Beads of copper are amongst the oldest and most widespread ornaments known in North America. Native copper was an important material to prehistoric Americans, and certainly the most important metal. It was collected, transported and traded over wide areas as early as 7000 years before present, and its use for ornaments persisted until it was gradually replaced by European metals over the many years of the contact period. A recently discovered cache of copper beads, bead preforms, awls, a crescent knife and scraps of raw copper at site 20KE20 in northern Michigan offers insight into the process of copper-bead production in 5th-century North America.