How Old Is This?

Swingit · May 27, 2010

This was found by a friend in southwest Minnesota in a farm field by a creak. It was found while rock picking. Do you think there is more close by, I would like to find one to :dontknow:

HH!!

A. Grignon · Jun 10, 2010

Copper culture, rat tail spear, excellent find! MnLineman is right about age......its really old!

Tuscoro · Sep 11, 2010

Swingit said:
This was found by a friend in southwest Minnesota in a farm field by a creak. It was found while rock picking. Do you think there is more close by, I would like to find one to
HH!!

How old?
Adena (BC)/Hopewell (AD) same people different times, My ancestors called them Alegwi(Mound Builders), Adena 600 BC to 0 From this point to about 700 AD academia calls them Hopewell.

Nice point.

Backbacon · Sep 24, 2012

Google "old copper culture rat tail spear"

Cannonman17 · Sep 25, 2012

Copper was used as much as seven thousand years ago, maybe earlier as there are some forms that bare and undeniable resemblence to Agate Basins which are well dated in excess of ten thousand years. From the early Archaic all the way through the hay day of the Middle Archaic, and was still in use at the time of contact. There are very few firm carbon dates for copper though organic material is frequently preserved on the surface, handle, or socket areas. Dating your piece with any degree of certainty is virtually impossible, we just don't know enough. For a long time, and still to some extent, people liked to refer to copper, (all copper) as having come from the "old copper culture" but that term is very much outdated as recent research has shown that copper was used not by a single culture at a given point in time, but rather by many over thousands of years and that the various types of copper projectiles and other artifacts represent distinctly different time periods, just like their stone counterparts. We just don't know what order they were made in yet exactly.