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>> My name is Dale Rogovitch. I'm on the education staff here at the museum.
I'd like to welcome you to our program. One of our Historical Society staff archaeologists will be
present today, speaking about the excavations in the
Shanty Bay pre-contact area. Door County is a prototype for
heaven, and apparently, that's
been known for a very long time. Mr. Reckner.
Everyone. ( applause ) >> Paul Reckner: Thanks, Dale.
You're too kind. Thank you for coming. Thank you.
So, my name is Paul Reckner. I'm an archaeologist on staff with the Wisconsin Historical
Society's Museum Archaeology
Program. The Wisconsin Historical Society
active archaeological program. does actually have an ongoing
of the highway, wearing yellow And any given spring, summer or fall, sometimes winter, you may see these folks out on the side
We do a lot of our work for veother state agencies, theor Wisconsin Department of Transportation and in this case,
the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Parks Department. This is just one of the active
projects that the Wisconsin Historical Society maintains, much through your support.
about some of the work we do and So thanks for coming out to hear
for supporting Archaeology Month here in Wisconsin.
talk, so I'll just move on from there. You've seen the title of the
This may not be the best place to start for a talk beginning
Wisconsin Archaeology Month, but
I just want you to know up front, this is not going to be
archaeological discovery in Door the story of some unique
first pyramid in Wisconsin, or County. You know, we did not find the Arc of the Covenant, or the
anything like that. But really, what this talk focuses on is the remarkable
ability that prehistoric peoples
of Wisconsin, of the Wisconsin area, had to adapt to a changing
live in environments where even just a few decades ago, archaeologists thought it was not possible for humans to live.
I'll talk a little bit more about that as we get on.
of how certain landscapes, But flowing from that, I also want to look at this whole idea
thousands of years. You know, we've all seen them, continue to attract a human presence over the course of
especially if you've been to Door County, these places that
have this kind of persistent
draw, you know, to human populations, to live and play there.
I think archaeology,
particularly prehistoric archaeology in the Door peninsula kind of is a unique
window for taking, for looking
at those reasons why we, as contemporary humans, are drawn to these places, and trying to
put just a slightly different spin on that, a different perspective to understand prehistoric peoples thousands of
years ago found the same places to be attractive, beautiful and you know, comfortable places to live.
So that's kind of where I want
to take things today. To do that, I'm going to start by just giving you a quick run
through of how archaeologists divide up Wisconsin's past into kind of discreet periods. Then we'll go onto a quick
archaeological tour of Door County. And finally, for the second half
on the Shanty Bay campsite in Peninsula State Park, where we of the talk, I may want to focus
did some work last year in the fall.
What I want to try to tease out is the relationship between the geological and cultural histories of this very
particular place that has drawn humans for at least 2,500 years.
So we'll start with a bit of a chronology.
This is just a rough example of how archaeologists divide up the
periods of Wisconsin prehistory. They start with the big chunks.
There are basically four of those that are sub-divided into a few smaller segments. There's the Paleoindian Period,
sort of the initial phase in
human occupation in Wisconsin. Then we move on to the Archaic, to Woodland, and finally Oneota.
It's important to note that a lot of these divisions are based
on changes in how people adapted to, and made use of, their
environment and the landscape around them.
So, just so you can kind of have a visual.
The Paleoindian Tradition or
necessarily live in caves all perthe time, or ever, anyway.ur kind of stereotypical caveperson, although they didn't
But these were the first human inhabitants of the Wisconsin
region. They came in following large
prey animals, mammoths, bison, mastodons.
These were mobile hunter groups,
You know, probably many of you very small. They had very elaborate stone tool technologies.
have seen the beautiful stone projectile points, the spear points that are produced in this
period, and I'll show you a few of those a little later, as we
move on. So these are our first peoples.
As time progressed, various technological changes and social
changes changed the way people related to their environment and
the landscape, and we moved into
what we call the Archaic Tradition beginning about 10,000
Here, we have a slightly more restricted migrational area. years ago.
People are making use of a wider range of resources, largely as a
result of the declining numbers of these large prey animals.
As we move into the post-glacial era, we see people starting to
fish, and developing or elaborating a much more complex plant fiber technologies, so you
You begin to get, what was I have basketry, nets for fishing.
people are starting to use going to say, oh, they're working with metal. Right, this is the period when
for native copper in the US. copper in Wisconsin, of course, the upper peninsula of Michigan being one of the primary sources
This is an epicenter for the copper era. As time moves on, and certain
technological and social changes
a bit of a break, and a new sort that are present in the Archaic Period eventually combine and reach the point where they have
again, to migrate through ofsmaller circles, but they'ree Woodland Period or Tradition, where you have people beginning,
greater variety of ecosystems for subsistence. using broader, much more wide ranging, not wide ranging, but a
We have the emergence of ceramic technology, which we'll talk
about a little bit later, which is one of the defining issues for technologies for the
Bow and arrow develop in this period. For Wisconsin, again, we have a very distinctive archaeological
region within the US. During the Woodland Period, we
also have the emergence of the effigy mound cultures, which
probably a number of you are
familiar with. There's an illustration of one
So that's our Woodland folks. We'll talk a little bit more of those in the background here.
we have the Oneota, leading, about them. Then emerging from the Woodland,
really, right up into the period of contact with Europeans.
the Door peninsula, of course, It's interesting to note that
in Wisconsin is one of the earliest locations in Wisconsin to be directly encountered by
Europeans.
At any rate, the Oneota carry forward some of the developments that occur in the Woodland
Period. They have a greater degree of sedentism, villages are established.
There's extensive agriculture.
Corn, beans and squash. You see ceramic technology elaborated.
So, these are sort of the big chunks of time and culture, and adaptation that archaeologists
prehistory. Taking that to Door County and used to divide up Wisconsin
talk here. the Door peninsula, I focus mainly on two sites through the
Fish Creek, in Peninsula State One, near Sturgeon Bay, the Cardy Site. And the other, up north near
Park, Shanty Bay. But I just wanted to show you, briefly, just how many
substantial archaeological
And we shouldn't be surprised at sites, and this is only a selection, are present on the Door peninsula.
of look at it initially as well, that, really. Because, you know, the Door peninsula, while we might sort
it's a nice place to vacation, but I don't know if I'd want to live there, you know, it's
remote, it's cold, it's rugged. But, you know, maybe it's a great place to go hunting and fishing.
Exactly.
You know, hunting and fishing for us, may primarily be recreation.
You know, this is a primary resource activity for prehistoric peoples.
peninsula offers a wide range of Door County and the Door
ecological zones and opportunities for resource
Within a very small area, you have Lake Michigan shoreline, the Green Bay shoreline. acquisition.
front. You have of course the beach
You have wooded uplands. You have swamps, marshes, also
Not exactly the most appealing, but very important. So, it's not surprising that the important resource areas.
for many, many thousands of years. Door peninsula has drawn people
The reason I'm starting with the Cardy Site here, if some of you
are familiar with it, it is the earliest, to date, documented human occupation of this far
If you know Sturgeon Bay, it's north in Door County.
actually right across the street from the Days Inn on the south
Somehow it survived there. side of Sturgeon Bay.
It's owned by the Cardy family, or was up until just recently. What's been found there is a
large collection of stone tools,
wide range of tools for datingprocessing meat.early Paleoindian Period, roughly 10,000-11,000 years ago, and a
Let me point out this one in particular here.
This one in particular is the give-away.
early site. It's called a fluted Paleoindian This is one of the items that really dates this as a very
point. It's probably of the Gainey
type, though it's difficult to
others. disThese are just more cleareen cexamples from Indiana, as it But at any rate, here are a few
lower left here, you can see happens, but the one on the
really displays the distinctive basal shape, and what's called a fluting flake star, that's very
distinctive to this period, and was done in order to allow the
point itself to be hafted to a spear shaft.
It's very distinctive of this period. The interesting thing about what
11,000 years ago, is of course, you're all familiar with the these folks were doing up there
fact that most of the state of Wisconsin was glaciated.
Door County, probably more so than just about anywhere else in
the state. Up until just a few decades ago,
it was not clear that it was
possible for humans to live up in this area at that time.
the Wisconsinan Glacier seemed The models for the recession of
to indicate that this area was still glaciated.
Cardy Site have been known for And while the artifacts from the
many decades, the presumption was they're a fluke, or a fraud, possibly.
But with some recent
withdrawal of the Wisconsinan Glacier, it's actually become re-evaclear that by aboutfacts, 10,000-11,000 years ago, it was
actually possible for humans to live up there, not likely, but
accept that the Cardy Site is in possible. And archaeologists have come to
fact a Paleoindian campsite that was located so close to the wall
was probably visible. The Paleoindians who were living of the receding glacier, that it
at the Cardy Site could actually see the receding wall from their
campsite. This has really sort of pushed
the boundaries of just how aggressive these early
Paleoindian hunters were in moving into these new environments, where the glaciers
Again, presumably following prey had just recently receded.
animals, looking for new available open hunting space. But you know, these were some
tough people living on the edge of the glacier. I've never been there, but I've seen pictures, and it's you
know, it's beautiful, but not friendly. And because of the significance,
fact, just last year, acquired the Cardy Site was recently, in
by the Archaeological Conservancy for preservation and long term research, largely
through the efforts of Wisconsin
archaeologists, including our own state archaeologist John Broihahn.
The Cardy family itself,
recognized the significance of this and donated the land to the
So we now have this very Archaeological Conservancy.
significant site preserved in Wisconsin. That's where things start in
Door County, essentially, as far
as human habitation. Now I want to take you up north and talk a little bit about the
Shanty Bay Site.
This is Nicolet Bay in Peninsula State Park. Have any of you been up there?
Have you visited? An amazing place. It's one of the most beautiful
do archaeology so far in places I've been lucky enough to
Wisconsin. So, not surprised that it would draw people, even several
thousand years ago. This is approximately the location of the archaeological
But today, it's absolutely site known as Shanty Bay.
gorgeous. It didn't always look like this, though, not surprisingly.
What might be more surprising,
This is one of those human is that it didn't actually even exist up until a few thousand years ago.
particular site. cultural and geological relationships that I think is really interesting about this
So here's a current aerial photo of the Peninsula Park area and
But if you go back about 5,000 Shanty Bay.
years, this is more what it looked like. This was during a high water
phase of the Lake Michigan
system, full of glacial meltwater. The water levels are much
higher. It's in fact an island, completely separated from the mainland.
But currents that were being
driven by glacial melt brought lots of glacial till and gravels
And over time, slowly built up a and sand in.
gravel and sandbar between the island and the mainland,
this landscape that once the creating the space, creating
lake receded far enough, actually became habitable space.
it's been utilized as a vacation So we know now, of course, that
This is the park in the 1940s. resort, probably since at least the late 19th century, into the early 20th.
Well, the origin of the site name, Shanty Bay, is actually is
this area of the park. derived from the old name for
It was called Shanty Bay because early vacationers actually built
shanties along the lake front there, and you know, they were permanent sort of shacks or
season. There was almost a little city family owned. They would return season after
a camp manager, allegedly, you there that developed. They had postal delivery there,
know delivered mail every once and a while, once Peninsula Park
This was in the '40s. This was after the shanties were was formally established.
removed, and it's a little bit more of the sort of modern
campsite landscape that we
most about for the rest of the expect. So we know why it draws us. But the thing I want to talk
peoples? time here is, you know, why here. Why here for prehistoric
together make it almost as It has a number of unique features, not unique, but distinctive features that
gorgeous for prehistoric peoples as it is for us in the present. Or course, there's the bay
that's shallow, sheltered, you
know, water access. Fishing. It's possible.
This is one of those types, the structure of this bay is such that it would attract sturgeon
winter over. in the winter, where they would
So this may have actually been an important winter hunting camp
was the case at the time. Because of the highland, where for prehistoric peoples, if that
preventing wind, provided some the original island formed over to the north and west,
sort of shelter from the prevailing westerly and northwesterly winds.
You know, you get sort of a calm
area in the bay itself, which was very attractive to folks who were living outside quite a bit.
You have sandy soils that were
brought in gravels that formed this sand and gravel bar that we
They were well drained. They were easy to dig. now call Nicolet Bay area.
to cook your dinner, that wasn't You could stay dry. If you needed to dig a fire pit
hard. It wasn't a physical strain to do.
So that was attractive. The area around the bay also
offers a wide range of other ecological zones, as we talked
about with the peninsula itself,
bay could easily go to acquire marshes, woodlands. These would be nearby locations where folks were camping at the
other resources, both food and raw materials for necessary tools.
Finally, and this may be the
kicker, Eagle Bluff, just north and west of the site, is actually an excellent source for
Silurian chert, which is very good for production of stone tools. Essentially, if you were a
woodland tradition
around thinking, you know, this is basically the equivalent of, lafor us, you know shore frontf Shanty Bay, you'd be looking
shopping and recreation, and a property with easy access to
So in terms of the archaeology hardware store. You know, this is prime territory.
that's been done there, surprisingly little. It was first recorded back in
1918, but no systematic archaeology has been done there up until the 1990s, when
Wisconsin archaeologist, was Victoria Dirst, a long-time
asked by the park to come in and do some work related to some
wanted to put in, some infrastructure that the park
facilities for visitors to the Nicolet Bay area. That is why the Wisconsin
Historical Society's archaeology
program was asked to come back in 2010.
the park wanted to do to improve There was some additional work
some of the amenities there. All of the work that's been done
is, all the work that's been there, as interesting as this
done there has been very limited, sort of salvage and
The site itself hasn't been the focus of a sustained, research-driven archaeological mitigation excavations.
I think that's something that we investigation.
within the park, so this is a can hope fgood thing.uture when What we do know from the limited In the meantime, it is preserved
place there, it's a multi-season excavations that have taken
the habitation that existed cathere.. "Village" might be a little much, a little larger scale than
activities, taking advantage of that wide range of resources But nonetheless, it served as a base camp for subsistence
that were available in the immediate area, hunting,
fishing, foraging, possibly horticultural activities. We're not sure about that at
And of course, tool making. One of the most, I think this point.
burial ground. intriguing discoveries so far has been that this is also a
If you're up in Peninsula Park at Nicolet Bay, you know, this
We'll get to that in a minute. summer, well I'll show you.
But it's something to think about. In terms of human habitation of
the site, it's basically
characterized by serial occupations, Short-term, arriving, camping, departing,
returning, probably you know, in
a seasonal cycle as different resource types are available across the area.
We have the Woodland Period well
represented, 1500 years at least.
levels have risen multiple times But we also know the lake
since that initial Algoma period of high water right after the glacial retreat.
So there are these periods where
not inhabited. we know the site itself was actually abandoned because it was inundated under water and
This is one of these other kind of interesting relationships between what we can do in terms
of geological and hydrological
actually lived at Nicolet Bay. history, and human history. We can kind of refine our knowledge of when people
Moving beyond the Woodland Period, we have Oneota Period habitation as well, probably
since with what's called the
Classical Horizon, the Lake Winnebago Phase. Tricky details, I'm not sure
that I understand them myself,
but at any rate, some time between 1300 and 1500 in our
We also have a hiatus there where another high lake level period interrupted occupation some time around 1350.
Historically, meaning the 18th
and 19th century, we know that the Peninsula Park area was the territory of Menominee,
Potowatami and several other
tribal groups. So it's likely that they visited
But again, because of the limited scale of the Nicolet Bay as well.
archaeological evidence yet. archaeological work that's been done there, we don't have the
But it's certainly a strong likelihood, and something to look into in the future.
Here's a rough map of the area, with Nicolet Bay in the upper right.
and to the left of that. The beach front is just below
There are a couple of buildings that the park has added over the second half of the 20th century,
for visitor facilities. In the 1990s, Victoria Dirst's
excavations kind of focused on these four areas here.
Again, largely with the interest
of making sure that park improvements didn't damage the
were known to be there, since you know, well, known since 1918. arOne of the most remarkablet
things, as I said, that Victoria
probably at least 45 years old, dinterred some time between 700 the remains of what is believed to be an older adult woman,
and 800 in the Common Era, AD. This photograph doesn't actually
show the burial out of respect, but it gives you a sense. This burial actually survived below the installation of a
water pipe that probably
The decision was made not to occurred some time in the mid-20th century. It is still there.
remove it, not to disturb it any further.
Park and you're in Nicolet Bay, you can just kind of keep it in the back of your mind that So if you do visit Peninsula
don't see too many people in you're not alone, even if you
bathing suits running around. I think it adds an interesting element to the cultural
significance of this area that's
different from what people expect when they're going to the
But you know, it's not just our beach, it's been a lot of other people's places for a long time before ours.
So, during the 1990s, they
discovered quite a few projectile points.
literal arrowheads. This is the Woodland and Oneota Period. IIn these traditions, they're,
making use of the bow and arrow,
so you end up getting these very distinctive triangular arrowhead
indicator of that. projectile points as an
This is the work that we, with From the 1990s, we move on, and this is the work that I can speak most directly about.
the Wisconsin Historical Society, did in the fall of 2010.
We were called back to assist the parks with the installation of some new utilities.
line with the bend in it, that And literally, that little red
seeing archaeologists digging in is our excavation area. This is a little unusual. Probably most of you are used to
The park knew of the existence very regularly laid out squares on the Discovery Channel. This is a different situation.
of the site. They were installing a new
and they needed to run bathroom and shower facility,
underground electrical service to that.
anything they didn't need to. You know, again, because we're They didn't want to disturb
not doing research here. We're just trying to make sure
the resource itself survives for
future research. So, this was our excavation area.
We think we dug the neatest,
most rigorous electrical trench the electrical contractors had ever seen.
( laughter )
started to drift a little, so we That's a new one for me, too. ( inaudible ) No, actually the trench had
corrected right at that bend. ( laughter ) But I wanted to show my crew,
even though it shows a flaw in our technique. ( inaudible ) Unfortunately, yes.
Regardless, I want to talk a
little bit about dirt. Soil tells archaeologists a lot about the history of the site,
and it's very important in
helping us understand the sort of whens and why heres that we're so interested in.
This is a profile of what we
bottom of the trench, we're finding the sand and gravel, the trench. You can see that at the very
original, undisturbed soils that form the sand and gravel bar
that created the Nicolet Bay
land form. Right above that, we have two soils.
We have a slightly gray band and
then right above that a very dark band, which is the old living surface that is
essentially the top soil that was once exposed to the surface.
reasons, typically occurs in Below that, this leached band which, for various chemical
places where soils have not been significantly disturbed for a long time.
Archaeologists like to see
those. It indicates that somehow this
soil, had not been, at least old living surface, this old top
massively disturbed by later uses of the park, you know, animal pasturing, farming, the
development as a park as a
tourist destination. One of the things that really helped preserve this old land
surface was recent fill that the
park has actually brought in over the 20th century to raise
deal with some flooding issues. So that cap has actually been a benefit to us. the level of the beach area, to
sand and gravel soil that was, As we excavated down into this
stains. aThis one here, these are the undisturbed by recent activity, we started to find these dark
dug to create fire pits, cooking remnants of pit features that prehistoric inhabitant would've
abandoned and occasionally pits, storage pits where they would preserve foods. Eventually, these would be
they'd be intentionally reused as trash pits to get rid of debris that they didn't want on
surfaces where they were
actively living. We found a bunch of these.
We actually found about a half This is one profile.
dozen. You can see here this slight
It's a little dark on the screen, but this highlights the location. You can see it's slightly below
the old top soil level. What we found in the core of
vessel. We actually found over 4,000 this was the remains of what we believe is a single ceramic
individual fragments just in this tiny little basin.
So we believe that, and these are some examples of what we believe is a North Bay Plain or a Linear Stamp vessel rim,
about 2500 years old, give or take. These impressions were created
a slightly bent crescent shaped tool, produced from a reed simply with a thumbnail or with
Just to give you a sense of the overall shape that some of these or a piece of wood. These look very plain.
vessels would probably form, kind of globular with a rounded
bottom. They'd be placed in a pit with
either heated rocks or an actual live fire to allow the material
inside the pot to be cooked.
They're a little humble, but these are the first early experiments of people in the
Wisconsin region with ceramic technology. And as such, these were also
They failed frequently. And what we believe happened is this pot actually failed while flawed.
Maybe the material spilled out being used, cracked.
into the fire. You know, wasn't good anymore,
So we think they just abandoned it there. The pit eventually filled in or was intentionally filled in,
left there. The pot was further crushed.
residues from the soil within this cluster of ceramic We found ifragments.rs later. We were able to extract some
that analyzed, that's actually We're hoping that once we get
going to reveal something about this little time capsule of, you know, a 2500-year-old dinner,
say, perhaps, that someone was
preparing to cook and ended up having to go out for pizza or whatever.
( laughter )
That's going to give us some interesting information on the
occupied the site, potentially, depending on what sort of material they are actually able seato put in their pot.ple
That tells us a lot about the season they were there. You know, we can also acquire some dates using radiocarbon
dating, so we can place this
ruined evening at Shanty Bay in a more rigid time frame, you know, plus or minus 100 years,
hopefully, exactly when this all
occurred. This is going to be a nice continuing project for us.
Just to wrap up, because I want to get you out of here soon,
pit features. We found examples of some later ceramics, what's known as Heins We found a haCreek.ozen of these
These are really only in the
realm of 1300 to 1000 years old. You can see some elaboration
These decorations are applied with the use of twisted cords, developing.
wrapped around a stick or other rigid structure. either just applied directly to the wet clay surface, or perhaps
I have a few other examples of To be able to impress along the rim of the pot, as it were.
similar pots from similar periods, all from the Shanty Bay site, covering a significant
period of the Woodland. These are largely how we know at
this point when the site was occupied, based on the
chronology of these distinct
vessels. We found a lot of animal bone,
Avian bones, thin-walled hollow bones. so we know they were hunting.
we found was we're pretty sure Lots of fish. One of the more distinctive bits
is a carnivore molar, probably a black bear. It was heavily charred, so very
likely a piece of dinner. Then we found lots of stone material. These are not, I don't know how
to say this, these are not their
Craftsman tools that they brought out on the weekends to work on their car.
These were the down and dirty,
elaborately shaped projectile points that you see, you know, folks used. They're not the really
from some periods, and from this period as well.
These are called expedient
tools. They're quick knock offs. You just took down a deer, and
you needed to butcher it, so you
got a couple of good rocks together, smashed them until you
sharp edges. got a bunch of fragments with
You knew, because you were a skilled hunter and butcherer, that that was enough.
That would do the job for you,
and you didn't need to put a lot of time into shaping a really elaborate tool to do the job.
We did also find a few things that were a little more formal
we call bifaces, edged tools, that were shaped by being worked in their shape. On the lower left, you see what
on both sides, both faces of the form.
They would've been knives for cutting, essentially. On the righthand side, some more
These would've been used for formal shaped scrapers.
kills for consumption. virtually everything, working bone and wood, and defleshing animals, you know, processing
to why Shanty Bay, why here? Just to wrap up, a little bit more about stone tools, because it kind of brings us back
We found over 600 stone artifacts, tools and the byproducts, the debris from
stone tool making, in our excavations, made of almost two dozen different materials.
But what's interesting about the Agate, chalcedony, chert, flint.
collection is that over a third of it, 38%, is made from Silurian chert, which is the
material that's available locally in the Eagle Bluff
formation, just about a mile northwest of the site.
Then another third, actually
over a third, is of unidentified cherts that we're almost sure were simply collected from
gravel pits that had formed around the landscape. So, you needed good stone material, you either went to
Eagle Bluff right next door, or you went to the nearest glacial till deposit, picked up a couple
together until you got something of little cobbles, knocked them
good. They were favoring local materials here.
In the tools area, we're
actually looking at 46 distinct tools. Over 40% of these tools were
made out of the local chert from
Eagle Bluff, and it's only a little less than 30% from these unidentified glacial cherts,
probably from local till
for tools in this area. Whether they're isolated and So, there's almost no definitively non-local stone use
stone tool sources, or they just they don't have access to these other tool sources, these other
have what they need and they can get by with what they have
That's what they chose to do. So that takes us back. locally.
They pretty much had everything they needed within easy reach. Really, the answer to the question, why not here.
understand, was this a We're still going to have to do some more research to really
four-season location, were there actually people living up here
It's interesting to think that in the winter in Door County?
the folks living in the Cardy site 9000 BC, when they went north, the location of the
Shanty Bay campsite, not only didn't exist, but it under the
ice. And then just a few thousand
years later, land formation processes take place. What was the term you used, Dale, as close to heaven
as you can get in Wisconsin.
same reasons, but I think what's It formed, and then we have this continuous record of human occupation, not always for the
interesting is, you know, with just a slight twist in
motivations underlying those perspective, a lot of the same
reasons for bringing people back to this place.
opportunities for research here in the future. I think there's some interesting
So that's what I have for you. Thanks for your patience.
It was a little longer than I meant. ( applause )