Without smelting, Old Copper Culture peoples used cold-working techniques to shape native copper — hammering and annealing rather than melting. While they could rework broken items through annealing, repeated cold-working made copper brittle and items often had to be discarded. Archaeological evidence shows copper was worked using multiple techniques including hammering, annealing, grinding, drilling, and bending. Tool types included arrowheads, spearpoints, needles, and other implements.
Key facts to verify independently:
- Native copper deposits were eventually depleted through mining (requires additional sources)
- When artifacts broke, they could not forge them back together (annealing allowed some reworking)
- Broken pieces became smaller items, gradually decreasing in size (requires additional sources)
- By European contact, only small items like fish hooks and needles remained in use (requires additional sources)
- The tradition diminished significantly over centuries (requires additional sources)