Native American, Western Great Lakes Region, Wisconsin and Southern Canada, Old Copper Complex Culture, Late Archaic Period, ca. 3000 BCE. A fantastic selection of five rare copper items from one of the earliest Native American tribes in North America. First is a slender needle with one curved tip. Second is a knife with a slender blade and sharpened edges. Third is a hefty trapezoidal celt with a thick handle body and a sharpened, crescent-shaped edge. Fourth is a petaloid spear tip with flanged hafting fins on one side of the tang. The largest item is a tapered spear head with a sharpened tip and a solid tang. Given the make-shift tools and primitive smelting techniques, scholars posit that copper blades like these examples were shaped through the cold-forming method where raw material is gradually shaped into certain forms at temperatures - usually ambient - below the threshold at which recrystallization (molecular restructuring) occurs. Size of largest (large spearhead): 7.2" L x 1.2" W (18.3 cm x 3 cm)
For further information on the Old Copper Complex Culture as well as stylistically-similar examples , please see the Manitoba Archaeological Society, University of Manitoba.
Provenance: private Minnesota, USA collection; ex-Old Barn Auctions, Ohio, USA; (needle) ex-Ted Fowles collection, found in April 1967 at Black Bird Island, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, #311; (knife) ex-Kirk Whaley collection, found in 1931 in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, #245; (celt) ex-Wiesner collection, found near Winneconne, Wisconsin, #154
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#150446
Condition
All items have minor nicks to surfaces and peripheries, with slight bending to overall forms, and light encrustations, otherwise intact and very good. Light earthen deposits as well as fabulous, green, brown, and purple patina throughout. Old inventory labels on numbers on some items.