5/21/2026 - Entry 001
Boiled down to its simplest form, all metal detectorists want to dig up one of two things when out hunting. 1. Valuable items - gold, silver, coins, etc. 2. Old and historically significant artifacts. Bonus points if a find checks both of these boxes.
Now contrary to what some social media accounts would lead you to believe, items found in either of these categories are difficult to come by, especially in Wisconsin. The primary rule of finding old things is to be in old places. And Wisconsin was settled in the early-to-mid 19th century. In metal detecting terms, that ain’t old. Detectorists on the east coast are blessed with at least 100 more years of colonial history. And don’t get me started on European detectorists who frequently unearth thousand year old Roman artifacts and medieval hammered coins.
But what a lot of people don’t know (including myself until recently) is that Wisconsin, USA is the epicenter of some of the oldest detectable metal artifacts in the world. Artifacts that pre-date the pyramids in Egypt, Stonehenge, and the Bronze Age by thousands of years.
I’m talking about the Native American Old Copper Complex.
When most people picture primitive Native American tools they imagine stone tools like arrowheads and hammerstones. But few people realize that Native Americans in the Great Lakes region were among the world’s earliest metalworkers. 20,000 years ago during the Ice Age, massive glaciers advanced south into the northern Great Lakes region of the US. As they inched southward, the glaciers broke off and carried large chunks of copper bedrock from Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. Then, roughly 10,000 years later, the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated. The large chunks of float copper remained in its wake and were distributed throughout Wisconsin and surrounding areas.
As Native Americans moved north after the Ice Age they discovered these large green chunks of copper and found opportunity. Over the next several thousand years, they used this resource to create projectile points, knives, jewelry, needles, axes, and all sorts of useful primitive tools.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to unearth several different Old Copper Complex tools while out metal detecting. Most recently I found the straight back knife while detecting a small parcel of public land sandwiched between two lakes. This spot was previously home to some old lake cabins which is why I was there initially. I had found over a dozen silver coins and three gold rings in only a few short hunts earlier in the year. I didn’t think it could get much better than that. Until it did.
I was hiking out and swinging along a trail through the woods when I hit a faint but repeatable 93 on the Manticore. With the volume of silvers I had pulled out of this place I thought for sure this would be a deep silver dollar. Eagerly, I pressed the shovel into the dirt. After battling layers of roots and rock, finally I discovered what my detector had signalled to me. Out came a large artifact, caked in a turquoise green crust and dusted in dirt. After gently wiping away the dirt and loose bits I realized immediately that I had something much better than any silver dollar. A perfect straight back knife from the Old Copper Complex.
Long before I stood here, someone else did too.
There’s something surreal about pulling an old artifact from the dirt that’s been lying there, waiting, for thousands of years. It’s a quiet kind of proof that long before I stood here, someone else did too. Everything about our lives is different, yet somehow we ended up in the same place, with the same tool in our hands for a moment.
There’s no deeper connection to history than that.
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Items pictured in this story:
- Straight Back Knife (Classification: II, A-1)
- Straight Flat Tang Point (Classification: I, G-1)
- Ovate Conical Point (Classification: I, L-2)
- Float copper nuggets
- Unknown scraper or broken point
Sources & further reading:
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