Why Copper?

From top left, clockwise: 1. A Roman copper coin depicting Domitian and aulos and lyre players. 88-89 CE. 2. Late Bronze Age copper alloy hoard. The three objects in the foreground are socketed axes. 3. Small copper straight-backed knife found on Isle Royale 4. Modern copper exhibit (QMHA).

Top Left: Mark Cartwright (Unmodified) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED; Top Right: Wessex Archaeology CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED; Bottom Right: NPS Image; Bottom Left: NPS Image

What first attracted people to become makers with copper? Was it something to do with its physical properties like its malleability and density, or its color and luster? Or was it for spiritual reasons? Maybe it was all of the above. Copper has been captivating and helping us for thousands of years, and it remains an essential metal in today's electronic world.

Around 6000 years ago, people were finding and using copper in Cyprus. About 500 years before that, miners in what is today Israel were carving out copper sulfide ore. Around 7500 years ago, people were mining for copper in Serbia. Even earlier, Indigenous North Americans were mining native metallic copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale—the first metal mining in the Western Hemisphere.

Men and women made copper tools like fishhooks and knives, bracelets and earrings, and other useful goods. They traded these items, as well as raw copper, through networks that crossed much of North America, connecting different groups of people across the continent culturally, politically, and economically. In the 1800s, investors and immigrants ventured to the Keweenaw and Isle Royale hoping that copper would help them strike it rich, or at least, make a better life for themselves and their families.

Artifacts recovered from copper mining sites and historical maps, letters, photographs, and other documents are important sources of information about these earlier days. Examined together, they provide a fuller picture of what life was like hundreds, and even thousands, of years ago.