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Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center / Past Cultures / Specific Sites

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Overhead – Site Mapping

Site Mapping In the days before GPS and GIS, site mapping was done with surveying instruments such as transits or alidades, or tape measures. This 1980 photo shows a Kathy Stevenson and a UW-La Crosse crew setting up a grid over a large field, using a transit, tapes, stakes and string, and handheld radios. Measurements were carefully recorded in notebooks. Back in the lab, the site was mapped by hand on large pieces of graph paper. This Woodland and Oneota site, now developed, was south of the Highway 14/61 “overhead” at the south end of La Crosse.

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MVAC Educational Programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these programs do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. This project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation.