The human story of western Wisconsin spans 12,000 years, from
the first Native Americans to today's diverse rural and urban
populations. Over the past one hundred years, archaeologists have
recorded and investigated thousands of sites left by western Wisconsin's
earlier inhabitants. Through the study of these sites and their accompanying
artifacts archaeologists are working to reconstruct the unique and
changing lifeways of the region's early inhabitants. Visit the
links shown at the left to learn what archaeologists have discovered about how
these early inhabitants lived in the region we now call western
Wisconsin.
The Point
Guide will help you learn how archaeologists identify projectile
points. Information about preserving cultural resources can be
found on the Stewardship
page.
The Pre-European
People Section provides an overview of Wisconsin's first
inhabitants.
The Specific
Sites Section allows you to explore some of the sites that the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center has investigated. These
sites represent just a few of the many sites MVAC has worked on since
its beginning in 1982. There is a major section on rock
art and to new discoveries in
Tainter
Cave. Investigations at Trempealeau
in the 1920 and 1990's are discussed. Descriptions of project
involving the public include La
Crosse County, Krause,
Second Ft. Crawford, and Red
Cloud. Pages provide an overview of Silver
Mound and MVAC's work at Seventh
Street and River
Resort.
The Native
Knowledge section provides information about connections between the
archaeological records and historic and contemporary Native
People. Native
Voices section contains excerpts from interviews with Ho Chunk tribal
members. It provides easy access to the interviews that are
otherwise located in several different sections of MVAC's web site.
The Artists
section explores possible links between pre-European craftspeople and
contemporary Native American artists. The Games
section looks at archaeological, ethnographic and archival information
related to Native American games.
The Experimental Section provides
information on current research designed to explore, understand and
bridge the past and the present. The Native
American gardens and plant processing section shows the experimental
garden planted at the UW-L Archaeology Center and Laboratories and
the processing of the plants and produce harvested from the garden.
The Technologies
section explores how the area's first inhabitants created stone tools,
ceramics and artifacts from copper and catlinite. The Replicas
section shows the process of making resin replicas from actual
artifacts.
The Mound Maintenance section
provides information about the Wisconsin Archeological Society’s draft
Mound Maintenance Protocol which deals with how to best preserve and
protect Native American Mounds in Wisconsin.
The
Links Section provides links to the University of Wisconsin's Archaeology
Major and Archaeology
Club. The Related
Links page will guide you to some additional archaeology
related sites.
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