Jewels of the Werowances: An Archaeological Analysis of Copper in Eastern Algonquian Societies

Summary

One of the rarest metals in the Americas, copper has long been traded across the North American continent by indigenous cultures who viewed the raw material as holding immense spiritual and social significance.  Native American societies from the Great Lakes to the Chesapeake Bay have fashioned copper into various objects that were often used by elites to uphold social distinction and maintain political order. Archaeologists studying indigenous groups have observed that the consumption of copper irrevocably changed after European arrival.  Many have asserted that a flood of European brass in North America contributed to a devaluation of copper in indigenous cultures. This paper examines how the meanings of copper artifacts shifted as a result of European invasion.  Copper artifacts recovered from pre- and Post-Contact sites in Virginia and Maryland illustrate how these events changed the symbolic function of Native American copper.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Indigenous Landscapes of the Middle Chesapeake   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 773