20 Wisconsin Natural Resources

About a thousand years ago on thissame day — the summer solstice — theplaza below the mound might have beenbustling with a different event. Perhaps aheated game of “chunkey” would havebeen waged. Certainly the Native AmericanIndian city of about 500 would have beenabuzz preparing food for the impendingsolstice celebration marking the first day ofsummer and longest day of the year.

Today, though, quiet picnics unfold onfreshly mowed grass instead of the great an-nual Green Corn Ceremony of the past.

Aztalan State Park is Wisconsin's pre-mier archaeological site. It’s a national land-mark and listed on the National Register ofHistoric Places. It’s a prehistoric marvel anda mystery.

We’ve onlyscratched the surface in unearthing the remains of an ancient peopleand one of ourgreat cultural mysteries at Aztalan StatePark.

As temperatures climbinto the mid-80s, about35 people are standingalongside the Crawfish

River in the shade of an immensestockade wall. In the distance, chil-dren race up the steps of a large ter-raced, flat-topped mound. Coupleshold hands, don sunscreen andcarry digital cameras.

Natasha Kassulke

Aztalan was inhabited from about 1000-1300 AD by Mississippian culture Native Americans whose scattered settlements stretched from present-day Mississippi up through Missouri north to Wisconsin and west tothe Great Plains. They farmed river bottomlands and were mound builders.This painting depicted what village life might have looked like at Aztalan.

The Wisconsin Department of Nat-ural Resources is the largest guardian ofstate archaeological properties, andDNR archaeologist Mark Dudzik callsAztalan “the crown jewel” of the state’scollection. Located in a glacial drift re-gion in Jefferson County, Aztalan is acultural landscape that has hinted at,but not yet given up many of its secrets.

Cultural landscapes are the worldswe create around our homes and in-clude a mix of natural features such ashills and rivers, and monuments suchas cemeteries or ball parks. These fea-tures define what we think is impor-tant about our surroundings and howand why we use them.

During a tour of the site organizedby the Natural Resources Foundation,Dudzik and former Wisconsin State Ar-chaeologist Bob Birmingham who alsodirects the Aztalan Friends group, ex-plain that the Indian occupants whobuilt these stockade walls have beentraced to a mother site at Cahokia, alarge Middle Mississippian settlementin west-central Illinois located near pre-sent day St. Louis, Missouri. Cahokiahoused 20,000 people and covered fivesquare miles. At the north end of Ca-hokia’s “urban” center is the 14-acreMonks Mound, the largest prehistoricearthen construction in North America.

“You are at the northern outpost ofa great civilization and very complexsociety,” Birmingham tells the Aztalantour group. “I think that the Mississip-pian civilization is comparable to thegreat civilizations around the world.”

The people who settled Aztalanbuilt large, flat-topped pyramidal

mounds and a stockade around theirvillage. Decades of archaeological re-search, including carbon dating andtooth samples found at the site thatwere traced back to Cahokia, have pro-vided some clues to the culture thatcreated these mounds. It was once avillage and ceremonial complex ofabout 500 people that thrived between1000 and 1300 AD before the site wasmysteriously abandoned.

Lynne Goldstein, professor in theDepartment of Anthropology at Michi-gan State University, has spent 30 yearsstudying Aztalan from burial sites, tothe plaza and midden (garbage dump),and has surveyed a 70-square-mile areaaround Aztalan. Her primary interestshave been site layout and structure.

“One thing that really struck me is that people kept pointing to Aztalanand had lots of the-ories about the site,but those theorieswere based on verylittle information,”Goldstein says.

For nine yearsshe conducted a sys-tematic random sur-vey in the surround-ing area. She lookedfor evidence of re -lated Missis sippiansites and artifactslike shell-temperedpot tery, tri angularprojectile points andrectangular-shapedtrench houses.

The Aztalan In-

Friends group director and former State Archaeologist Robert Birmingham (center with hat)led this tour at the historic site in Jefferson County that is preserved as a state park. Hedubs Aztalan as Wisconsin’s first documented farming town that housed Wisconsin’s firstsports stadium.

dians would have shared the region’sresources with Late Woodland Indians,a people indigenous to the Upper Mid-west who built the effigy moundsfound in the Aztalan area.

“I found over 450 sites, but theywere not related to Aztalan,” Goldsteinsays. During her studies she alsolearned a great deal about how peopleplace themselves on a landscape.

“Aztalan’s location is very interest-ing,” she says. “It had a lot going forit.” The inhabitants hunted, fished andfarmed on the floodplain of the Craw-fish River. The river here is shallow,and the people who lived here movedglacial boulders into the stream to formnarrow rock barriers called weirs. Fishfunneled through and sometimes weretrapped by these fish weirs, remnantsof which can be found today during

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Scientist and geologist Increase A. Lapham mapped the Aztalan site in 1850. At thetime he recorded 76 mounds in the area. Few remained by 1912 after the area hadbeen sold as cropland and souvenir hunters had hauled away artifacts.K

ENOSHA PUBLIC MUSEUM PAINTING BY ROB EVANS

KRISTIN BALOUSEK

KRISTIN BALOUSEK

This reconstructed mound at Aztalan shows an area archaeologists believemay have been the home site of a chief. Research and found artifacts indicateit was customary to build houses for the chiefs on terraced hills.

“ANTIQUITIES OF WISCONSIN.” WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

22 Wisconsin Natural Resources

low water. One side of the river was awide open prairie rich with flowersand grasses. The other side was wood-ed providing timber for building andwildlife for hunting. The area hasdozens of springs, which to Indianpeople are sacred entrances to the fer-tile underworld.

Corn, a staple food source for theMississippian Indians, also would havegrown well in the area. Birminghamcalls Aztalan “Wisconsin’s first farmingtown.” And because chunkey, a gamethat involves throwing spears at a disc-shaped stone, was played here, it also is“Wisconsin’s first sports stadium.” DiscoveryAztalan’s remnants were discovered in1836 by Wisconsin settler TimothyJohnson. Soon after, Nathaniel Hyer, aMilwaukee judge, heard reports of thevillage and traveled on horseback tomap the site. Hyer believed the villagewas built by Aztec descendants fromthe ancient Mexican city of Aztlan,thus, he named the Wisconsin site,“Aztalan.” Though he did not get thespelling quite right and the Indianswho settled here have no known linksto Aztec culture, the name stuck andsurvives today.

Recently, a letter from Hyer de-scribing Aztalan in 1838 surfaced on e-Bay. The Wisconsin Historical Societyacquired it and you can see a copy on-line at wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=1709.

In 1850, author, naturalist, scientistand “The Father of Wisconsin Archae-ology,” Increase A. Lapham, investi-gated the site. At that time the proper-ty was mostly unfarmed and Laphamurged its preservation. Lapham's re-search results were published by theSmithsonian Institution in an 1855landmark book titled “The Antiquitiesof Wisconsin, as Surveyed and De-scribed.” This was the first publishedbook on Wisconsin archaeology.

Samuel Barrett began the firstlarge-scale systematic excavations ofAztalan in 1919, as Director and Cura-tor of the Milwaukee Public Museum.Barrett discovered remains of smallhouses, thousands of pieces of human

and animal bone, food remains, stor-age and refuse pits, burial sites,chipped stone tools and pottery. Scat-tered human bones and remnants of aheavily fortified city and behemothclay and heavy timber stockade wallwere, for Barrett, evidence of likely violence in the region.

“The wall marks the largest prehis-toric habitation site in Wisconsin,”Birmingham attests.

Areas in the 22-acre village site atAztalan include more than 30 watch-towers located along the stockadewalls. Several less massive inner walls

separate the site into an area wheregarbage was dumped, a housing area,a plaza that functioned as a public orceremonial open space, and a pyra -midal mound area. The flat-toppedmounds were constructed in stagesand sometimes were topped with a cer-emonial building.

In one temple, tribal memberswould have tended the sacred fire.Maintaining a sacred fire was commonin Mississippian Indian culture.

Another large mound supported acharnel or burial house.

A conical mound precinct is located

DNR Archaeologist Mark Dudzik explains that protecting cultural resources like Aztalan includes protecting the “viewshed” or visual landscape of the surrounding area to preserve the look and feel of an area.Dudzik stands before thereconstructed southwest mound at Aztalan.

This tableau from the Milwaukee Public Museumenvisions what the walled city might have lookedlike. The museum conducted formal digs at Aztalan from 1919-20 and in 1932.

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The walled community had different areas for residences, a public plaza, ceremonial locations,sports, chiefs, priests, a burial area and garbage (a midden). Our podcast has stops at the four sitesshown above in purple.

LYNNE GOLDSTEIN, M

ICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

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adorned with 1,978 local clam shellbeads and a few beads of importedGulf Coast marine shells. When Barrettexcavated the mound, he dubbed herthe “princess,” but her actual status isunknown. Today, Princess Mound canbe seen behind the settlers’ BaptistChurch that serves as the Aztalan His-torical Museum.

Goldstein believes the princess isLate Woodland Indian instead of Mis-sissippian culture. This mixture ofWoodland and Mississippian artifactscontinues to be one of the most confus-ing elements about the site for thosetrying to fathom its secrets.

along a ridge at the western edge of thesite (now located along Highway Q)with about 16 conical mounds in a lineextending about a quarter mile north.Many of the mounds in this precinctmarked the locations of large ceremoni-al posts. The mounds covered the holeswhere posts had formerly been set intothe surface. Only the last mound — thePrincess Burial — contained evidenceof human burial.

The Princess Burial is one of themost unusual burial sites recorded inWisconsin because it contained the re-mains of a female in her early twenties

Preservation effortsWhen the site was mapped by Laphamthere were 76 mounds, but only a frac-tion of those mounds remained by1912. The land had been sold as crop-land. Farmers hauled away soil fromthe pyramid mounds to level the fieldsand souvenir hunters dug for artifacts.Others hauled away the burned claywall remnants known as “AztalanBrick” to fill ruts in area roads.

Aztalan’s beginnings as a park dateto 1922 when a group of JeffersonCounty citizens purchased the few re-maining conical mounds and named

the site Mounds Park. The propertywas deeded to the Wisconsin Archaeo-logical Society, and more land was pur-chased in 1927.

In 1947, the Wisconsin Legislaturedirected the state Conservation Com-mission (now known as the Depart-ment of Natural Resources) to buy theland as a historical memorial park. Thecommission bought 120 acres and theWisconsin Archaeological Society andLake Mills-Aztalan Historical Societydonated their lands.

From 1949 to 1952 the WisconsinArchaeological Survey (a group of pro-fessional archaeologists), excavated toprovide technical information for vari-ous DNR restoration projects. Their ex-cavations included the southwest andnorthwest mounds as well as addition-al houses, entrances to the site and theprecise location of stockade lines. Theselocations were used during stockaderestoration.

In 1952 Aztalan State Park openedto the public. The site was designated aNational Historic Landmark in 1964and listed in the National Register ofHistoric Places in 1966.

In 1960, Joan Freeman joined theWisconsin Historical Society as Curatorof Anthropology, and hired its first siz-able field crew. She was the firstwoman to receive a Ph.D. in Anthro-pology in Wisconsin, specializing in ar-chaeology. She was also the first StateArchaeologist. The Society did more ar-chaeological excavation in Wisconsinduring the next 10 years (1960-1970),than had ever been done previously byany university or institution in thestate. Freeman negotiated with the De-partment of Natural Resources for re-search support, and archaeologistsworked at Aztalan for three years focusing on the stockade, northeastpyramidal mound and village area.

To date, archaeologists have alsouncovered about 15 rectangular andcircular pit house structures.

Modern research by Goldstein andUW-Milwaukee archaeologist JohnRichards has helped sort out data discov-ered during those early investigations.Goldstein also has mapped the site.

MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM

KRISTIN BALOUSEK

24 Wisconsin Natural Resources

“The site is a wonderful education-al resource,” Richards adds. “It’s also aspectacular cultural resource that is ex-tremely under-utilized.” Much of theresearch on the site has centered on an-alyzing artifacts already taken from thesite rather than digging new areas witha few exceptions.

In 1996 Goldstein’s Michigan StateUniversity students studied the site. Inthe plaza area, they discovered a large,sculptured, tiered surface with 70 deepstorage pits.

In 2003, with hopes of properly de-veloping the site as a major interpre-tive location for Native American cul-tures, the Department of NaturalResources completed a new masterplan for Aztalan that calls for expand-ing the park’s area, a new visitor cen-ter, interpretive trails, a pedestrianbridge and fishing piers.

Preservation and protection isneeded to ensure vandals stay away.During the solstice weekend tours, vis-itors found deep ruts left by a truckthat had driven over grasses in a low-lying area of the park. Trash had beenleft along a stockade wall. Goldsteinnoted that vandalism had frequentlybeen a problem during excavations atthe site.

Yet, the site is protected by stateand federal law and digging and arti-fact collecting are prohibited. The sitealso is considered sacred by modernIndian tribes. What happened to them?“We call Aztalan a place of historiesand mysteries,” said Tom Davies, thelate Aztalan park ranger and staunchpark supporter, in an interview video-taped by Wisconsin Public Television.And one great mystery is why the In-dians left Aztalan.

The village flourished for aboutthree hundred years when around1300 AD, the Aztalan Mississippians,like their relatives at Cahokia, seem-ingly vanished. There are no legendstelling what happened and no writtenaccounts since the Indians lacked awritten language.

Mississippian culture was still ac-tive in areas that are now South and

Woodland-only occupation followedby a mixed Late Woodland and Missis-sippian use of the site.

Goldstein and Richards also want-ed to assess the degree to which plow-ing disturbed the site. While excavat-ing in the plaza, Richards found thatmuch of the midden deposits weremade up of solids that had erodedfrom different parts of the site as theoccupants built houses, mounds andstockades.

Broken pieces of pottery formed thelargest class of artifacts. They also foundstone arrow points, animal bones andfreshwater mussel shell hoes.

Richards’ discoveries led him to be-lieve that Aztalan was isolated and hadlittle or no contact with Cahokia afterAztalan was settled. Evidence showspottery styles changing over time atCahokia, but those changes were notmimicked in Aztalan as would be ex-pected if there was ongoing trade be-tween the communities.

“I don’t see a lot of continuous con-tact between Cahokia and Aztalan,” hesays. For example, most artifacts, in-cluding pottery, stone tools and orna-ments mimicked Cahokian styles butwere made from local materials likeBaraboo pipestone from Sauk County.

From 1976 to 1987, Goldstein, thenat the University of Wisconsin-Mil-waukee, led the “Crawfish and RockRiver Archaeological Project,” whichlater became the “Southeastern Wis-consin Archaeological Project.” Thiswas the beginning of the first systemat-ic archaeological survey of the regionsurrounding Aztalan, and places thesite in a broader context.

Goldstein and UW-Milwaukee ar-chaeological students conducted shov-el tests and excavations to try to an-swer questions about site organizationand development. In 1984, the UW-Milwaukee excavated habitation areasof Aztalan including a large garbagemidden deposited in a riverbankravine. Richards, then a Ph.D. studentof Goldstein’s, directed excavationsand analyzed contents of eight feet ofneatly deposited layers that spannedremains from several hundred years ofsite occupation, from a small Wood-land period farming village to the sud-den emergence of the Mississippians.

“Each layer tells a story,” Richardssays. “One goal was to see if we couldfind a place in the site where there wasa separation between the Late Wood-land Indians and the Mississippians.”Results demonstrated an initial Late

Signs and a self-guided tour booklet are available to help park visitors explore and appreciate the site.

KRISTIN BALOUSEK

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Southeastern states. The Spanish con-quistador Hernando DeSoto and earlyFrench explorers described the Indi-ans’ customs and beliefs.

Birmingham says one hypothesissuggests the Mississippians left Azta-lan when they ran out of resources.There is evidence in Cahokia that somepeople were malnourished — subsist-ing too much on corn and lacking adiet rich in protein. New climate mod-els indicate that the Midwest alsomight have suffered a serious droughtat the time. Violence in the regionmight also have chased them out ofAztalan.

Richards speculates that OneotaIndians moved into the area and werestrong competitors for resources.Major Oneota occupation sites havebeen found at nearby Lake Kosh -konong as well as near La Crosse andalong the Mississippi River.

“The clues as to why the Mississip-pians left Aztalan are all around us,”Birmingham says. “We are going tofigure it out.”

In fact, more than 80 percent of theAztalan site has not been excavated.While some artifacts are now housedat Aztalan, many pieces are scatteredthroughout the area, with a large num-ber curated at the Milwaukee PublicMuseum. Saving the viewshedFrom the parking lot visitors can seebarns, silos and the Lake Mills watertower. It’s a reminder that develop-ment may come knocking.

To address this concern, the park’s2003 master plan noted “Aztalan’s ar-chaeological treasures, Native Ameri-can culture, and pristine appearancemust be protected. A critical compo-nent of the site's long-term protectionis educating and inspiring the publicto understand its global significance.”

The day-use park is mostly openprairie, with 38 of its 172 acres in oakwoods. You can canoe, boat and fish inthe Crawfish River, but the park doesnot have a boat launch.

The master plan, “calls for the pro-tection of scenic views into and out ofthe site through the purchase of devel-

Aztalan State Park is located on Highway Qsouth of I-94 near Lake Mills. The park is opendaily 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. A state park vehicle admission sticker is required. Self-guided tourbrochures are available at the parking lots andthere are interpretive signs around the site. Thisis a day-use only park — no overnight camping.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:VISIT wnrmag.com to listen to a podcast tour of the park.

VISIT dnr.wi.gov/org/land/parks/ specific/aztalan/ to view a nine-minute video produced by Wisconsin Public Television for the Friends of Aztalan State Park.

PICK UP A COPY of “Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town” by Robert Birmingham and Lynne Goldstein (2005) Wisconsin Historical Society Press, paperback $14.95.

READ: “Viewing the Ruins: The Early Documen-tary History of the Aztalan Site” by John D.Richards, Wisconsin Magazine of History, Winter 2007-08.

Visit the DNR website atdnr.wi.gov/org/land/parks/ specific/aztalan/ and the Friends Group website at xyezsite.com/ aztalan/aztalan.htm

opment rights and scenic easements.The aesthetic intent is that all develop-ment on the property blend into thelandscape as unobtrusively as possibleso that the magic of Aztalan remainswhile public knowledge of the site’samazing history increases.”

A “viewshed” is defined as the nat-ural environment that is visible fromone or more viewing points. Strategiesto protect these scenic views and vistasinclude regulating the type and inten-sity of nearby development, setting design requirements, planting treesand screening vegetation, setting stan-dards for locating telecommunicationtowers and wind turbines, requiringunderground utility wires, scenic (con-servation) easements, setting sign stan-dards and developing transportation designs.

Today, a visual buffer of farm fieldspredominates surrounding AztalanState Park. Though three sides of Azta-lan have been deemed AgriculturalPreservation Area by the JeffersonCounty Agricultural Preservation andLand Use Plan (1999), residential lotscould still be permitted within viewingdistance of the park.

The National Historic PreservationAct of 1966 requires that agenciesusing federal funds consider archaeo-logical sites in project development.Wisconsin demonstrated its leadershipin 1985 by strengthening state laws toinclude the protection of cemeteriesand other burial areas.

Critical to future preservation at thesite is the Friends of Aztalan State Parkgroup, which formed in 1994 to help theDNR raise funds, lead tours and pro-vide an advisory board to guide re-search at the park. The Friends of Azta-lan State Park have launched a $1million fund drive to help build a visi-tors' center to house a permanent arti-fact collection and to tell Aztalan’s storyas it continues to unfold.

“The people of Aztalan did not thinkof themselves as individuals but as partof something larger,” Birmingham says.“Places like this remind us of that.”

Natasha Kassulke is creative products managerfor Wisconsin Natural Resources.

KRISTIN BALOUSEK