Re-examining trade networks in Late Woodland Virginia (900–1600 CE): An LA-ICP-MS analysis of copper artifacts

Abstract

When Europeans and Virginia Indian polities first made contact, the Monacan of the Virginia Piedmont supplied the Powhatan of the lower Chesapeake Bay with copper, a material that Powhatan elites considered highly valuable. Scholars have long debated the provenience of this copper. Some suggest that throughout the Late Woodland Period (900–1600 CE) the Monacan mined their trade copper from the Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountains. This study supports an alternative model wherein the Monacan acquired much of their copper through trade and strategically controlled its flow into coastal trade networks. Laser-Ablation Inductively-Coupled Plasma Mass-Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) analysis of copper artifacts from Late Woodland sites in Virginia suggests that much of the native copper that circulated through interior trade networks came from more distant deposits (e.g., Michigan), rather than from sources in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.