[Ge]
Hopewellian communities living in and around the Ohio and Mississippi valleys acquired a very wide range of exotic goods and raw materials from all over North America. Native copper from around the Great Lakes to the north, silver from near Cobalt, Ontario, obsidian from the Yellowstone area of Wyoming, meteoric iron from a number of different meteor falls, marine shells, shark and alligator teeth from Florida, grizzly bear teeth from the Rocky Mountains, and mica, quartz crystal, and chlorite from the Appalachians. How these items and materials were acquired is not exactly known. Expeditions to remote sources may have been responsible in some cases, but the majority probably arrived through ‘down-the-line’ exchange between villages, the trade being controlled by some kind of elite or local ‘big men’.
