Re-examining trade networks in Late Woodland Virginia (900–1600 CE): An LA-ICP-MS analysis of copper artifacts

Bassett, Madeleine; Stevenson, Christopher M.; Dussubieux, Laure

doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.101967

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Significantly, by expanding the evidence of known metal use, it is possible to refine the ways groups interacted with each other. Taking a raw material–centric approach for understanding past interaction networks is common in other regions (Bassett et al 2019; Hill et al 2018; Loring 2002, 2017; Lothrop et al 2018; Lulewicz 2019; McCaffery 2011; Pike et al 2019; Walder 2019), but this study demonstrates that it is possible to ask similar questions even when the raw material in question cannot be physically analyzed. Moreover, this approach complements traditional provenance studies analyzing sourcing, exchange, and network analysis by adding a robust way of understanding the scale of past interaction networks in a quantitative way.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Detecting Early Widespread Metal Use in the Eastern North American Arctic around AD 500–1300

Jolicoeur

2020

Am. Antiq.

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In the first millennium AD, peoples across the North American Arctic began to use and exchange metal. A group known as the Late Dorset (AD 500–1300) were the first to widely exchange metal in the Eastern Arctic. However, due to differential taphonomic processes and past excavation methods, metal objects in existing collections are rare although geographically widespread. This has led to metal being seen as a broadly exchanged but uncommon raw material among Late Dorset. This article expands the known scale of Late Dorset metal use by analyzing the blade slot thicknesses of bone and ivory objects from sites across the Eastern Arctic and comparing them to the thicknesses of associated lithic and metal endblades. These results demonstrate that Late Dorset used metal at least as frequently as stone for some activities. Given the few and geographically discrete sources, metal would have been exchanged over thousands of kilometers of fragmented Arctic landscape. The lack of similar evidence in earlier periods indicates intergroup interaction increases significantly with the Late Dorset. It is through these same vectors that knowledge and information would have flowed. Metal, consequently, represents the best material for understanding the maximum extent and intensity of their interaction networks.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Detecting Early Widespread Metal Use in the Eastern North American Arctic around AD 500–1300

Jolicoeur

2020

Am. Antiq.

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“…We suggest that smelted and alloy copper arrived at sites in central and western Virginia by way of the same trade networks through which native copper and marine shell flowed during earlier periods. As we discussed in our previous phase of research (Gunter-Bassett et al 2019), native copper found at sites in central and southwest Virginia is compositionally consistent with geological sources in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions and could have been transported via one of a series of north-south trade routes, such as the paths that later become the Great Wagon Road (Farrell 2010;Hofstra and Mitchell 1993;Tietze Larson 2014). This is not to say that all artifacts with compositions matching Great Lakes sources necessarily originated in the Great Lakes region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…As Lattanzi (2022:21-23) points out, it is possible that glaciers transported nuggets of Great Lakes copper away from their original source rock and deposited them much farther to the south. That said, the dominance of Northeast and Great Lakes copper in the Native copper artifacts found at hinterland sites (Gunter-Bassett et al 2019) suggests strong ties between western Virginia and the northeast and northern Middle Atlantic. We suspect that these ties persisted through later periods and that European copper objects circulated through the same north-south networks through which native copper flowed during earlier periods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Significant advances have been made in matching copper artifacts to geological sources of ANC in the American/Canadian Midwest (Anselmi et al 1997; Mulholland and Pulford 2007; Rapp et al 2000), the Southeast (Goad 1979, 1980; Goad and Noakes 1978), the Northeast (Anselmi 2008; Levine 1999, 2007a, 2007b), and Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Lattanzi 2007, 2022). The source attributions of ANC within the assemblages studied here were completed by Gunter-Bassett et alia (2019), who established that sources of ANC in Virginia included the upper Midwest as well as geological deposits in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In this follow-up analysis of European trade copper, two artifacts from Fort San Juan were identified as ANC, but a provenance assignment was not attempted.…”

Section: Elemental Characterization Of Copper Alloymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have long debated whether the Monacans mined copper from local deposits in the Blue Ridge Mountains or acquired it through trade. Our study of native copper artifacts from five Late Woodland sites in Virginia determined that the majority of the copper came from remote locations (e.g., Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey;Gunter-Bassett et al 2019)-although, as we noted in the original study (Gunter-Bassett et al 2019), it is possible that some of the copper circulating through Monacan-Powhatan networks came from sources closer to home, perhaps from deposits in western Virginia or North Carolina (e.g., Quinn et al 2022). Whatever the source(s) of native copper, documentary records make clear that Algonquian elites (e.g., Chief Powhatan [Wahunsenacawh] and his weroances [chiefs]) valued it in part for its rarity, and they tightly restricted its distribution (Gallivan 2016;Mallios 1998;Potter 1989).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Examining the Seventeenth-Century Copper Trade: An Analysis of Smelted Copper from Sites in Virginia and North Carolina

Stevenson,

Gunter-Bassett,

Dussubieux

2024

Am. Antiq.

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When the colonists who made up the Virginia Company of London established James Fort on the banks of the James River in 1607, they brought with them sheets of scrap copper. Based in large part on the experience of the earlier Roanoke Colony, the English knew that copper was a highly prized material among Native peoples of the Chesapeake, and they brought it with them as a trade item. Artifacts made from European smelted copper (impure copper and copper alloy) have been found at contact period sites (ca. AD 1607–1680) throughout Virginia, and James Fort has long been hypothesized to be the primary distribution point for that material. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the elemental composition of a sample of smelted copper artifacts from James Fort (1607–ca. 1625), as well as samples of copper artifacts from five Native sites in central Virginia. We also analyzed a sample of copper artifacts from another well-known European fort site—Fort San Juan (1567–1568) in North Carolina. The results suggest that although a portion of the smelted copper that circulated through Native networks in Virginia came from James Fort, the rest of it possibly came from English, French, or Dutch distribution points to the northeast.

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The Great Valley of Virginia as place and time in American geoheritage

Pyle,

Fichter

2024

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The Great Valley of Virginia (GVV) is a section of a much larger geologic structure which spans from the northeastern US through the Mid-Atlantic and to the southeast. While the structural formation of the region represents nearly 1.2 billion years of geologic history, the rocks that remain record vast cycles of tectonic change. The legacy of that geology is a rich and aesthetically attractive region that has drawn many peoples over time to its agricultural fertility and geologic resources. This contribution traces the geologic development of the GVV, the relationship of the GVV to the peoples, both indigenous and European colonizers, that inhabited it over thousands of years, and the geologic resources that they found. Although relatively under-expressed from a geoheritage perspective, the GVV possesses a rich legacy of how its resources supported each society's needs and interests, and the role that the geologic environment of the GVV played at critical moments in the historical development of the US over the last 400 years. Supplementary material at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.7047725

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Re-examining trade networks in Late Woodland Virginia (900–1600 CE): An LA-ICP-MS analysis of copper artifacts

Cited by 3 publications

References 65 publications

Detecting Early Widespread Metal Use in the Eastern North American Arctic around AD 500–1300

Detecting Early Widespread Metal Use in the Eastern North American Arctic around AD 500–1300

Examining the Seventeenth-Century Copper Trade: An Analysis of Smelted Copper from Sites in Virginia and North Carolina

The Great Valley of Virginia as place and time in American geoheritage

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