Using technology like X-ray fluorescence and mass spectrometry, researchers have determined Indigenous peoples sourced materials from all over North America, including Yellowstone, as this New York Times article explains.
The question is, how did the Hopewell Culture, in what is now Ohio, get obsidian from Yellowstone and copper from Isle Royal, Michigan?
Ball State Professor of Anthropology Mark Hill thinks it comes down to social networks, not trade. He's in the process of testing Hopewell ornamental and ritual paraphernalia. "We use these materials, these exotic items that are coming long distances, we use them as sort of markers to trace these social networks to see how things flow," he explains.
He likens the material to dye markers in water as he traces the origin of things like copper breastplates, jewelry and musical instruments. Pictures of some of these items are restricted because they were used in burial.
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Hill takes a very tiny sample, less than the width of a human hair, which is vaporized so a mass spectrometer can measure all the different elements that are present. He compares them to a source database.
In 2017, Hill published a paper in Archeological and Anthropological Sciences after discovering 21% of copper used in the Scioto Valley by the Hopewell Culture came from the Southern Appalachians.
This was a surprise to him and others who had been focusing on Lake Superior.
"That opens up a whole new line of inquiry," he says. "What are the connections to the South? How are they maintaining these connections? Who's maintaining the connections? Is it being done through social networks?"
Tim Everhart is an archeologist and museum curator at Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Chillicothe, Ohio. It's there scientists excavated artistic symbols in the 1920s that were made of copper, obsidian, silver and pipestone.
Everhart is also curious about the origins of the material used.
"So these sort of archeo-science studies — as we would call them, that really allow us to definitively understand where materials are from — are really foundational to doing that.
"The next step is thinking about the relationship involved in acquisition and artistic transformation but also in the meaning of the materials," Everhart continues. "And I think most of that work in the future is going to be best accomplished in collaboration with contemporary native people."
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Both Hill and Everhart value working with Indigenous peoples to understand the meaning of various objects and the journey of the materials that were used to make them.
Scientists believe they're only scratching the surface when figuring out the origin of the materials and how they got here. Many of the Hopewell artifacts are held in collections at Ohio History Connection and the Field Museum in Chicago. Many Indigenous peoples don't want their items studied; they just want them returned.
