J World Prehist (2009) 22:213235 DOI 10.

1007/s10963-009-9020-8 ORIGINAL PAPER

Copper Working Technologies, Contexts of Use, and Social Complexity in the Eastern Woodlands of Native North America
Kathleen L. Ehrhardt

Published online: 30 September 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract The creative ways in which native North American peoples of the Eastern Woodlands utilized copper throughout prehistory present provocative contrasts to models of Old World metallurgical development. Archaeological approaches that incorporate laboratory methods into investigations of indigenous metalworking practice have brought new insights and raised new questions about the development and use of techniques, sources of materials, and the social dynamics of copper consumption. This paper integrates the results of these studies into a discussion of copper use in Old Copper, Hopewellian, and Mississippian traditions that focuses on illuminating the complex relations among levels of technological sophistication in the manipulation of the material itself, the often elaborate and meaning-laden contexts in which artifacts were used, and the relative social complexity of the cultures that supported copper procurement, transformation, and use. It is suggested that technological style approaches will assist archaeologists in efforts to esh out culture-specic aspects of its consumption. Keywords Native copper Eastern North America Prehistoric copper working Anthropology of technology Archaeometry Technological style Mississippian Old Copper Complex Hopewell

Introduction The following contribution reviews recent archaeological approaches to the ways in which native peoples of the Eastern Woodlands of North America utilized metals throughout prehistory and suggests directions for future research. It will undoubtedly present a marked and provocative contrast to the models of New and Old World metallurgical development presented by other authors. There are two important reasons for this, both worth stating at
K. L. Ehrhardt (&) Illinois State Museum, Springeld, IL, USA e-mail: kathy@eclipse.net K. L. Ehrhardt 930 S. Rangeline Road, Columbia, MO 65201, USA

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the outset. First, until Europeans arrived on North Americas eastern shores in the sixteenth century, the history of metals use among Eastern Woodlands peoples centers on the exploitation of one particular metallic resourcenative copper. This is not to say that the archaeological record does not contain evidence for the manipulation of other metals, like gold (Halsey 1996, 35), silver (Brose and Greber 1979a, 253; Spence and Fryer 2005), lead (primarily in the form of galena; Walthall et al. 1979; Walthall 1981) and meteoric iron (Halsey 1996, 3)it simply means that copper overwhelmingly predominates the metallurgical landscape. Second, there is no reliable evidence that prehistoric native American copper workers ever melted, smelted, alloyed, or cast the metal (Clark and Purdy 1982, 45). Producing the raw material and forming it into nished objects never went beyond procuring it in its native form from nearby or far-away sources, then cold hammering (with some hot hammering), and annealing it into shape. Yet, despite this apparent absence of innovation and given the limitations of these primary techniques, skilled copper workers developed extraordinarily rened repertoires of secondary forming techniques to produce some of the most technologically sophisticated, symbolically powerful, and artistically breathtaking objects ever found in prehistoric native North America. In the Eastern Woodlands, indigenous copper working goes back well over 7,000 years, and has been known to archaeologists for well over 150 years (Martin 1999). Scholars have long known that copper use was hardly ubiquitous throughout prehistory: some native groups never used copper at all. In others, adoption is scanty or sporadic. In yet others, copper assumed an especially important, even paramount role as a symbolically powerful raw material and a spectacularly important and meaningful nished product. Native copper was used by prehistoric Eastern Woodlands peoples for utilitarian tools, art objects, items of ceremonial or symbolic signicance, and personal or ritual adornment. Some artifacts were manufactured to be used in life, whereas many, both used and unused, appear in burial contexts as adornments or burial furniture. Largely because it has traditionally been interpreted as an exotic and valuable raw material and as an important medium in exchange, mortuary practice, self-expression, and ritual, and because such spectacular artifacts have been fashioned from it, native coppers appearance in indigenous material culture assemblages has long intrigued archaeologists. In the Eastern Woodlands, approaches to its study have taken many forms. Some of the earliest were experimental, conducted for the purpose of replicating indigenous copper working techniques and for controverting early claims that North American Indians could not have produced the copper artifacts recovered in nineteenth century mound investigations (Cushing 1894; Willoughby 1903). In culture history studies, copper and copper artifacts were listed as important traits in spatio-temporal ordering schemes. At the same time, copper artifacts have also been the subject of innumerable formal, stylistic, and technological analyses. Other studies have been directed toward understanding how copper was procured and distributed within and among native groups, how artifacts were manufactured and used, and what the raw material and the nished products meant in the social, political, economic, ideological, and technological contexts in which they functioned (see Grifn 1961 for a classic study). While modern researchers may still be asking some of the same kinds of questions about the relationships among material culture, technology, and meaning, new approaches have emerged that are opening the door for new interpretations. Advances in materials science analysis and in scholarship (material culture studies, symbolic anthropology) are pushing our interpretive envelopes to unprecedented levels. The increased application of archaeometric (laboratory) methods to questions of material composition and sourcing,

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ratoire studies has begun to yield information that manufacturing history, and chane ope goes beyond that which formal, stylistic, and contextual analyses alone can reveal. This new knowledge adds solidity and condence to our inferences (Kingery 1996a, 12). It has already shattered long-held beliefs in many realms of inquiry, and is opening our minds to new avenues of interpretation. These new bodies of scientically derived evidence, combined with the adoption of important ideas from the anthropology of technology and the social aspects of materials use, have resulted in the development of interdisciplinary approaches that emphasize the importance of illuminating the technical, ideational, and contextual details of production and use processes at local and supralocal levels (see Childs 1994). More importantly, they have stimulated interest among archaeologists in integrating these archaeometallurgical ndings into analyses that consider both material and nonmaterial aspects of technological and sociopolitical systems (after Kingery 1996a, b). Increasingly, scholars are working from the premise that copper working, like all native technology (and all technology, for that matter), is woven into the very fabric of culture. They recognize that it is indeed a social phenomenonthe material, its products, its procurers, its crafters, and its consumers operate within culturally meaningful sets of symbols, meanings, intentions, and actions with regard to its acquisition and use. All play multilayered roles on complex and dynamic social, political, technological, and ideological stage(s) (Ehrhardt 2005; Kingery 1996b; Lemonnier 1993, 69). One of my arguments here is that understanding how both culturally ascribed attributes and physical properties of materials like native copper affect performance in all these domains should now be a critical aspect of our interpretations (after Kingery 1996a, 12; see also Charles et al. 2004). These perspectives and approaches are entirely compatible with materiality approaches in archaeology (Meskell 2005). Most signicantly, archaeologists are beginning to take the results of these studies to even higher levels of social inquiry. Questions concerning the role of copper in such areas as craft specialization, ritual and ceremonial practice, long-distance exchange, the rise and maintenance of social inequality, and technological and social change within prehistoric societies and at contact are some of the research issues that occupy the minds of researchers today. Copper working is found (to a greater or lesser degree) in many prehistoric cultures of the Eastern Woodlands. However, archaeologists have identied three major prehistoric copper-consuming cultural traditions, the Old Copper complexes of the Middle and Late Archaic period, centered in the Upper Great Lakes and upper Midwest (c. 40001000 BC), the Hopewellian horizon of the Ohio Valley, midcontinent, and Gulf Coast (c. 100 BC400 AD), and the Mississippian systems (from c. 900 AD to European contact in the southeast) of the midcontinent and southeast (see Figs. 1, 3, 5). These manifestations are not temporally or culturally contiguous, nor do they exhibit the same level of organizational complexity. Copper use within them is not unchanging; because there are both distinct and subtle shifts over time in terms of production technique, form, function, and intended use of artifacts crafted, it cannot be said that there is one all-inclusive native style. However, certain social threads are common to all three of these systems: (1) copper appears frequently in mortuary contexts; (2) it is identied as a valued good; (3) it was traded among groups, often long-distance; and (4) some form of specialization was likely present (Leader 1988). Even so, the door must remain open to recognize potential differences in the way the material was viewed, how it was worked and for what purpose, how production may have been organized, and in the life histories of various copper artifacts that were created. For this reason, there is no single developmental or interpretive paradigm that is now or has been applied to the whole of copper working in the Eastern Woodlands. In each area,

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researchers have developed their own suites of research questions (domains of inquiry can and often do overlap) based on the data at hand and the historical trajectory of scholarly inquiry. The purpose of this work then, is to review the major copper working traditions of the Eastern Woodlands, with an eye toward elucidating some of the ways that archaeologists are currently approaching the study of copper and copper working in their regions and in their respective cultural traditions. I emphasize contributions by those who have integrated scientic (archaeometric/archaeometallurgical) analyses into attempts to address larger anthropological problems. First, I present a very brief introduction to the Eastern Woodlands and its peoples. I then move to a discussion of native copper, its availability, and how archaeologists have shattered long-held beliefs about the source(s) of the material. A short, and necessarily non-exhaustive review of what is known about metal working and the contexts of copper use in each of the three major prehistoric traditions follows; incorporated into each review is a discussion of the predominant paradigms and/or theoretical approaches that currently drive thinking. I end by offering suggestions as to the direction of future interdisciplinary research in copper working studies.

The Eastern Woodlands Geographical Setting The Eastern Woodlands of native North America is a vast, geographically and culturally diverse region of indigenous peoples stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. It is generally divided into two subareas: the northeastern Woodlands and the southeast. Native Peoples It is impossible to enumerate here the myriad archaeological cultures identied in the Eastern Woodlands or to describe their diverse adaptations through time. Broadly speaking, however, in the coastal or in often deeply forested or mixed grassland/forest areas of the Northeast subarea, native peoples exploited lands full of rich and varied resources through hunting, shing, gathering, and harvesting. Later, in zones where habitats were amenable, they practiced horticulture or a mixed economy (Tuck 1978, 28; Levine et al. 1999). Hunting-gathering groups were generally small and largely egalitarian in structure, maintaining relatively low population densities across local landscapes. Groups tended to be mobile according to season or resource availability. Some populations, however, became seasonally sedentary or completely sedentary due to resource abundance and intensied exploitation patterns, or the adoption of and ultimate dependence on horticulture. Burial ceremonialism has a long trajectory in the northeast (Tuck 1978, 43). In the southeast, where climatic conditions are temperate to subtropical, social and economic adaptations also varied broadly according to habitat. Small populations of mobile hunters and gatherers tended to gravitate along waterways, exploiting a wide spectrum of seasonal resources. Early on in many areas, populations increased and became residentially stable. In some places, small-to-very-large settlements arose concomitant with population increase and the intensive collection and tending of starchy seed plants and seasonal resources, such as nuts. Along coasts, peoples continued to follow a seasonal round of hunting and gathering, exploiting shellsh, mammal, and plant resources. Plant

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domestication (subsistence intensication), sedentism, long-distance exchanges, and the rise of political inequalities are features of southeastern cultural development. At major points in the prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, widespread cultural manifestations, namely Hopewellian and Mississippian traditions and their local variants, appeared over large geographical areas of the Eastern Woodlands. Within their respective spheres of inuence, distinctive types of material culture and suites of ideas became elaborated and ourished to varying degrees. These were often accompanied by sweeping but not ubiquitous social, political, economic, and religious changes at the local level among them intensication of cultivation practices, change in community organization and distribution, heightened symbolic and artistic expression, elaboration of mortuary practices and ceremonial ritual, and construction of monumental earthworks and mounds. In both cases, some form of social complexity emerged. Materially, both are marked by the widespread exchange and consumption of exotic goods. The material repertoires that represent (and often serve to distinguish) Eastern Woodlands cultures in the archaeological record are utilitarian, non-utilitarian, or both. They consist mainly of implements relating to the procurement and processing of resources, weapons, personal adornment items, art objects, and ritual/ceremonial paraphernalia. Technologically, artifacts range from simple to very complex. They are made of a wide variety of natural resources (which may be local or nonlocal to their makers and/or users), including but not limited to stone, bone (and antler), shell, clay, teeth, wood, crystals, metals, minerals, bers, and bark. Certain types of artifacts, particularly stone tools and pottery vessels, are frequently quite localized temporally, geographically, functionally, and stylistically: tool kits may be specialized and vary widely according to the range of activities for which they were manufactured.

Native Copper in the Eastern WoodlandsMultiple Sources for Prehistoric Metalworkers? Copper Sources in the Eastern Woodlands Native, or metallic copper deposits occur in many locations in North America. In the Eastern Woodlands, deposits are found in the Lake Superior region, along the Appalachian mountains, and in Nova Scotia (Lattanzi 2007; Levine 1999; Rapp et al. 2000, 7, 2026). Copper can occur as masses, chunks, lumps, sheets, and in arborescent forms; it may be found in buried deposits, in near-surface pockets or veins, or as outcrops (Maddin et al. 1980, 212; Ries 1916, 603609). Of these occurrences, the deposits in the Lake Superior basin are the largest, richest, and best known. Indeed, they are the largest native copper deposits in the world (Rapp et al. 2000, 9; Fig. 1). Signicant outcrop and near-surface sources are found on the Keweenaw Peninsula and on Isle Royale, Michigan, and along the Brule River in northwestern Wisconsin (Martin 1999). Drift or oat copper also occurs for hundreds of miles around these deposits in the form of nuggets/boulders of enormously varying size and weight, having been dropped on the landscape as result of four episodes of glacial advance over the bedrock deposits (Halsey 1996, 6; Rapp et al. 2000, 1112). Native Copper Procurement in PrehistoryOld Questions, New Answers Native copper from the Lake Superior region is thought to have been heavily exploited by indigenous peoples from about 6000 BP to European contact. Abandoned mine pits are still

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visible on the ground surface, and mining tools have been found in and around the pits themselves (Martin 1999, 108; Mason 1981, 181; Whittlesey 1863). Generations of investigators (Grifn 1961; Martin 1999, 84110) have researched prehistoric mining activities there, documenting locations of mine pits, identifying processing stations, and conducting excavations. Researchers estimate that there are over 5,000 mines in the area (Rapp et al. 2000, 10), but they have been hesitant to provide estimates as to the exact amount of copper removed in these operations. Wayman (1989, 4), however, suggests that it may well have exceeded 5,000 tons. Rapp et al. (2000, 10) comment that production must have been tremendous, far exceeding any other source. This dramatic and unequivocal evidence for extensive prehistoric copper exploitation became the basis for the development of a resource procurement model centering on the Lake Superior deposits as the single source for copper artifacts recovered in the northern copper region (see Levine 1996, 1999, 2007). The idea was given voice as early as 1855 (Wilson 1855, 204cited in Levine 1999, 183). Despite some well-reasoned objections and solid geological evidence to the contrary, by the rst decades of the twentieth century, it had become fact (Levine 2007). For interpreters of prehistoric economic and technological life, the implications of accepting this view were profound. If, as most researchers believed with apparent certitude, all the native copper used to make all of the copper

Fig. 1 Map showing the major copper-bearing zones of the Lake Superior Copper District and the approximate areal extent of the Old Copper Complex (after Gibbon 1998)

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artifacts found in the northeastern Woodlands came exclusively from the Great Lakes, then copper found in contexts far from this source would have to have been obtained either by trade or by direct procurement (often over long distances). Importantly, copper artifacts found far from their sources were recognized as exotic (Seeman 1979, 291292; Streuver and Houart 1972). According to Winters (1968, 181, italics mine), coppers exotic nature may have added an intrinsic value to these [nished] items beyond their basic utilitarian properties. Value can be seen in a number of ways (Bernardini and Carr 2005, 634635; Cooper 2006, 152). In an economic sense, value has to do with cost to procure as a function of distance from the source (Seeman 1979, 292). In a technological sense, value may stem from the mechanical advantages of the material and its properties and the uses to which it could be put. It may also arise out of special regard for the specialized, transformative skills of the crafter, and/or the powers with which the material itself is thought to be imbued or invested (Helms 1993, 108, 115, 149150). It is also clear that copper has an intrinsic worth or value that transcends either economic or technological considerations. Value in a symbolic, ideational, or even aesthetic sense was undoubtedly culturespecic, but its distributional abundance throughout prehistory in special contexts, primarily in burials as status- or prestige-type gifts, elements of regalia, or as bodily adornment placed with the favored dead attests to its importance in mortuary and ritual ceremonialism (see Helms 1993). While it is imprudent to push historic meanings too deeply into prehistory, in the historic period, copper was esteemed by native peoples for its life-afrming and restorative qualities. It was associated with the other world, specically the Underworld and the Underwater Panther, whose tail was made of copper. Copper from the Panthers tail was thought to be a powerful healing medium (Bradley and Childs 1991, 16). Thus, copper has been built into scenarios of long distance trade and exchange as a desired exotic and valued material. Trade in copper had been established from Late Archaic times (Pleger 2000; Winters 1968), with a trend toward increased local control of the materials consumption and redistribution. It became a major prestige commodity in the complex, formalized trade systems that have been devised for the Middle Woodland (Hopewellian) and Mississippian eras (Seeman 1979). At the same time, copper has been deeply woven into hypotheses concerning the development of social complexity (the rise of elites/rank societies) based on local or regional control of access to or use and display of rare exchange goods (Brown et al. 1990; Goad 1979, 240; Lattanzi 2007; Pleger 2000). But, to what extent is copper really an exotic material? What sources besides outcrops may have been exploited? While it is largely passed over, several researchers have pointed to the role that oat or drift copper may have played in the rise of local copper working industries (Gibbon 1998; Halsey 2004; Rapp et al. 2000, 1112; Wayman 1989). Float copper is found as far south as the conuence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and as far east as New York. Throughout prehistory, nuggets of usable size could be picked off the ground or gathered from streambeds and used, arguing for a more localized pattern of copper procurement. Wayman (1989, 3) has called it a prime source of native copper for ancient peoples, while Halsey (2004) maintains that most of the copper used in the prehistoric period probably came from oat sources. Although compositional testing for sourcing prehistoric copper artifacts was reported as early as 1848 (Bastian 1961), application of modern systematic trace element analysis for the express purpose of linking copper artifacts to their geographic/geologic sources in order to assess the movement of copper in interregional trade began in earnest in the late 1970s (see Veakis 1979). One of the most inuential studies was that of Goad (1978, 1979, 1980). Through optical emission spectrography and neutron activation analysis of copper ores and artifact samples from diverse locations and temporal periods, she determined that

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in addition to Lake Superior sources, Middle Woodland peoples of the southeast also exploited local sources, namely those deposits in northwest North Carolina and in the Ducktown triangle area of northeast Georgiasoutheastern Tennesseesouthwestern North Carolina. This led her to reevaluate Middle Woodland trade systems in that region (Goad 1979), nding that they were actually more regional in structure than interregional. Goad also discovered that in certain cases, individual artifact types and archaeological sites correlated with particular material sources (Goad 1979; Brose and Greber 1979a, 252). Importantly, she noted a trend through time away from Lake Superior sources (which in some of her cases, were several hundreds of miles away) towards greater use of local resources in the Mississippian southeast. Meanwhile, George Rapp and colleagues from the University of MinnesotaDuluth were amassing a large database of chemical ngerprints of North American ore sources and archaeological artifacts (Rapp et al. 1980, 2000). Archaeologist Mary Ann Levine contributed geological and artifact samples from various locations in the Eastern Woodlands to enhance the data set (Levine 2007). Using neutron activation analysis (NAA), they chemically ngerprinted thirteen Eastern Woodlands sources. Of these, seven are in the Lake Superior region and the remaining six (two in New Jersey, two in Nova Scotia, and two in Pennsylvania) are found east of Lake Superior (Levine 2007; Rapp et al. 2000, 64). Levines (1996, 1999, 2007) interest in such a project was to test the dominant model privileging Lake Superior copper procurement throughout prehistory. Testing 65 native copper artifact samples from 19 sites in the northeast against ngerprinted sources, she found that her results varied by period; virtually all of the Late Archaic (c. 50003000 BP) specimens she tested were traced to Lake Superior sources, while sources for Early Woodland (c. 30002000 BP) artifacts centered on deposits from Nova Scotia. While Levines ndings are extremely signicant, she did not delve into what impact they might have on models of native copper distribution in northeastern prehistory. Lattanzi (2007), however, takes up this problem. He tests long-debated suggestions that the presence of copper artifacts in the Delaware Valley resulted from either the migration into the area of peoples who brought copper artifacts from elsewhere, or from local participation in far-ung trade networks centered outside the region. Although preliminary, results of his LAICPMS (laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) sourcing of Late Archaic and Early Woodland artifacts from the Delaware Valley concur with Levines: in the Late Archaic, native copper came from Lake Superior sources. Later, in the Early Woodland, a shift occurred to exploitation of local sources in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Lattanzi (2007, 132133) concludes that a more focused [geographically?] pattern of local copper procurement, manufacture, and exchange prevailed in the Delaware Valley during the Early Woodland, indicating a change in procurement practices. He also suggests (2007, 133) that copper and other exotic artifacts found in Early Woodland burials may signal a move toward social complexity there. McKnight (2007) looks at the problem in yet another way. Also using LAICPMS, he sourced multiple artifacts from several Early and Middle Woodland caches only to nd that these caches are not homogeneous sourcewise; in some cases, he found that up to three different source areas in the Upper Great Lakes and elsewhere are identied in a single cache.

Copper Consumption in the Eastern Woodlands The results of these recent investigations broaden our interpretive vistas as to the potential sources of native copper in the Eastern Woodlands and challenge us to continue to revisit

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some long-held assumptions about how and from what source(s) the major copper working cultures of the Eastern Woodlands acquired and distributed it. At the same time, they set the stage for relating what we are now learning about the technological and contextual aspects of its consumption. As will be shown, crafters from the three traditions discussed here worked copper into different kinds of artifacts for somewhat different purposes, ranging from the strictly utilitarian to ritual. From a technological perspective, artifacts of all periods are generally complex in form and involved signicant technical prociency and knowledge on the part of the artisans of both the behavior and limitations of the material and of manufacturing techniques. Also, in each of these situations, it is clear that for indigenous peoples, native copper had qualities that lent it an aura of exceptionality as Helms (1993, 101) has termed it, for the people who were using it. The Old Copper Complex (c. 40001000 BC) Not surprisingly, the oldest rm evidence for copper working in the Eastern Woodlands is found in the Lake Superior region (South Fowl Lake, Minnesota) and dates to 6800 BP (Martin 1999). Radiocarbon dates from pits on Isle Royale indicate that native peoples were removing copper from that locale by c. 3500 BC. The single outstanding copper-using tradition in the region with roots in this era is the Old Copper Complex, or Industry (formerly known as the Old Copper Culture), which ourished in the Mid-to-Late Archaic period (40001000 BC; Martin and Pleger 1999; Pleger 2000, 2003; Pleger and Stoltman 2008). Centered in eastern Wisconsin, the Old Copper Complex is found throughout the western Great Lakes drainage, radiating both westward and eastward from that core (Gibbon 1998, 27, 36; Fig. 1). The complex takes in a number of discrete, largely egalitarian, mobile hunting and gathering societies with their own characteristic tool kits of lithic and osseous materials. However, these cultures also shared in varying degree a common [copper] metallurgical technology and a set of style concepts (Gibbon 1998, 40; Mason 1981, 186). Material evidence of the complex consists of distinctive types of copper implements, weaponry, and ornaments that were frequently but not always found in mortuary contexts. These artifacts include socketed or tanged spear points, knives, straight, or crescent type blades (ulus), awls, perforators, spuds, celts, chisels/wedges/axes (some also socketed), harpoons, sh hooks, needles, gorges, crescent shaped ornaments, bracelets, pendants, rings, and beads (Fig. 2; Pleger and Stoltman 2008, 787839). Artifacts tended to be large, heavy, bulky, and primarily utilitarian in form (Leader 1988, 73). The origin of the raw material is assumed to be the Lake Superior deposits or the abundant oat copper available in the region. Important work has been done to elucidate Old Copper metalworking techniques. Leader (1988) (xeroradiography), Vernon (1985, 1990), and Schroeder and Ruhl (1968) (metallography), are among those who have performed laboratory tests on Old Copper materials, while LaRonge (2001) has performed important experimental replication work. These investigations revealed that artifacts were fabricated either directly from nuggets or laminar plates or from prepared copper blanks that were hammered, attened, and repeatedly folded over and bent into shape (Vernon 1990). Sheets were also produced. Alternate cold hammering and annealing processes were employed in manufacture. While hot hammering is suspected, it has not been demonstrated through laboratory analysis. These primary techniques were accompanied by differential, often combined use of abrading (grinding), riveting, perforation (by drilling or punching), bending, or molding (often around mandrels), and polishing (LaRonge 2001; Leader 1988, 71; Vernon 1985,

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Fig. 2 Examples of Old Copper Complex copper artifacts from various locales in Wisconsin. Left to right: chisel (#11836/1571), socketed spud (#2147), small celt, socketed spearpoint, crescent knife, beads, stemless point (#1876), tanged point, rat tailed tanged point (#1908). Courtesy of the Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photograph by Kathleen L. Ehrhardt

1990; see also Martin 1999). Researchers have found no evidence of casting, melting, or smelting of the metal (Smith 1968, 242). Archaeologists have long sought to resolve a larger set of social questions with regard to the function of Old Copper artifacts, rst posed by Binford (1962) over 40 years ago. If these objects were recognizably utilitarian in form but are found primarily in mortuary contexts, were they ever actually used, or were they manufactured strictly as grave furniture or personal accoutrements? Can some form of status recognition in an otherwise egalitarian society be inferred by their placement in burials? Looking into these questions, Penman (1977) used microscopic use-wear analysis (examination of edge angles, and wear marks from e.g. battering, blunting, smoothing, reworking to conclude that most of the over one thousand Old Copper artifacts he examined had indeed been employed for various utilitarian purpose(s). In his visual examination and xeroradiographic testing, Leader (1988) also found signs of use and resharpening on many objects. While Schroeder and Ruhls (1968, 162) metallographic analysis revealed that four of the ve objects they tested had been left cold worked, Vernons (1985, 1990) showed that points, knives, and celts left annealed outnumbered their cold worked counterparts by 4:1. However, 80% of the awls were nished by cold working. Thus, Binfords questions have no rm resolution to date (see Childs 1994, 234235). However, as Gibbon (1998, 42) points out, the fact that these objects had functioned in the everyday world is not inconsistent with their placement with the dead or their use as social markers, and is probably connected with achieved status in otherwise egalitarian

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societies. Recent research has shown that as early as the Late Archaic, copper may have had great social and symbolic signicance to Old Copper peoples, particularly when placed with the dead. Pleger (2000, 2003) argues that while evidence for social complexity (in the form of achieved status) is indeed found in some Old Copper burial contexts, social differentiation begins to appear with greater intensity at about the time Old Copper merges (about 1000 BC) with the Red Ochre Culture. It is during this time that Pleger (2003, 16) sees a signicant uptrend in the production of copper ornamentation versus copper implements, and a similar increase in the occurrence of prestige-type goods of nonlocal (exotic) manufacture in particular burials within area cemeteries. He also adds that it may well have been during this time that copper emerges as a valuable trade item. Hopewell (c. 100 BC400 AD) Hopewell is a Middle Woodland cultural phenomenon that covered vast but non-contiguous territories of the Eastern Woodlands, and whose inuence was local, regional, and interregional (Fig. 3). While most researchers agree that its cores are in the Scioto tradition of the Scioto River Valley, Ohio and the Havana Hopewell of the Illinois River Valley in west central Illinois, its overall cultural expressions were extremely variable according to local or regional tradition and practice. Hopewell is known primarily for increased social

Fig. 3 Map showing sites mentioned in the text, and the approximate areal extent of Hopewell

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complexity; elaborate mortuary ceremonialism, which included mound construction and the consumption of prestige goods; and the development of widespread, long-distance trade networks dealing in exotic materials and nished objects (Seeman 1979, 237, 240, 254), commonly known as the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. Native copper is known to have played important roles in all of these domains. Seeman (1979, 303304) ranked copper rst in cultural importance on his list of major Interaction Sphere raw materials, and McKnights (2007) impressive inventory of the materials distribution throughout the Hopewellian world is dramatic testimony to its signicance. Copper is thought to have circulated in both raw and nished form. Seeman (1979, 251) further argues that the Hopewell site, the major center of the Scioto Tradition (in Ross County Ohio), was coppers point of entry into the interaction system, and that the Hopewell and Trempealeau (western Wisconsin) sites were centers for the manufacture of nished copper artifacts. In view of recent studies arguing for local production, the latter supposition is now in question (Carr 2005b; Ruhl 2005, 705). New work has shed light on copper acquisition during this time. Until Sharon Goads (1978, 1979) work, direct acquisition from Great Lakes sources had been the preferred procurement model (see Bernardini and Carr 2005, 631634 for recent supporting arguments). However, McKnight offers new insights. Based on his recent LAICPMS provenance ndings, McKnight (2007, 224) concludes that copper deposits from Lake Superior were not the exclusive source for native copper, but were by far the most important. He found, however, that beads from two burial caches at the Hester site in the Copena area of the southern Appalachians (northern Alabama), come from multiple sources in the Lake Superior district. These results, he claims, shed doubt on the notion that procurement was direct. McKnight further points out that several of the major northern centers were located well within, or within reasonable distance of, the Lake Superior oat copper catchment zone, making drift copper accessible for local consumption. During this period, copper is thought to have been consumed and distributed by persons who controlled its movement and/or desired to communicate symbolically and materially their social (leadership? shamanic?) role in life, and more frequently, in death (Carr 2005a, 280281; Charles et al. 2004, 63; Seeman 2004, 59, 61; Winters 1981, 1922). Both nished and unnished objects are documented primarily from mortuary contexts, appearing there as personal belongings, or as gifts/offerings. Ruhl (2005, 707; see also Carr 2005a, 280) has also noted their occurrence in other ritual settings. Hopewellian artifacts differ signicantly in form and manufacturing technique from the solid, largely utilitarian forms found in Old Copper contexts. A wide range of primarily ornamental forms, some quite spectacular, are featured in the industry. These include earspools (Fig. 4c), gorgets (Fig. 4b), bracelets, beads, arm rings/bracelets, and head dresses. Panpipes and platform pipes also occur, while relatively fewer utilitarian implements (Fig. 4a), including awls, copper axes, celts, adzes, and gouges, are recovered. Several innovations are noted in Hopewellian metalworking technology. Hopewellian copper artifacts were manufactured by hammering copper nuggets or prepared blanks into solid forms and into sheet stock, the use of which becomes much more widespread. Rods and blanks were formed by hammering, annealing, and grinding into shape (Leader 1988, 78). Metallographic analysis by Wayman et al. (1992) revealed that the heads of two of the solid adzes they examined were formed using either hot forging and/or cold hammering and annealing. Final forms, such as solid bracelets and adze heads, were then achieved using various combinations of bending, folding, rolling, and grinding actions (Leader 1988; Wayman et al. 1992, 107, 113). Sockets were formed by hammering over an anvil (Smith 1968, 242). Holes were created by punching or drilling.

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Fig. 4 Examples of Hopewellian copper artifacts from the Hopewell site, Ross County, Ohio. a Celt (left, #56018) and large awl or piercer (right, #56711); b rectangular gorget (#56375); c earspools with cut-out design (#56201); d sea mammal efgy (#56174); e geometric cut-out (#56163). All images 2009 Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois. Reproduced with their permission

Metalworkers also cold worked, annealed, and ground pieces of copper into at sheets of various thickness (0.181.25 mm inclusively), which were then used alone or hammered together. Sheets were then used to produce nished artifacts that were mainly ornamental (Leader 1988; Wayman et al. 1992, 102; Willoughby cited in Greber and Ruhl 1989, 122). Breastplates and perforated rectangular ornaments were fashioned (Fig. 4b). Sheets were also cut into two-dimensional geometric and/or zoomorphic shapes (Fig. 4d, e). Openwork cut-outs are often features of the geometric cut sheets (Fig. 4e). Many animal efgy sheets are embossed or repousseed to enhance the design (see Fig. 4d). Sheet is also used to sheath or clad wooden or shell forms, perhaps to give the appearance of solid copper. Hollow beads and hollow bracelets were also produced. Beads were made of strips either wound around a cylindrical mandrel or freeformed. Bracelets were formed by sinking the sheet into concave molds, then hammering the protruding edges inward to form a C-shaped

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cross-section (Leader 1988, 86). Sheets and ornaments were repaired using rolled strip copper rivets (Willoughby cited in Greber and Ruhl 1989, 112). One of the most distinctive artifacts in the Hopewellian ornamental and ritual repertoire was the copper earspool (Fig. 4c). Bicymbal, or yo-yo shaped examples are probably the most complex copper artifacts manufactured in native northeastern North America (Ehrhardt 2005, 67; see Greber and Ruhl 1989 for discussion). Earspools often exhibit exquisite craftsmanship; some are even made with an overlay of meteoric iron or native silver (Ruhl 1992, 52). Essentially, earspools are made of sheet hammered into two disks or plates. The inner and outer disks are joined centrally by a stem or other mechanism. In some cases, construction involved the use of nonmetal adhesives or twine (Ruhl 2005; Ruhl and Seeman 1998). Using optical microscopy of several prepared earspool cross sections, Wayman et al. (1992, 101103, 131) discovered that a number of the disks comprising the obverse and reverse of the nished spools were actually made up of at least three or four layers of copper sheet hammered tightly together. Importantly, the disks were riveted together at the midsection and joined at the outside edge through use of mechanical, rather than metal welding or bonding techniques. The variability Ruhl (2005, 703) notes in earspool construction and decorative style within and across regions has led her to conclude that production and consumption were local in scale. Thus, Hopewellian metal workers produced solid objects and also manufactured and manipulated sheet stock. Embossing, cladding, and sinking techniques were added to the technological repertoire of earlier times. First evidenced in Archaic traditions, the use of rolled rivets for joining and repair becomes more frequent. Twine wrapping and adhesives are now also used as joins (Ruhl and Seeman 1998, 659). Several types of nished artifacts appear to exhibit standardization in form and design. The use of templates to achieve that consistency has not been demonstrated conclusively (Greber and Ruhl 1989, 141; Ruhl and Seeman 1998). Also, the purposeful selection of high arsenic copper (Wayman et al. 1992, 130) and the intentional use of copper and silver cladding techniques point to the importance of the color and visual effect of the nished product (see Ruhl and Seeman 1998, 655, 657, 659). Overall, the impressive quality and complexity of the metalworking found among Ohio Hopewellian peoples has prompted Leader (1988, 198) and Halsey (1996, 15) to suggest that metalworking specialists worked at manufacturing copper items, possibly on a full-time basis (Leader 1988, 198). The Mississippian (from c. 900 AD to European Contact in the Southeast) The Mississippian way of life is marked by the intensication of maize-based farming within a mixed subsistence economy, the emergence of local systems in which linked settlements ranged in size from farmsteads to large ceremonial temple/burial mound centers, the standardization of art styles over vast distances, participation in long-distance trade in exotic and elite goods, and an unprecedented level of legitimized sociopolitical authority (Brown 2004, 106; Grifn 1990; Pauketat 2004, 79, 4041; Fig. 5). It was also a time of elaborate mortuary ritual, ceremonialism, and complex ideological expression. There is little doubt that native North American copper working technology reached an expressive high point in this period. As among Hopewell peoples, copper was a primary prestige good of the time; it was exploited by Mississippian peoples for internal and external consumption and was traded over long distances. It was used for fashioning a range of ceremonial artifacts and implements thought to be markers of high social status, authority, and wealth. This is demonstrated in the copper-rich elite gravesites found in mounds of the period.

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Fig. 5 Map showing sites mentioned in the text, and the approximate areal extent of the Mississippian

Particular types of elaborate, well-nished, status/ritual-related objects made of copper, especially copper repousse plates, are the preeminent components of the Southeast Ceremonial Complex (SECC), a hallmark of the Mississippian period (see Fig. 6c). The SECC is dened as a set of specialized ritual imageryin which thematically important animal and human gures are rendered according to specic stylistic conventions of representation (Brown 2004, 105; Brown and Kelly 2000, 476). The SECC ourished throughout the southeast from c. 13001500 AD (Leader 1988, 198199; Sampson and Esarey 1993, 452). The large ceremonial center sites of Etowah (northwest Georgia), Spiro (eastern Oklahoma), and Moundville (western Alabama) have been identied as SECC copper working centers (Leader 1988; Sampson and Esarey 1993). Artistic styles (based pri marily on variation in the artistic style of copper repousse plates) of copper prestige goods have been identied with technological and artistic industries there (Brown 1989, 2004, 120121). Cahokia (southwest Illinois), the fourth and earliest of the major Mississippian ceremonial centers, has not yielded much in the way of copper or classic SECC-related copper artifacts. However, it is argued to have been a major pre-classic center, trading copper and producing particular types of copper artifacts at an early stage of SECC classical development (Brown 2004; Brown and Kelly 2000, 473474). Copper artifacts, some very impressive in form and design, are also found in smaller quantities at various other sites throughout the Mississippian sphere (see Goodman 1984).

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Some of the copper for Mississippian artifacts is thought to have originated from Great Lakes sources, however, a shift is noted to the use of primarily southeastern resources (Goad 1978, 1980, 271; Hurst and Larson 1958). Copper working during this period is heavily directed toward production of ritual regalia, accessories, and adornment (Fig. 6). Artifacts include hair ornaments, gorgets, beads, headdresses, large perforated plates (plaques), earspools, long-nosed god maskettes (Fig. 6a), ear ornaments, and copper-covered masks and other items. Ritual items also occur in the form of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic rattles and efgies (Fig. 6d). Spear heads and other ceremonial implements such as celts, maces, large axes, bipointed needles, and pins are also found in the industries (Hamilton et al. 1974). Mississippian crafters fabricated solid implements and sheets in the manner of earlier metalworkers. Renements of the period center on the further thinning of sheet into foil [dened by Leader (1988) as sheet thinner than .05 mm] and the extensive use of repousse

Fig. 6 Examples of Mississippian copper artifacts: a long-nosed god maskette ear ornaments, Meppen Mound site, Calhoun County, Illinois; b repousse plate with forked-eye surrounds, Craig Mound, Spiro site, LeFlore County, Oklahoma; c repousse plate depicting Birdman, Late Braden style. Wulng group, Dunklin County, Missouri; d turtle-shell efgy rattles: carapace (left), plastron (right). Mitchell site, Madison County, Illinois. a Photograph by David H. Dye, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. b Photo John Bigelow Taylor, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. c Artist unknown, repousse plaque, c. 12001400. Copper, 11 9 5 00 . Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Gift of J. Max Wulng, 1937. d Photograph by Doug Carr, courtesy of the Illinois State Museum

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technique in executing design motifs (Fig. 6b, c). Use of cut-outs is also documented. Leader (1988) also notes the continued use of perforation, shearing, grinding, molding, and burnishing. The practice of covering objects made of materials such as wood and stone with thin copper sheathing intensies during this period, and becomes a signicant feature of Mississippian metalworking. Human and animal efgies, rattles, earspools, bodkins, nials, beads, bladelike objects, and sun gorgets are examples of clad objects (Leader 1988, 129135, 198; Hamilton et al. 1974, 176177). Elaborate ceremonial, symbolic, and status-related ornamental artifacts, such as highly decorated plates and symbol badges, are manufactured of copper sheets and foils. Sheet artifacts are now larger due to use of delicate riveting to join multiple hammered sheets. Plates are elaborately embossed with iconographic motifs reecting important themes associated with the cult complexes they represented (Brown 1985, 114). More complex methods of attachment and repair are also in use (see Fig. 6c for examples). Some artifacts, including headdresses and plates, are thought to have been used heavily and were even patched with new pieces or with pieces of other plates (Brown et al. 1990, 265; Hamilton et al. 1974, 187; Leader 1988, 184; Watson 1950). During this period, designs became more standardized through use of templates; like plate styles are found widely distributed over long distances across the southeast (Brown 1989). Mixed styles at individual sites indicate trade in these prestige objects (Brown et al. 1990, 265). These and other considerations have led scholars to hypothesize that highly skilled and specialized artisan-crafters, possibly under court sponsorship, were producing these objects full-time in workshop settings (Brown 2004, gure 25; Leader 1988). New ndings of a copper working area and associated artifacts beneath Mound 34 at Cahokia should test these ideas on the ground, and further esh out some new thoughts about the nature and intensity of copper production, craft specialization, and the possibilities for dedicated precincts of ritual-related production there (see Ehrhardt 2007; Kelly 2006; Kelly and Kelly 2007). They will also provide new sets of well-provenienced data for technological studies of production. Aside from Leaders (1988) careful examination of materials from Etowah and Mississippian collections in Florida, Watsons (1950) detailed descriptive treatment of the Wulng Plates (Dunklin County, Missouri), and Hamilton et al.s (1974) work on the copper from Spiro, it appears that little large-scale archaeometric investigation has been done on Mississippian copper materials. Sourcing information comes primarily from Goads (1978, 1980) inuential NAA and optical emission spectroscopy work. Schroeder and Ruhl (1968) conducted a very small-scale metallographic investigation on two copper sheets, nding that one had been cold worked and the other had been left annealed. Recently, two gorgets from Moundville were tested instrumentally and metallographically. Results indicate that they were cold worked, then left in an annealed state (Springer 2007, 5). Compositional analysis by XRF (X-ray uorescence spectrometry) was inconclusive.

Discussion It has not been possible to recognize here all of the ne research that has been conducted by scholars on the very kinds of anthropological questions we are looking to answer (see Brose and Greber 1979b; Carr and Case 2005; Charles and Buikstra 2006; Clark and Purdy 1982; Galloway 1989; Goodman 1984; Leader 1988; Sharp 2004; Martin 1999). But, as this review demonstrates, there are lifetimes of work left to be done. From an anthropology of technology perspective, our goal is, of course, to understand the role(s) of copper and

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copper working in the lives of the people that consumed it. Using multiple lines of evidence, we seek to characterize and determine the source(s) of the materials themselves and to identify design and manufacturing techniques. We build these ndings into a production technology, the material and social relations of which are then tied to procurement strategies and to the social, political, economic, and symbolic aspects of distribution, use, reuse, deposition, even discard. This comprises the technological system and situates it as a social project within a dynamic and changing universe of social and ideological action (after Kingery 1996a, b, 227). At the same time, we must keep in mind that in all facets of the work, copper manipulation is but one aspect of a much larger material, social, and symbolic matrix. As I prepared this review, I could not fail to recognize again how much potential continued, large-scale, systematic archaeometallurgical research holds to expand upon, enrich, even recast the work that has gone before. Research on sourcing, manufacturing history, and on identifying the suites of techniques that make up these metalworking traditions has already brought new understandings and new interpretive possibilities. Identifying alternative sources of copper material and realizing the implications of those determinations for models of acquisition, manufacture, and exchange is one example. Another related theme involves working through the question of regionalized or localized copper production and consumption both inside and outside the heartlands of these traditions and how these processes might t into larger schemes of intergroup (panregional) interaction and cohesion (Brown and Kelly 2000, 476; Carr 2005b; Carr and Case 2005, 2228; Gibbon 1998). One important way to address these questions (and other new inquiries as well) is to combine relevant material and contextual data with appropriate laboratory techniques to discern local technological styles (after Lechtman 1977, 1994). According to Lechtman (1977, 6), elucidating technological style means getting a grasp on technical modes of operation, attitudes towards materials, some specic organization of labor, ritual observanceselements which are unied nonrandomly in a complex of formal relationships. This is accomplished, in part, by using materials science and materials engineering approaches to bring to light physiochemical and working properties of artifacts and materials, as well as their procurement and manipulation histories. Incorporating this information into our intellectual tool kits, and placing the results within the contexts of many of the social questions we are asking, provides for an enhanced, yet more culturespecic, reading of the particular choices, attitudes, perceptions, and activities involved in acquiring, crafting, using, and even disposing of copper as material and object within the larger cultural system(s) of which both individuals and objects are a part (Kingery 1996b). As we have seen, there is much more to be learned about the potential variations in the ways in which native peoples, whether separated or close in time, space, tradition, and/or social position interacted with this material. Identifying and isolating particular technological styles allows us to then turn our attention to the relationships within and among prehistoric societies, in terms both of their copper use and of larger spheres of interaction. Lastly, the question remains whether indigenous native copper working systems in Eastern Woodlands prehistory constituted true metallurgy. As has become amply clear to researchers, native American copper workers did not melt, smelt, cast, or alloy copper. Many authors argue that they did not need tothe high quality of the material available to them obviated the need for the kinds of manipulations associated with true metallurgy (Clark and Purdy 1982, 45; Craddock 1995, 98100; Martin 1999, 2829). Yet, through the use of simple techniques commonly attributed to the very earliest stages of native metal working rather than to true metallurgy, crafters manipulated and improved coppers

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properties by heating and hammering it with a great deal of control and a fairly sophisticated use of re (Clark and Purdy 1982, 56). Their specialized knowledge and skill in forming and shaping it into useful items and extraordinary pieces of functional, portable art in a range of iconographic styles is without question (Craddock 1995, 100; Wayman et al. 1992, 133134; but see Bernardini and Carr 2005, 626627). Regarding Old Copper artifacts, no less respected an archaeometallurgist than Cyril Stanley Smith asserts that the skill with which the North American artifacts were made is impressive and that they are far larger and better shaped than any known native copper objects from the Middle East (Smith 1968, 242). Craddock (1995, 122) comments that North American metallurgical practice was the true summit of achievement in the fashioning of native metals. In view of the many ways in which copper was manipulated by native North American peoples and the complex roles it played in social life, it appears to be of little overall consequence whether the technology itself can be labeled true metallurgy. It is provocative and useful to think about why North American metal working technology did not follow the same developmental paths documented for other New World metal working industries (see Clark and Purdy 1982, 52). However, more immediate questions about the use of native copper and its roles in prehistoric material and ideological repertoires, in technological innovation, in mortuary ritual, in conspicuous display, and in the development and maintenance of social stratication appear to have taken center stage. I have argued here that materials science approaches provide important lines of evidence in these inquiries and that an integrated approach to technological style will help us elucidate these ideas. It is an exciting time to be in native North American copper studies. The kinks involved with soft social scientists trying to navigate the world of hard physical science and scientists are largely ironed out; it remains for us to build on the work of our predecessors and to operationalize larger-scale projects which will not only enlarge our data base but also respond to important questions touched on here and in the growing literature.
Acknowledgments I wish to thank sincerely Ben Roberts and Chris Thornton for inviting me to join the symposium, and for their support throughout the presentation and publication processes. Dorothy Hoslers comments are much appreciated. I also thank John Halsey, Greg Lattanzi, Lisa Anselmi, and Matt McKnight for sharing their ideas and their soon-to-be published work with me, and Tom Pleger for technical advice on Old Copper. I am also indebted to Robert Sharp of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jamie Kelly of the Field Museum, Terry Martin of the Illinois State Museum, Dawn Scher Thomae of the Milwaukee Public Museum, and Stacy Park of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum for their help with the images, and to all of the institutions and photographers who allowed their photographs to be reproduced here. Larry Grantham helped with the maps. Tim Taylors and Sarah Wrights editorial and organizational assistance is gratefully acknowledged.

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