Introduction to Historical Archaeology in Wisconsin

Introduction to Historical Archaeology in Wisconsin

Heather Walder, guest editor

Adapted from The Wisconsin Archeologist, 2021, 102(1):4–8

This issue of The Wisconsin Archeologist is a summary of recent archaeological and archival research on topics from the last 500 years of history in the area now called Wisconsin. A project this size is a collective effort and draws on previous scholarship. I begin with appreciation and gratitude for the work of all the original authors of the Special Issue of The Wisconsin Archeologist (Volume 78, Number 1/2), entitled Wisconsin Archaeology, particularly the 2.5 chapters of material on historical topics. These included work by David F. Overstreet (“Oneota Prehistory and History”); Carol I. Mason (“The Historic Period, Native Peoples”); and Robert A. Birmingham, John H. Broihahn, and David J. Cooper (“Historic Period, Euro-Americans”). These authors’ foundational work has been a critical guide for scholars, avocational archaeologists, and students over the last decades. I am also personally lucky enough to say that each of these individuals has been a mentor to me at various stages of my training and work as a Wisconsin archaeologist, and for this I am grateful. The 1997 Special Issue was certainly my first resource as I was beginning a career here, and it sits close at hand on my desk today.

In the years since that publication (Birmingham et al. 1997), historical archaeology as a specialized field has matured and developed its own scholarly specializations, and relatively recent events and sites have received more scholarly attention. Further, in recent decades, the importance of fostering collaboration between archaeologists and descendant communities has grown considerably. In a first for The Wisconsin Archeologist, the section edited by Addison Kimmel, on Indigenous archaeologies of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, included coordinated collaboration among historians, scholars, and elders from several of our state’s sovereign Native Nations. Menominee Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) David Grignon and Ho-Chunk THPO William Quackenbush contributed as authors, while Cynthia Stiles has worked with Ojibwe stakeholders for many years and obtained direct permission to share knowledge from those experiences in her article.

The co-authored section on Military Archaeology in Wisconsin, organized by section editor Jon Van Beckum, likewise benefitted from the expertise of many scholars synthesizing their individual work into a comprehensive summary. Each contributor points out a museum or other resource where the public may explore their topic in greater depth, highlighting the importance of making archaeology accessible and interesting to general audiences. I am grateful to both section editors Kimmel and Van Beckum for their significant contributions to this issue and their endless patience as we brought everything together. The authors of each article likewise devoted significant time and effort to preparing their manuscripts and final articles, and I thank them for their work on this project.

In 2020 and 2021, multiple contributors to the issue faced personal or COVID-19-related challenges in completing their work. We are grateful to them for persevering through illnesses of themselves or family members, loss of research time, limited access to archives and materials, and the general disruptions that this experience has caused us all. When researching or reading about seemingly distant historic catastrophes like the Great Depression or epidemic disease outbreaks during the early colonial era, it can be easy to forget that those collective past events were made up of individual experiences and tragedies, just as the pandemic has been for us today. This is a lesson for us as archaeologists, whenever we find some fragment of material culture, we might glimpse the life events of the human individual who touched it last.

The contributors to this issue summarize information about Wisconsin’s archaeological sites affiliated with diverse Native American communities in the seventeenth through twentieth centuries; colonial posts of the French and British fur trade; American military clashes and conflicts; large and small fortifications and encampments; settler farmsteads; logging, mining, and industrial development; shipwrecks and historic-era maritime archaeology; and CCC and WPA-era camps. Beyond merely reporting and interpreting material culture, historical archaeology can provide a voice to communities often marginalized in the documentary record, such as colonized Indigenous groups, enslaved peoples, immigrants, and communities of low socioeconomic status. This work can be a way of “bearing witness” to both the struggles and resilience of communities past and present (Hauser et al. 2018).

The field of historical archaeology is vast, and there are areas where we still lack focus, particularly in Wisconsin. The experiences of African American and Black communities in Wisconsin are an especially noticeable blind spot in current research, but see Hawley and Speth (2016). Like the discipline of archaeology as a whole (White and Draycott 2020), the “whiteness” of Wisconsin archaeology is glaring, in both research topics and practitioners themselves. Only by diversifying our field can we begin to ask the questions and explore the events that are relevant to the experiences of all people who call this state home. The Wisconsin Black Historical Society operates a museum in Milwaukee, and future coordination between historical archaeologists and this organization could be a starting point for further research. By creating fieldwork and scholarship opportunities that seek out and welcome participants from underrepresented communities, the next cohort of Wisconsin archaeologists could be more diverse than any previous generation.

There are other rich topics of interest in historical archaeology today that are not represented here. With some noteworthy exceptions (e.g. Richards et al. 2017), archaeological studies of historic urban contexts in Wisconsin lag behind studies in other Midwesternstates. For recent examples, see the “Unearthing Detroit” project (Ryzewski 2021) and public outreach webpage, recent excavations in Chicago’s historically African American Bronzeville neighborhood (Gregory et al. 2021), and investigations of the Underground Railroad in Chicago (Graff 2019). Other Midwestern historical archaeologists have examined early university student experiences, especially at large or land-grant institutions like Michigan State University (Goldstein et al. 2017). The archaeological history of labor and capitalism (Baxter 2012) is exemplified in research at the Pullman Heritage Project (Walikainen Rouleau et al. 2019). Industrial archaeology, as a specialization within historical archaeology, could reveal much about the lives of immigrants and workers who participated in extractive industries in northern Wisconsin, as has been explored in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (e.g. Gohman 2013). In their chapter on logging (Dunham et al., this issue), the authors draw comparisons with lumber camps in Minnesota and Michigan, since comparatively fewer such sites have been fully investigated by archaeologists in Wisconsin.

Making archaeology public, and bringing together scholars, students, and avocationalists has been a goal of the Wisconsin Archeological Society (WAS) since its inception. Recent WAS public archaeology events at the Historic Indian Agency House at Fort Winnebago in Portage offer Wisconsinites hands-on opportunities to participate in excavations at a historic site. Online programing like the Wisconsin Historical Society Maritime Preservation and Archaeology Program’s Maritime Trails webpage brings underwater archaeology to the public in digital format (and see Kiefer et al., this issue).

There are further opportunities for developing long-term public programming like those in the Mackinac area and at Fort St. Joseph (Nassaney 2011) in Michigan. This could take place at locales such as Fort Blue Mounds on the property owned by the WAS (Birmingham, this issue) or other locations with existing public outreach infrastructure, like those highlighted in the Military Archaeology section of this issue (Van Beckum, this issue). Another area of significant public interest is the well-documented and celebrated history of the brewing industry in Milwaukee. However, archaeologists have not fully “tapped” the potential of excavations at historic brewery sites to investigate their material culture as a complementary line of evidence with archival records (but see Cullen 2011 and the Discovery World museum’s “Ale through the Ages” series that ran 2007 to 2013.

Looking forward, some authors in this issue highlight important areas for additional research in Wisconsin, notably, in the lead district of the Upper Mississippi Valley (Millhouse, this issue), Euro-American farmsteads (Reckner, this issue), and the archaeology of Civilian Conservation Corps camps (Bruhy, this issue), which included some predominantly Native American work groups (Stiles, this issue). Another promising direction in Wisconsin archaeological research is direct collaboration with Indigenous stakeholders (e.g Overstreet and Grignon, and Kimmel and Quackenbush, both in this issue). Sasso (this issue) notes that working towards full summaries and publications of recent fieldwork investigating historic Native American sites is an ongoing process. Such work is critical for sharing knowledge and collaborating with descendant communities. In the future, additional archaeological projects operating in coordination with Tribal Historic Preservation Offices can ensure that outreach and youth programming reaches interested tribal members. This can build capacity for Indigenous-led historical archaeology and heritage management, helping ensure that the next generation of Wisconsin’s archaeologists come from a broader variety of backgrounds and communities.

Some contributions to this issue are authored by scholars drawing on decades of experience and knowledge, while others are at the relative beginning of their careers. In organizing this project, the editors hope to balance and highlight the numerous theoretical and methodological perspectives through which Wisconsin’s historical archaeology is now being investigated. By engaging the public, collaborating with descendant communities, and focusing attention on events and peoples often unseen in primary documentary sources, we can continue developing the practice of historical archaeology in Wisconsin.

References

Cullen, Kevin, 2011. Rediscovering Milwaukee’s Historic Breweries: Part 1: Milwaukee’s Downtown Breweries. Brewery History, the Journal of the Brewery History Society Online 140:71–86. Available at http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/140/Milwaukee.pdf

Gohman, Sean M., 2013. It’s Not Time to Be Wasted: Identifying, Evaluating, and Appreciating Mine Wastes in Michigan’s Copper Country. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 39(1/2):5–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43958424

Goldstein, Lynne, Lisa Bright, and Jeffrey Painter, 2017. Sherds of Spartans Past: Ceramics from the Michigan State University Campus Archaeology Program. In Innovative Approaches and Explorations in Ceramic Studies, edited by Sandra L. López Varela, pp. 107–117. Archaeopress, Inc., Oxford.

Graff, Rebecca S., 2019. An Ardent Anti-Slavery Tale: Narrating Resistance through Chicago’s Underground Railroad, 1856–present. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage 6(2):85–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/20518196.2019.1576267

Gregory, Michael M., Jane D. Peterson, and Noel Hincha, 2021. History Beneath Our Feet: Archaeology in Chicago’s Bronzeville Neighborhood. Illinois Antiquity 56:8-20.

Hauser, Mark W., Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Koji Lau-Ozawa, Barbara L. Voss, Reinhard Bernbeck, Susan Pollock, Randall H. McGuire, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Christopher Hernandez, and Sonya Atalay, 2018. Archaeology as Bearing Witness. American Anthropologist 120(3):535–536. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13071

Hawley, Marlin F., and Janet M. Speth, 2016. A Note on African Americans in Early Wisconsin Archaeology. The Wisconsin Archeologist 97(1):47–52.

Nassaney, Michael, 2011. Public Involvement in the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. Present Pasts 3:42–51. http://doi.org/10.5334/pp.43

Richards, Patricia B., Catherine R. Jones, Emily Mueller Epstein, Nicholas W. Richards, Brooke L. Drew, and Thomas J. Zych, 2017. “You Couldn’t Identify Your Grandmother if She Were in that Party”: The Bioarchaeology of Postmortem Investigation at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. In The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy in the United States, edited by Kenneth C. Nystrom, pp. 237–257. Springer International Publishing, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26836-1_11

Ryzewski, Krysta, 2021. Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Walikainen Rouleau, Laura, Sarah Fayen Scarlett, Steven A. Walton, and Timothy Scarlett, 2019. Historic Resources Study of Pullman National Monument, Illinois. Michigan Tech Publications, Michigan Technological University. Report for the National Park Service. Available at https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/14692/

White, William, and Catherine Draycott, 2020. Why the Whiteness of Archaeology is a Problem. SAPIENS Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. July 7th 2020. Available at https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/archaeology-diversity/