The copper-using cultures of North America’s Archaic Period (10,000–3000 BP) have long been an archaeological enigma. For millennia, Middle and Late Archaic hunter-gatherers (8000–3000 BP) around the Upper Great Lakes region made utilitarian implements out of copper, only for these items to decline in prominence and frequency as populations grew and social complexity increased during the Archaic to Woodland Transition. From a cultural evolutionary perspective, the trajectory of North America’s copper usage presents a conundrum, as it is generally assumed that “superior” tools, i.e., metals, will replace inferior ones, i.e., stone. For well over a century, scholars have pondered the reason for the demise of copper technology that was once a wide-spread phenomenon. To address this question, an extensive archaeological experimental program was conducted which compared replica copper tools (spear points, knife blades, and awls) to analogous ones made of stone or bone to assess whether relative functional efficiency contributed to the decline of utilitarian copper implements. Here, the results of this three-part research program are presented in concert with population dynamics and ecological change to paint a broader picture of the complex interrelationships between the social, ecological, and technological spheres of past human behaviors. The synthesis of these approaches reveals that functional explanations—derived from experimental archaeology placed in an evolutionary framework—can shed much light on the trajectory of metal use in the North American Great Lakes.

北美古代时期（10,000-3000 BP ）的铜消费文化长期以来一直是一个考古谜。几千年来，上古大湖区附近的中古晚期狩猎采集者（8000-3000 BP ）用铜制成了实用工具，但随着古埃及时代到来，人口的增长和社会复杂性的提高，这些物品的知名度和频率下降。林地过渡。从文化进化的角度来看，北美的铜消费量呈现的轨迹了一个难题，因为一般认为“上级”的工具，也就是说，金属，将取代劣质的，即， 结石。一个多世纪以来，学者们一直在思考铜技术曾经一度被广泛使用的消亡原因。为了解决这个问题，进行了广泛的考古实验程序，将复制铜工具（矛尖，刀片和锥子）与类似的石头或骨头制成的工具进行了比较，以评估相对功能效率是否导致了实用铜工具的减少。在这里，将这个由三部分组成的研究计划的结果与人口动态和生态变化相结合，以更广泛地描绘过去人类行为的社会，生态和技术领域之间的复杂相互关系。