Compositional Analysis of Copper-base Metal Artifacts from Michigan

Summary

Compositional analysis of copper-base metal artifacts using portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) is an accurate and non-destructive way to identify "protohistoric" European-trade items in early contexts and to assess the continuity of native copper object use on historic-era archaeological sites (Dussubieux and Walder 2015). This poster presents new results from pXRF analysis of artifacts from two late 17th century archaeological sites in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: the Cloudman Site, a protohistoric or Early Historic Anishinaabe / Ojibwe camp on Drummond Island, and the Marquette Mission site, a Tionontate village in close proximity to a Jesuit mission at St. Ignace. Copper-base metal artifacts from feature contexts were selected for analysis on the basis of other potentially temporally or culturally-diagnostic trade items from the same features. Results provide new information on the persistence of native-copper metallurgical practices in colonial contexts and the introduction of smelted-copper trade items at these sites, furthering the understanding of interactions among Native American communities as well as European explorers, traders, and missionaries in this area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15149

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