Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "Old Copper Culture: North America's Forgotten Metal Workers" video.

@casey9439 Copper from Lake Superior was traded widely across North America. Shells from the Gulf Coast went the other way. High quality stone for tool making was also traded widely.
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If they were annealing they were practicing a form of metalurgy. Copper alloys unlike iron is annealed by heating and quenching.
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The Upper Great Lakes is one of the earliest sites of metal working for tools and weapons* in the world. Was it the first? I think that's open for debate. But one th using I wonder about is even though the Lake Superior region is deficient in chert and flint shouldn't the be basalt or obsidian in the area. Given that the area was once a failed rift zone that saw extensive volcanism around 1.5 billion years ago. This was an era when the Earths tectonic processes proceeded at a faster rate than today due to the Earth's internal temperature being hotter than today. IIRC most of the major earthquake activity in the eastern half of North America are thought to be related to this failed rift zone that could have split the early core of North America. If you are interested in plate Tectonics at all take a look at Christopher Scortese's YouTube channel. He has a number of syop motion maps that trace plate movements back at least as far 1.5 million years ago. Beyond that things start to get much more difficult to puzzle out due to the amount of errosion, impacts etc. *Weapons are tools. They differ only in that are usually meant to serve a single purpose. To kill, injure or maim in defense of ones self, in hunting and unfortunately war. War if our chimp cousins are anything to go by is a part of the human condition.
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@Oddball5.0 I have never really understood the rational behind this idea. There were definitely sources of copper much closer to the centers of Bronze Age culture in Europe and the Mediterranean. Now were the ships of the Bronze Age capable of making trans Atlantic voyages. Yes they probably were. Especially if Mediterranean societies were voyaging to Britian for Tin. Now Britian is not the only source of Tin available to these Bronze Age cultures. Spain and Afghanistan come to mind. There are likely others. As to voyaging to North America you are looking at either making a landing in the Gulf of St Lawrence or the mouth of the Mississippi. And then either trading for raw copper. Or forming expeditions to travel up river through the Great Lakes or the Mississippi and St Croix rivers. Just how long would these voyages be. 1 year? Two? Three? I think it likely there may have been occasional ships from the Old World that wound up in the Americas (1). The impact they may have made is negligible. And the number that could have found their way back home can probably be counted on one hand. 1) One every 50 years? And just how many of the crews would have been pretty much dead on arrival.
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The Upper Great Lakes may have been rich in native copper and rich iron ores. But they were sadly deficient in other areas. Domesticatable food stuffs for one. Aside from Wild Rice and Cattails I really can not think of anything else. Plus there are no readily domesticatable animals in the region. Never mind the winters. Summers are short.
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You annealed copper by heating and quenching. Iron alloys are annealed be heating and cooling gradually. Some copper alloys will work harden during machining. Aluminum Bronzes aka Ampco bronzes are one. They can also be difficult to machine due to their ability to absorb heat very fast. Drills can get stuck in holes that heat up and actually cause the hole to get smaller because the material surrounding it gives it no where else to go. The company Ampco (where the term comes from) initial bronze alloy product was actually a cutting tool grade Bronze used for machining steel. It was superior to the carbon steel cutting tools of the time.
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A sideline for shaft mining of copper in the UP and Northern Wisconsin was noth gold and silver. It wasn't a major sideline but it was there.
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Once the Woodland period is reached I can see some trade in Native Copper (either artifacts or raw material) and hoods from other regions being conducted bl ot just in short distance trade over long periods of time. But in trips of one year or shorter directly between peoples from the Lake Superior area to the area they were looking for materials from. West to areas rich in Obsidian. East or South for shells. The only possible impediments being the existence of tribes sitting on choke points trying to extract excessive tolls. Similiar as to how the city we commonly call Troy may have done in the Bronze Age controlling trade through the Dardanelles. I can see a trade expedition setting out down the St Croix or the Wisconsin Rivers by canoe in late summer bound for the Gulf Coast. Then wintering over and heading north in the Spring. Perhaps places like Poverty Point served not just as ceremonial centers but also as trade nexis.
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@AncientAmericas The hard rock copper and iron mines of the UP and Northen Wisconsin are all pretty much closed now. These mines were started in the last half of the 19th century. They were almost all closed by the end of the 1950s not because there was no ore left. They were closed because they were economically uncompetitive with iron and copper from surface mines. Plus they had to be pumped continuously due to water intruding from aquifers largely fed from Lake Superior.
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The existence of the Copper Cultures* of the Great Lakes Basin was well known in that region in the 1950s when I was a wee sprout (I'm a boomer, you don't like it go find a rope to, you get the idea). Certain areas in Northern Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan used the Copper Cultures and the logging period of the mid to late 19th Century as the basis for tourist attractions. If the early nativd peoples had had the skill to exploit it there was a far richer source of metals in the area. The UP and the Indian Head Country** are incredibly rich in high grade iron ore. The only reason it is not mined today is because the mines along with the copper mines were not surface mines but deep tunnel operations that simply became to expensive to operate due to the costs of pumping. *Plural because they may have had slight cultural differences they all used Native copper. What they lacked was Tin to takes the next step into bronze. To my know.edge the only good source of Tin in North America is in Northern Mexico **Look at a map. Look at the Northwestern portion of Wisconsin. It should be self explanatory.
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Copper and copper alloys are annealed by heating and then rapidly cooled by quenching in water.
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