The Old Copper Complex of the
Western Great Lakes*

Thomas C. Pleger, Ph.D.
UW-Fox Valley Anthropology
Copyright © 2000

Prehistoric Native Americans first populated the area that we now call Wisconsin at least 11,500 years ago. The first human inhabitants arrived in the western Great Lakes during the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (last ice age). As glaciers receded north, new territories were opened up for habitation. Small groups of hunter-gatherer extended families began to settle into this new landscape as early as 6500 BC. Archaeologists refer to these post-ice age hunter-gatherer cultures collectively as the Archaic Tradition. These cultures made a living by exploiting a wide variety of terrestrial game, migratory waterfowl, fish, and plants. The Archaic Tradition spanned a time of 6500-1000 BC in this part of the Midwest.

Great Lakes Archaic Indians were the first to experiment with metal fabrication technologies in North America. Ninety-nine percent pure copper was discovered in the Lake Superior basin in vein form and in the form of nuggets in glacial outwash gravel beds. Through experimentation, Archaic peoples learned to hot and cold hammer the copper to produce a variety of projectile points, wood working tools, harpoons, fishhooks, and jewelry. Many of these tools were used for everyday subsistence activities; however, some copper goods were traded to cultures outside of the region in order to obtain exotic materials such as marine shell and exotic chert.

The term Old Copper complex has been applied by archaeologists to the cultures that manufactured these ancient tools. We know from radiocarbon-dated materials recovered in close association with these copper artifacts that the Old Copper complex dates to between 6000 and 3000 years ago. In some instances, copper oxidation has preserved organic materials that would have otherwise long since deteriorated. For example, the author has published a date on a preserved fragment of string that was found adhering to a copper knife at the Oconto Old Copper Culture State Park site. This string sample yielded a date of approximately 6,000 years before the present; this is the oldest cemetery site in Wisconsin. Dates of similar age have been obtained by the University of Toronto from the Lake Superior Basin on fragments of preserved wooden shafts recovered from the inside of copper harpoon points.

By the beginnings of the third millennium B.C., copper tool fabrication was in decline and there was a gradual increase in the manufacturing of copper jewelry and other personal ornamentation artifacts. This shift from copper tools to jewelry, likely represents a change in the complexity of hunter-gatherer social organization and the emergence of social inequality in prehistoric Indian populations in our region. By 1000 B.C., a complex and far reaching exchange system developed in the Eastern Woodlands of North America; copper was one of the most important resources traded in this system. Prehistoric artifacts manufactured out of Great Lakes copper have been recovered across the Eastern Woodlands of North America. From the archaeological data we can conclude that the ancestors of modern Great Lakes Indian cultures were the earliest people to work metal in the Americas long before the arrival of the first Europeans. 

For more information about Wisconsin archaeology, please visit the UW-Fox Valley Anthropology web site at: www.uwfox.uwc.edu/academics/depts/ant.html.

*Originally published in the Appleton Post-Crescent

Recommended Readings

Birmingham, Robert A., Carol I. Mason, and James B. Stoltman (editors)
1997 Wisconsin Archaeology. The Wisconsin Archeologist, Volume 78, Number 1/2, The Wisconsin Archeological Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Halsey, John R. (editor)
1999 Retrieving Michigan’s Buried Past: The Archaeology of the Great Lakes State. Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bulletin 64, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Martin, Susan R.
1999 Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan.

Martin, Susan R. and Thomas C. Pleger
1999 The Complex Formerly Known as a Culture: The Taxonomic Puzzle of "Old Copper", pp. 61-70. In Taming the Taxonomy: Toward a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology. edited by Ronald F.Williamson and Christopher M. Watts, Eastend Books and the Ontario Archaeological Society, Toronto, Canada.

Mason, Ronald J.
1981 Great Lakes Archaeology. Academic Press, New York, New York.

Pleger, Thomas C.
2000 Old Copper and Red Ocher Social Complexity, Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 169-190.

Pleger, Thomas C.
2001 New Dates for the Oconto Old Copper Culture Cemetery." Papers in Honor of Carol I. Mason. edited by Thomas C. Pleger, Robert A. Birmingham, and Carol I. Mason. The Wisconsin Archeologist, Volume 82, No. 1 & 2, pp. 87-100.

Pleger, Thomas C.
2003 A Brief Introduction to the Old Copper Complex of the Western Great Lakes: 4000-1000 BC. In Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin, Inc. Oconto, Wisconsin, October 5, 2002, pp. 10-18.

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