Indigenizing Archaeology: Disassembling the Old Copper Culture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Old Copper Culture (OCC), as a general term, is an archaeological culture that has been studied for decades and still continues to be used as an identifier in American Archaeology. Throughout these studies there seems to be something crucial missing: Indigenous perspectives. I argue that Indigenous Traditional Knowledge is necessary for the interpretation of copper materials in archaeological contexts, as it would create a stronger narrative to frame what is already known spatially and contextually in the archeological literature. By examining Indigenous Traditional Knowledge of copper in the Lake Superior region, the priority of interpretation lies in Indigenous stories of land and water, which creates a more holistic archaeological narrative. In this paper, I utilize an Indigenous archaeological framework to explore the strengths and weaknesses of OCC literature and to provide a richer and more culturally specific story of Indigenous presence and the deeper meanings of copper.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53629