2307/2694278. JSTOR 2694278.
• Malakoff, David (19 March 2021). "Ancient Native Americans were among the world's first coppersmiths". Science. doi:10.1126/science.abi6135.
• Wittry, Warren L.; Ritzenthaler, Robert E. (January 1956). "The Old Copper Complex: An Archaic Manifestation in Wisconsin". American Antiquity. 21 (3): 244–254. doi:10.2307/277196. JSTOR 277196.
• Wittry, Warren L. (1951). "A Preliminary Study of the Old Copper Complex". Wisconsin Archaeologist. 32 (1): 1–18.