Join us for our winter Milwaukee chapter dinner Thursday January 16th Featuring Dr. Overstreet and celebrating the 2013 Lapham awardees - Drs. Robert Jeske, John Richards and Patricia Richards

Ancient Gardens and the Little Ice Age

By Dr. David Overstreet, College of the Menominee Nation

Raised agricultural fields are found at many locations on the Menominee Reservation and throughout eastern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Ongoing research at the College of the Menominee Nation has focused on garden beds constructed from about A.D. 1000 to 1500. After 500 years of sustainable life-ways, however, there was a major population collapse shortly before the arrival of Europeans in the Western Great Lakes. For many years this collapse was thought to have been the result of warfare, the introduction of European diseases, or climate change. Our current research suggest that climate change in the form of the “Little Ice Age” (ca. A.D. 1550 to 1880) could have contributed to the regional population collapse and maize agriculture may have been temporarily suspended in northeastern Wisconsin. Nonetheless, historic references indicate that Menominee bands were growing corn at all or nearly all of the villages on the Menominee, Oconto, Fox and Wisconsin watersheds in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, during the latter days of the Ice Age cornfields were commonplace in the Menominee world and other causes are considered for the pre-contact population collapse in northeastern Wisconsin.

Festivities to begin at 6:30 with a cash bar, and appetizers, Entrée and coffee for $35.00

Please send advance registration with payment to:

Katie egan-bruhy, W62 N822 Arbor Dr., Cedarburg, WI 53012

DEADLINE JANUARY 8, 2013