It’s Complicated: Additional Insight into the Source(s) for Poverty Point Copper

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As the largest and most complex archaic period earthwork site in Eastern North America, and the center of an extensive exchange network covering a wide region of eastern and central North America, Poverty Point has been the subject of considerable research efforts. Among this body of research, Hill and colleagues (2016) used laser-ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to examine the elemental composition of six copper artifacts from Poverty Point, and compare that to the composition of known sources in the Appalachians and Great Lakes. The results suggested an Appalachian source, contrary to previous assumptions that positioned Lake Superior as the expected source of Poverty Point copper. Encouraged by these results, an additional nine Poverty Point copper artifacts were analyzed using the same methods, and this analysis is reported here. Unlike the previous analysis, eight of these nine copper artifacts exhibited compositional profiles consistent with sources in the Lake Superior basin, while only one showed similarities to Appalachian sources. This new analysis adds detail to the complex interactions that structured the Poverty Point exchange system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• *SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39510.0