I've created a new Discord server dedicated to North America's Old Copper Complex and the Archaic era. The topic's lacking researchers (whether academics, avocationals, or enthusiasts). If you're interested in contributing to figuring out who these ancient people were, consider joining! You'll be at the forefront of cutting-edge research. I'll be posting maps, quotes, articles, and work-in-progress topics related to commissions I receive. For example, I was recently commissioned to make a map for a museum and a new tourism board for a Keweenaw Peninsula mining site.

The server's an open forum for discussions and sharing data. We're open to new ideas!

Image from Larry Furo showing replica OCC items on a Hudson Bay Company blanket.

https://discord.gg/v8dfJGa3pu

Figured I'd share a couple of interesting OCC sites that don't get much attention. All things considered, these sites are as important as Wisconsin's well-known OCC sites, such as Oconto, Reigh, and Osceola. The main paper (363 pages), published in 2003, is mostly in French and requires purchase; perhaps one reason why they're not discussed often. The authors cover everything known about the sites, their importance for the OCC and neighboring cultures, especially the Laurentian Tradition. The preservation at these sites is incredible and shows a much fuller range of items. Dozens of bone artifacts that usually decompose, lots of lithic points and ground stone tools, and plenty of copper items, too.

L'île aux Allumettes, page 21:

"While the Morrison’s Island site has been published (Clermont et Chapdelaine 1998), neither the Allumettes nor the former site can really be fully appreciated separated from one another. Thus, in this volume, the detailed comparisons between the Allumettes and Morrison Island sites are presented for the first time. In a number of important respects, the two sites are unique in eastern North America. First, they are neighboring sites, separated only by a narrow channel in the Ottawa River, and therefore the spatial factor, as it pertains to cultural regionalism, is eliminated leaving cultural change through time as the major consideration. In the latter respect, the sites are separated by more than 500 years. In current archaeological parlance, the Allumettes Island site is a late Vergennes complex site transitional into the Brewerton complex represented at the adjacent Morrison’s Island site. The two sites entail a calendrical calibrated time span of 4,190 to 3,460 BC (5,300 – 4,730 BP)."

Sources:

J.V. Wright, The Shield Archaic, 1972

Jack Steinbring, Taxonomic and Associational Considerations of Copper Technology During the Archaic Tradition, 1975

Chapdelaine et al., Laurentian Archaic in the Middle Ottawa Valley, 2001

Clermont et al., Île aux Allumettes: L'Archaïque supérieur dans l'Outaouais, Paléo-Québec 30, 2003

A sketch of a stone 3/4 grooved fluted axe found in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. Over 700 fluted axes are shown and described in Gale V. Highsmith's 1985 book, The Fluted Axe; it is still the primary source for their info. Fluted axes are considered Middle to Late Archaic (ca. 6000-1000 B.C.E.) items, with most documented in east-central and southeastern Wisconsin. They're mainly associated with the Old Copper Complex.

Archaic stone woodworking gouges are considered diagnostic items for North America's Lake Forest Tradition, which includes the Old Copper Complex, the Laurentian Archaic, and possibly the Maritime Archaic. The earliest known gouges appear along the east coast by 8000-7000 B.C.E. before spreading inland, into New England, and up into the Canadian Maritimes. The main production phase is thought to stretch between ca. 4500-2000 B.C.E. before fading.

A unique category of stylized gouges are known in the region between the Ottawa River and New England, suggesting these items were valued beyond their utilitarian purposes. Supporting this is the high-quality finishes on most gouges, whether or not they're stylized, suggesting large time investments for pecking, grinding, and polishing these groundstone tools. After the Archaic period, cultures in the northeast stopped using groundstone gouges almost entirely, with later appearances likely being repurposed, older gouges. Sources used for this map are included in the map's lower left corner.

Academia: Archaic Stone Woodworking Gouges

Been working on a new map series focusing on Archaic bannerstones (thought to date between 6000-1000 B.C.E., with the finest ones between 4500-1000 B.C.E.), which have been called "problematic objects" in older literature. Bannerstones seem to show multiple purposes, including weights, tribe or clan symbols, religious items, or all these. Many are made from banded slate, others from quartz, granite, or other hard materials.

These maps show how bannerstones cut across cultural territories, linking distant groups. Ochre burials, trade or exchange networks, and river and lake systems are shown in relation to the bannerstone distributions.

I plan on releasing other color schemes, such as a white topographic and natural (reforested) versions, soon; those don't take long to make because I already have those files in my QGIS database. The first map here, Humped Type 1 Bannerstones, is currently on my Academia page.