Compositional Analysis of Copper-base Metal Artifacts from Michigan

Compositional analysis of copper-base metal artifacts using portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) is an accurate and non-destructive way to identify "protohistoric" European-trade items in early contexts and to assess the continuity of native copper object use on historic-era archaeological sites (Dussubieux and Walder 2015). This poster presents new results from pXRF analysis of artifacts from two late 17th century archaeological sites in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: the Cloudman Site, a protohistoric or Early Historic Anishinaabe / Ojibwe camp on Drummond Island, and the Marquette Mission site, a Tionontate village in close proximity to a Jesuit mission at St. Ignace. Copper-base metal artifacts from feature contexts were selected for analysis on the basis of other potentially temporally or culturally-diagnostic trade items from the same features. Results provide new information on the persistence of native-copper metallurgical practices in colonial contexts and the introduction of smelted-copper trade items at these sites, furthering the understanding of interactions among Native American communities as well as European explorers, traders, and missionaries in this area.