Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center @ UWL

How can we tell the life history of a stone before an archaeologist found it? MVAC Senior Research Associate Dr. Connie Arzigian explains how this piece of orthoquartzite reveals that it spent quite a while being polished by the water before someone found it and made it into a tool.

Golden Oldies - reviewing previously unreviewed books by previously reviewed “greatest hits” authors! As we celebrate twenty-five years of the MVAC reviews of archaeological fiction, I thought it would be fun to re-visit six of the authors whose works have been reviewed in the past. Three of these authors have sadly passed away since I first reviewed them (Margot Arnold, Lynn Hamilton, and Elizabeth Peters); two have “retired” their archaeologist protagonists, Gideon Oliver (Aaron Elkins), and Emma Fielding (Dana Cameron); and one, (Kate Ellis) continues to put DI Wesley Peterson and his friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, in harm’s way as they solve contemporary crimes that have their roots in the distant past. While these authors have been reviewed previously, these books have not.

One broken teardrop trade earring made of copper was recovered from the 2nd Fort Crawford Enlisted Men’s Quarters. Examples of these earrings have been found on numerous contact-era sites, although sometimes they are made of silver.  Second Fort Crawford is in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  Link to information about visiting Second Fort Crawford: http://www.fortcrawfordmuseum.com/

While excavating it is necessary to keep the walls straight and clean so that we can see the different layers in the soil that might mark different activities or changes over time that are reflected in subtle changes in the soil. A clean profile wall helps to separate artifacts from those separate activities or different time periods.  A trowel or skim shovel can be used to trim back or clean the walls of the excavation.

MVAC Senior Research Associate Dr. Connie Arzigian explains how a fulgurite (petrified lightning) is formed.

This bone pendant was recovered from a hearth exposed by plowing at the Sand Lake site located north of La Crosse. Bone pendants have been found at a number of late precontact Oneota sites in the La Crosse area.

Read the entire review at:  https://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/book-reviews/?review=372957

This 500-year-old Oneota garbage pit represents a time capsule in which material was dumped within a brief period, perhaps as short as a week.  The pit might have been dug initially to store food crops but once the food was removed, it was reused to dispose of village refuse. The pit contains broken pottery, flakes, a turtle shell, mussel shells and other artifacts. A volunteer is excavating one level of the feature, using trowels, picks, brushes, and bagging samples of soil for flotation.  The garbage pit was excavated in the early 1990s from a site in the La Crosse area.

The Mississippi and smaller rivers and streams provided many fish, with freshwater drum, catfish, northern pike, suckers, gar, bowfin, bullheads and sturgeon popular. Fishing techniques have been suggested from the nature of some of the artifacts recovered. They can also be suggested from the nature and size of the fish. Large fish may have been speared. Nets and seines would have been the most efficient way to harvest schools of smaller fish in the shallow backwaters. Even crayfish and turtles were eaten.  Pictured is a bone harpoon (left) and two netsinkers (right).

Gullickson’s Glen is a small overhanging rock shelter located in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin.  Findings suggest that Native Americans were occupying the rockshelter as long as 2000 years ago, although the petroglyphs probably do not date farther back than 800 years ago.  The petroglyphs at Gullickson’s Glen are similar in style to other rock art in the region.  Pictured is a human figure located on a wall outside the rock shelter.  Link to additional images from Gullickson’s Glen:  http://mvac.uwlax.edu/past-cultures/specific-sites/rock-art/#Gullickson

MVAC Senior Research Associate Dr. Connie Arzigian explains how oolites formed, and how they became part of the chert used by Native Americans.

Read the entire review at:  https://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/book-reviews/?review=369310

This ceramic effigy pipe is thought to have been made in northern Europe sometime in the 17th or 18th century.  Most of the face is intact and seems to depict someone perhaps of Russian origin.  It was found at a prehistoric Oneota Site north of La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1979.

Former UWL archaeology student Matt Hill (now Associate Professor at Iowa State University) excavating the parasphenoid and a few other dorsal cranial bones of a lake sturgeon from a refuse pit at the Pammel Creek site in the late 1980s.  Fish were an important food source and were harvested throughout the summer.  This sturgeon has an estimated live weight of 50 pounds.  Lake sturgeon would have been easiest to harvest in the spring during spawning.  The Pammel Creek site (located south of La Crosse, Wisconsin) was occupied during the Fifteenth century, A.D. by a culture we now call Oneota.

Archaeologists think that many of the features found at archaeological sites were originally dug to serve as storage pits for agricultural crops (corn, beans, squash – all of which can often be recovered during flotation in light fraction samples). The structure of the pit may well have been similar to that described by an Hidatsa woman, Buffalo Bird Woman to anthropologist Gilbert Wilson, who published Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden in 1917  (https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html). The pit was lined with grasses or bark to keep the crops from becoming moldy from contact with the soil. The outer layer consisted of chains of corncobs, with shelled corn inside, as well as slices of dried squash.  A drawing of Buffalo Bird Woman’s storage pit can be seen at: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html#VII. Archaeologists rarely find intact storage features as they were reused as refuse pits but we do sometimes find remnants of the pit lining, including bark at the base, or grasses on the margin of the pit.  Left - the storage/refuse pit pictured is from an Oneota site in La Crosse County. Right - an image of thatch, presumed to be from the pit lining, still adhering to corn kernels that were burned in a storage pit.

Chipmunk Coulee – Mastodon Tooth https://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/past-cultures/specific-sites/site-snippets/?letter=c&term=126833

MVAC Senior Research Associate Dr. Connie Arzigian describes manos and metates, grinding stones agricultural populations in North America would have used to prepare maize crops. She shows how Indigenous peoples would have used these tools and explains the patterns of grinding, polish, and other wear that tell archaeologists they were used to mill or crush materials like maize.