WN@TL - Mapping Monumental Mysteries:Exploring Wisconsin’s Effigy Mounds. Amy Rosebrough. 2018.08.01

"Between AD 750 and 1200, communities across much of Wisconsin and portions of adjoining states created earthen burial mounds in the form of animals and spirits—Wisconsin’s famous ‘effigy’ mounds. Thousands of such monuments were created, transforming southern Wisconsin into what some early settlers described as a sculpted landscape. Effigy mounds were built by nearly two dozen communities, many located where Wisconsin’s major cities and towns stand today.

"Since their discovery by Euro-American settlers, the mounds have fascinated non-Native peoples. In the late 1800s, a number of eccentric individuals competed to document effigy mounds before the land was broken and developed. The sculpted landscape itself now survives only in the records they left behind, and in fragments saved by early preservationists, rugged terrain, and sympathetic landowners. Today, recent changes in Wisconsin’s burial sites protection law have extended increased protection to the surviving mounds. LiDAR technology has greatly enhanced our ability to locate and monitor damage to the last effigy mounds—while simultaneously changing our interpretations of how effigy building may have come to an end.

"Each community seems to have built mounds in its own way, drawing from various artistic and ritual traditions. Though broadly shared enough to comprise a larger Effigy Mound Ceremonial Complex, mound ritual and design varied in discernable ways. Mound form, in particular, reflects the social geography of Wisconsin’s Late Woodland communities, documenting the presence of different social groups in different regions. With the arrival of Middle Mississippian peoples from Cahokia ca. AD 950, some effigy-building communities seem to have retreated and intensified effigy ritual while others quickly abandoned effigy ritual in favor of Cahokian ceremonies and life ways.”

About the Speaker

Dr. Amy L. Rosebrough is a native of the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri who developed an interest in archaeology at a young age. After attending Missouri State University and the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, she moved to Madison and received her Doctorate from UW-Madison for her research into spatial patterning in effigy mound symbolism and Late Woodland ceramic design. She currently works as a staff archaeologist in the State Historic Preservation Office of the Wisconsin Historical Society, where she assists landowners, researchers, and archaeological consultants and maintains archaeological components of Wisconsin’s Historic Preservation Database.