Hosted By: Robert Ritzenthaler Archaeological Society

Location: Harrington Hall, Room 217

Speaker: George Christiansen, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Plateville Baraboo/Sauk County, Director of the Center for Wisconsin Archaeology, and President, Wisconsin Archeological Society

Abstract: For 12,000 years humans have lived along the Wisconsin River and its tributaries in the place that we call Sauk County. They left behind traces of their presence, some obvious, like their bas- relief sculptures that marked the burial places of their dead. Other remnants have slept silently beneath the surface of the ground. although we think of the past as being a distinct and different place from our present, those that have come before shared the same landscape. This presentation seeks to reveal a world that is both alien and familiar at the same time by exploring the prehistory of the hunters, gatherers and horticulturalists that called Sauk County home.