Other artifact type
Copper Awl
Also called Copper Perforator, Native Copper Awl, Old Copper Awl
Copper Awl8,500–3,580 cal B.P. for Old Copper artifacts dated on embedded organic material (Pompeani et al. 2021); Old Copper Complex beginning 7,520–6,180 and ending 4,840–4,190 cal B.P. (Bebber et al. 2022). Oconto cemetery, Wisconsin: radiocarbon dates from 7,560 ± 600 to 4,590 ± 400 B.P., AMS 6,020 ± 60 and 5,250 ± 110 B.P. (Milwaukee Public Museum). Rare in Middle Woodland Hopewell sites (Kocik 2012).Middle Archaic to Middle WoodlandKey facts
- Age
- 8,500–3,580 cal B.P. for Old Copper artifacts dated on embedded organic material (Pompeani et al. 2021); Old Copper Complex beginning 7,520–6,180 and ending 4,840–4,190 cal B.P. (Bebber et al. 2022). Oconto cemetery, Wisconsin: radiocarbon dates from 7,560 ± 600 to 4,590 ± 400 B.P., AMS 6,020 ± 60 and 5,250 ± 110 B.P. (Milwaukee Public Museum). Rare in Middle Woodland Hopewell sites (Kocik 2012).
- Cultural period
- Middle Archaic to Middle Woodland
- Culture
- Old Copper Complex; Hopewell
- Material
- Native copper from the Lake Superior basin, mined or gathered as glacial float copper; typically over 95% pure (Milwaukee Public Museum).
Description
A copper awl is a slender rod of hammered native copper, round, square or flat in section, tapering to a point at one or both ends. Some are double-pointed; others have one end flattened or widened as a grip, and a few survive in handles of polished bone (West 1929; Milwaukee Public Museum).
Makers cold-hammered a piece of native copper into a rod and ground it to a point, heating (annealing) the metal and dipping it in water when it began to crack or crumble (West 1929; Hodge 1907). Lake Superior copper is typically over 95% pure and carries traces of silver (Milwaukee Public Museum; West 1929).
The Milwaukee Public Museum groups awls with needles as perforators, probably for punching holes in hides, and reports ample evidence that they were hafted; Hodge (1907) notes that hafted awls of stone and copper may also have served as drills. Awls are among the commonest Old Copper tools: about 250 are known from Wisconsin, and 7 of the 26 copper pieces at the Oconto cemetery are awls (Milwaukee Public Museum). The key trait is a slender, hammered native-copper rod drawn to a point.
Size
Length 25–203 mm; thickness 1.6–12.7 mm; small ones most common (West 1929, Wisconsin collections, converted from inches). The Milwaukee Public Museum's roughly 250 Wisconsin awls are 20–400 mm long. A Hopewell-related awl from Trempealeau Lakes, Wisconsin, is 210 mm long (Kocik 2012).
Distribution
Core area: Wisconsin, especially the Lake Michigan shore and the Fox and Wolf River valleys, and the western Great Lakes (West 1929; Milwaukee Public Museum). Edges: Old Copper types reach Manitoba and Ontario (Milwaukee Public Museum), and West (1929) records a bone-handled copper awl from Rhea's Island, Tennessee.
Additional information
Look for a solid copper rod drawn to a point, with no eye. Copper needles have an eye; punches have a flat, battered head; pikes are much heavier rods, up to about 750 mm long (Milwaukee Public Museum); drills are square in section and shaped to fit a handle (West 1929). Bone awls have the same outline but are bone. West (1929) suggested that some short double-pointed copper spindles may have served as toggle fishhooks rather than awls. After the Old Copper Complex, Great Lakes copper work shifted toward small ornaments (Bebber et al. 2022).
Similar types
Types that are easy to confuse with the Copper Awl artifact.
Sources
- West, George A. 1929. Copper: Its Mining and Use by the Aborigines of the Lake Superior Region. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 10(1):1-184. Milwaukee.archive.org (opens in a new tab)
- Milwaukee Public Museum. n.d. Old Copper Culture: Artifacts; Sites; Distribution. Online Collections Research, Anthropology. Milwaukee.mpm.edu (opens in a new tab)
- Pompeani, David P., and others. 2021. On the Timing of the Old Copper Complex in North America. Radiocarbon 63(2):513-531. (Abstract read.)doi.org (opens in a new tab)
- Bebber, Michelle R., Briggs Buchanan, and Jacob Holland-Lulewicz. 2022. Refining the Chronology of North America's Copper Using Traditions. PLOS ONE 17(4):e0266908.journals.plos.org (opens in a new tab)
- Kocik, Cynthia. 2012. Regional Variation in Hopewell Copper Use. UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research 15. University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.uwlax.edu (opens in a new tab)
- Hodge, Frederick W. (editor). 1907. Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 30. Smithsonian Institution, Washington. (Entries Awls and Copper.)archive.org (opens in a new tab)