ART OF EAETHWORK BUILDEES WILLOUGHBY. 493 



practical use seems to have been limited principally to ax and adz- 

 blades, which occur in considerable numbers with burials or as parts 

 of sacrifical deposits. Indeed, it is not improbable that these copper 

 blades were esteemed as much for their intrinsic worth as for their 

 eificiency as tools. A large number of copper blades were found near 

 two skeletons in the great mound of the Hopewell group, the largest 

 of which weighed 38 pounds. 



The greater number of the artifacts of copper that have been 

 recovered are of an ornamental or symbolic character. Most of the 

 copper from which they w^ere made imdoubtedly came from the 

 Lake Superior region, although some may have been obtained from 

 erratic masses carried southward by the ice sheets in glacial times. 

 The purest and most ductile pieces were used in the formation of 

 thin sheets for covering various ornaments, or for cutting into 

 .symbolic forms; and the less malleable masses were worked into 

 objects which did not require as much hammering. Some of the 

 nuggets taken from the altars in an miworked or slightly worked 

 state contained impurities which rendered their further working 

 impossible or unprofitable. Experiments conducted by the present 

 writer^ show that alternate hammering and annealing are essential 

 to the successful working of native copper into thin sheets, and it is 

 probable that the aid of fin; was sought by most Indians in working 

 this metal into any form that required much hammering. 



The specimens shown on plates 2-5 were taken from burial deposits 

 and altars in the great mound of the Hopewell group (Clark's 

 Works), Ross County, from the mounds of the Turner group, Little 

 Miami Valley ; and from the Liberty gi'oup of Ross County, most of 

 them coming from the first locality. Fig-ures i and I represent the 

 straight-armed swastika. As will be seen by turning to /, plate 10, 

 it is not improbable that these objects were worn at the back of the 

 head. 



The design shown in k is undoubtedlj'^ a cosmic symbol, and the 

 analogy of its more prominent features to those of the serpent head, 

 plate 1, k, seems apparent. The designs d, g, and h are undoubtedly 

 derived from the human face, and they show a marked sense of 

 humor on the part of the artisan who made them. On plate 3, a 

 and c, are represented two gorget-like plates such as are usually 

 found with skeletons. One of these shows the remains of a piece of 

 twined woven textile which had been preserved by contact with the 

 copper, d and g are drawings of a crescent-shaped gorget and what 

 is probably a bracelet. These were found with a skeleton. And on 

 the same plate. A, is a conventionalized representation of the double 

 serpent head which appears on the Cincinnati Tablet. What is 



1 American Anthropologist, n. s.. Vol. 5, p. 55. 



