Articles

The Lost Gods and Tablet of Prehistoric Michigan

By, Henriette Mertz     Originally published in Ancient American Magazine. Reprinted with permission from The Midwestern Epigraphic Society Journal, Beverley Moseley   The Newberry tablet no longer exists. Found on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it represented only one of thousands of inscribed artifacts recovered from mounds dotting the state from roughly 1890 to Read More

Were Prehistoric Copper Oxhide Ingots manufactured on the Mississippi coast near the mouth of the Mississippi River?

By, Jay S.Wakefield, jswakefield@comcast.net   Copper: According to American Indian oral tradition, Michigan copper was mined in antiquity by “red haired white-skinned ‘marine men’ who came from across the sea”. Tens of thousands of pits, up to 30’ deep, were mined using fire-setting and stone hammers, with an estimated half a billion tons of pure Read More

Poverty Point, The Manufacturing of Copper Oxhides for the Atlantic Copper Trade

Bronze Age Town & Gulf Ports on the Copper Trail Open-fire manufacturing of Copper Oxhides (NE Louisiana, & Mississippi c.2000-700 BC)   J.S. Wakefield, jayswakefield@yahoo.com   Photos coming soon, apologies from AA staff.   Summary The “Late Archaic” Poverty Point earthworks in Louisiana are the earliest and largest monuments in prehistoric North America. The site Read More

Missing: Prehistoric Michigan’s Half-Billion Pounds of Copper

Missing: Prehistoric Michigan’s Half-Billion Pounds of Copper By David Hoffman AA #35 pp.18-21   Approximately 9,000 years ago, the Great Lakes achieved their current definition. Water levels would have been high near the time of the final glacier melt enabling human travel along ancient trade routes. Soil conditions indicate that at one time the Wisconsin Read More