Abstract
The Indigenous inhabitants of Arctic and Subarctic North America had been using native copper for several centuries prior to sustained interaction with Europeans beginning in the 18th century. The connection, if any, between the use of copper in these two adjacent regions is, at present, unclear. The ability to determine the source of native copper artifacts found in greater northwestern North America would inform on the movement of copper via trade and exchange between, and aid in understanding the innovation and diffusion of native copper metallurgy among, ancestral Dene and Inuit People. This paper provides the results of a Lead Isotope Analysis (LIA) pilot study examining Pb isotope ratios of native copper samples from multiple locations in the northern regions of North America. The results from this preliminary study indicate some overlap in Pb isotope ratios between Arctic and Subarctic sources of native copper, and these nonetheless record distinct isotope signatures relative to those associated with other North American native Cu deposits.
Highlights
The Archaeological evidence indicates native copper was used by Indigenous cultures at least 1000 years ago in the Western Subarctic and as early as 2000 years ago in the Central
Demonstrates remarkable consistency with our results, confirming that copper mineralization in this region is most likely of magmatic origin, and linked with the emplacement of the basaltic flows 230 million years ago. This is the first set of highly accurate lead isotope measurements for native copper from this region
The size of the earlier dataset and location of samples precludes meaningful comparisons between this earlier study and the current one. As noted in this earlier study, the logistics involved with obtaining geological samples of native copper in Alaska, and neighboring parts of northwestern Canada, are costly in terms of both time and money, and there are currently no plans for additional provenance analyses
Summary
The Archaeological evidence indicates native copper was used by Indigenous cultures at least 1000 years ago in the Western Subarctic and as early as 2000 years ago in the CentralCanadian Arctic. The Archaeological evidence indicates native copper was used by Indigenous cultures at least 1000 years ago in the Western Subarctic and as early as 2000 years ago in the Central. Arctic and Subarctic North America provided the first inventory of both archaeological examples and sources of copper and other metals for this large region. The question they raised which remains, is whether the copper-working traditions in these two adjacent but widely separated regions, which have a temporal and cultural (Dene) overlap, are related. An approach to examining the distribution of archaeological copper without relying on provenance data has been offered [13], but questions remain regarding the utility of provenance research in answering questions about the trade, exchange, diffusion, and innovation of copper in the far north. The ability to distinguish native copper deposits from the western Subarctic (Alaska and Yukon) from those in the Central
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