Hopewell era copper ingot found in Western New York

[Lloydd]

While detecting a friends farm, my partner Bruce and I were in a vineyard area when I got a high reading on my DFX. Removing a large plug revealed nothing in the hole, so checking the plug again I pulled out a heavy "rock". Bruce checked it and rubbed it on his coat and saw green patina, so I scratched the edge and saw copper. Long story, short, I contacted an archaeologist friend who suggested having it tested for purity, and if it tested pure enough to be Native Copper, then he was confidant that it was a Hopewell period copper ingot. Purity for Native Copper must be 99.75% or higher, and when tested at the University of Buffalo Lab, the X-ray spectrometer reading came out to be 100.0% on all three tests. The archaeologist had seen three other ingots of Native Copper found in the G.E. Mound in Indiana and were later reburied due to certain court decisions. He has not seen any other ingots, stating that they were usually fashioned into Celts or adzes soon after the copper was obtained from the deposits near Lake Superior and were prized possessions which were carried with them to their graves. There is a Hopewell burial mound in the town where I live and it is located about 4 miles West of the find location but no copper objects were reported to have been found in it's excavation years ago. Some copper celts were found in a mound in Central NY. The ingot measures just over 3" at max diameter, 3/4" thick and weighs 1.6 lbs. A small slice was removed for lab testing as noted in one photo. According to the archaeologist, this is the only ingot he knows to have been found in NY and the only one that has not been reburied. It appears to have been hammered to it's final shape. Thanks for looking. Lloyd

 

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[oxbowbarefoot]

Cool find! There is a great book called Metal Implements of the New York Indians that may provide you with a lot of info. I found a Copper Culture Awl in Pulaski, NY this past September that was a traded piece estimated between 3,500 and 5,000 years old. Keep up the good work!
-Ox

 

[Lloydd]

Ox Thanks for the info. The burial mound in our town has been carbon dated to ca 140 AD, so not nearly as old as your find. I saw your post, very neat object!! I have a stone gouge that I found on our farm in Lewiston, which was dated by the archaeologist at ca 5,000 BC, hard to imagine people roaming the area that long ago!! Thousands of years before the pyramids were built. Lloyd