Analysis of the site showed the rise in copper exchange and then its decline. The English quickly realized how highly the Powhatan peoples valued copper. As the English brought more copper into the colony over a nearly 20-year period, its value declined, and it never recovered what it had been at the time of English arrival. Copper was the most important metal in the Powhatan Confederacy, where it was a mark in life and death of the social hierarchy. The elite were buried with copper items to secure them passage in the spiritual world.