E. J. Neiburger, Curator Emeritus
Lake County Museum, Waukegan, Illinois
Abstract
A unique form of “Old Copper” culture spear point has been identified. The “step” socketed spears are rare and identified by a significant right angle step at the junction of the spear and the tang. These artifacts show a quantum advance in metallurgical technology used by ancient North Americans.
THE OLD COPPER CULTURES
One of the rarest examples of Native American artifacts is the ones made out of copper. In the northern Midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ontario, Canada, etc.) vast deposits of native copper, 99.9% pure, were left by retreating glaciers. Native Americans mined and collected this soft metal as early as 5000 BC. Those native groups, through time, who used this metal are lumped together as the Old Copper Culture and industry. (ref. 1,2)
Figure 1. Portion of the Hamilton “Old Copper” collection at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, showing numerous spear points.
Figure 2. Illustration of typical point styles of manufacture used by Native Americans.
Figure 3. Illustration showing the simple method of copper spear manufacture: pounding, shaping and folding.
The natives used the copper to fabricate tools and weapons (ref. 2). Though dwarfed numerically by the millions of stone artifacts made and used by prehistoric Americans, tens of thousands of copper artifacts have been found. One of the most useful products of this Old Copper industry was spear points.
The weight and impact generated by tossing a large stone spear generally cracked or shattered a stone point after one or two throws aimed at a hard object. Throwing a stone-tipped spear was destructive, thus very inefficient. The use of metal helped solve the breakage problem and was one of the primary uses for native copper. Native copper was used in the manufacture of strong, heavy, copper spear points. Thousands have been found.
There were many designs in spear point manufacture (Figure 2). These included: pencil-shaped spikes, flat leaf-shaped blades (notched or not), rat-tail blades (a leaf-shaped blade with a long, round rat-tail shaped tang), cones (like a pointed ice cream cone) and socketed spear heads (a flat blade with some type of hollow socket in the tang which received the wooden shaft). The blades differed in size, shape, weight and cross-sectional dimensions (flat, triangular, etc.).
The focus of this paper is on one particular form of socketed spear point: The Step-Socketed Point, a form of spear point (Figures 3–6).
The typical manufacturing technique for making a simple socketed spear point involves the hammering of a copper nugget, annealing (a heating technique to soften the metal and avoid cracking), and continued pounding until a flat, leaf-shaped blade is formed. Triangular notches are cut out of the opposing edges of the blade, and the sides are folded over to form a socket (tang) which surrounds approximately three-quarters of the wooden shaft. The tang connects the blade to the shaft. The blade was then ground and sharpened (Figure 3).
Most socketed spear points had their tangs on the same plane as the blade. This form, as described above, was easy to manufacture and resisted gross bending upon impact. Still there…
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