Wisconsin Public Television University Place History Sandwiched In  Paul Reckner Archaeological Excavations in Door County  May 3, 2001 UP 584  cc >> 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. >> Paul Reckner: Thanks, Dale. Everyone. (applause) Thank you for coming. Thank you. 

You're too kind. 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 does actually have an ongoing active archaeological program. And any given spring, summer or fall, sometimes winter, you may see these folks out on the side of the highway, wearing yellow vests and shaking a screen or using a shovel. That's probably us. We do a lot of our work for other state agencies, the 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. So thanks for coming out to hear about some of the work we do and for supporting Archaeology Month here in Wisconsin. You've seen the title of the talk, so I'll just move on from there. 

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 the story of some unique archaeological discovery in Door County. You know, we did not find the Arc of the Covenant, or the first pyramid in Wisconsin, or 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 environment, and in fact, to 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. But flowing from that, I also want to look at this whole idea of how certain landscapes, particularly Door County, continue to attract a human presence over the course of thousands of years. You know, we've all seen them, 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 of the talk, I may want to focus on the Shanty Bay campsite in Peninsula State Park, where we 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 period, basically, this is your kind of stereotypical caveperson, although they didn't necessarily live in caves all the time, or ever, anyway. 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, very small. They had very elaborate stone tool technologies. You know, probably many of you 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 years ago. Here, we have a slightly more restricted migrational area. 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 have basketry, nets for fishing. You begin to get, what was I going to say, oh, they're working with metal. Right, this is the period when people are starting to use copper in Wisconsin, of course, the upper peninsula of Michigan being one of the primary sources for native copper in the US. This is an epicenter for the copper era. As time moves on, and certain technological and social changes that are present in the Archaic Period eventually combine and reach the point where they have a bit of a break, and a new sort of tradition evolves called the Woodland Period or Tradition, where you have people beginning, again, to migrate through smaller circles, but they're using broader, much more wide ranging, not wide ranging, but a greater variety of ecosystems for subsistence. 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 Woodland Period. 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 of those in the background here. 

So that's our Woodland folks. We'll talk a little bit more about them. Then emerging from the Woodland, we have the Oneota, leading, really, right up into the period of contact with Europeans. It's interesting to note that the Door peninsula, of course, 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 used to divide up Wisconsin prehistory. 

Taking that to Door County and the Door peninsula, I focus mainly on two sites through the talk here. One, near Sturgeon Bay, the Cardy Site. And the other, up north near Fish Creek, in Peninsula State Park, Shanty Bay. But I just wanted to show you, briefly, just how many substantial archaeological sites, and this is only a selection, are present on the Door peninsula. And we shouldn't be surprised at that, really. Because, you know, the Door peninsula, while we might sort of look at it initially as well, 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. 

Door County and the Door peninsula offers a wide range of ecological zones and opportunities for resource acquisition. Within a very small area, you have Lake Michigan shoreline, the Green Bay shoreline. You have of course the beach front. You have wooded uplands. You have swamps, marshes, also important resource areas. Not exactly the most appealing, but very important. So, it's not surprising that the Door peninsula has drawn people for many, many thousands of years. 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 north in Door County. If you know Sturgeon Bay, it's actually right across the street from the Days Inn on the south side of Sturgeon Bay. Somehow it survived there. 

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, dating from this very early Paleoindian Period, roughly 10,000-11,000 years ago, and a wide range of tools for processing meat. Let me point out this one in particular here. This one in particular is the give-away. This is one of the items that really dates this as a very early site. It's called a fluted Paleoindian point. It's probably of the Gainey type, though it's difficult to distinguish necessarily between certain of these early types. But at any rate, here are a few others. These are just more clear examples from Indiana, as it happens, but the one on the lower left here, you can see 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 these folks were doing up there 11,000 years ago, is of course, you're all familiar with the 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 models for the recession of the Wisconsinan Glacier seemed to indicate that this area was still glaciated. And while the artifacts from the Cardy Site have been known for many decades, the presumption was they're a fluke, or a fraud, possibly. But with some recent archaeological work and a re-evaluation of the artifacts, and a recalibration of the withdrawal of the Wisconsinan Glacier, it's actually become clear that by about 10,000-11,000 years ago, it was actually possible for humans to live up there, not likely, but possible. And archaeologists have come to accept that the Cardy Site is in fact a Paleoindian campsite that was located so close to the wall of the receding glacier, that it was probably visible. The Paleoindians who were living 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 had just recently receded. Again, presumably following prey 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, the Cardy Site was recently, in fact, just last year, acquired 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 Archaeological Conservancy. So we now have this very 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 places I've been lucky enough to do archaeology so far in Wisconsin. 

So, not surprised that it would draw people, even several thousand years ago. This is approximately the location of the archaeological site known as Shanty Bay. But today, it's absolutely gorgeous. It didn't always look like this, though, not surprisingly. What might be more surprising, is that it didn't actually even exist up until a few thousand years ago. This is one of those human cultural and geological relationships that I think is really interesting about this particular site. So here's a current aerial photo of the Peninsula Park area and Shanty Bay. But if you go back about 5,000 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 sand in. And over time, slowly built up a gravel and sandbar between the island and the mainland, creating the space, creating this landscape that once the lake receded far enough, actually became habitable space. So we know now, of course, that it's been utilized as a vacation resort, probably since at least the late 19th century, into the early 20th. This is the park in the 1940s. Well, the origin of the site name, Shanty Bay, is actually is derived from the old name for this area of the park. It was called Shanty Bay because early vacationers actually built permanent sort of shacks or shanties along the lake front there, and you know, they were family owned. They would return season after season. There was almost a little city there that developed. They had postal delivery there, a camp manager, allegedly, you know delivered mail every once and a while, once Peninsula Park was formally established. 

This was in the '40s. This was after the shanties were removed, and it's a little bit more of the sort of modern campsite landscape that we expect. So we know why it draws us. But the thing I want to talk most about for the rest of the time here is, you know, why here. Why here for prehistoric peoples? It has a number of unique features, not unique, but distinctive features that together make it almost as 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 in the winter, where they would winter over. So this may have actually been an important winter hunting camp for prehistoric peoples, if that was the case at the time. 

Because of the highland, where the original island formed over to the north and west, preventing wind, provided some 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 now call Nicolet Bay area. They were well drained. They were easy to dig. You could stay dry. If you needed to dig a fire pit to cook your dinner, that wasn't 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, marshes, woodlands. 

These would be nearby locations where folks were camping at the bay could easily go to acquire 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 gatherer-hunter surveying the landscape from the shoreline of Shanty Bay, you'd be looking around thinking, you know, this is basically the equivalent of, for us, you know shore front property with easy access to shopping and recreation, and a hardware store. You know, this is prime territory. So in terms of the archaeology 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 Victoria Dirst, a long-time Wisconsin archaeologist, was asked by the park to come in and do some work related to some infrastructure that the park wanted to put in, some 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. There was some additional work the park wanted to do to improve some of the amenities there. All of the work that's been done there, as interesting as this is, all the work that's been done there has been very limited, sort of salvage and mitigation excavations. The site itself hasn't been the focus of a sustained, research-driven archaeological investigation. 

I think that's something that we can hope for in the future when opportunity presents. In the meantime, it is preserved within the park, so this is a good thing. What we do know from the limited excavations that have taken place there, it's a multi-season campsite. "Village" might be a little much, a little larger scale than the habitation that existed there. But nonetheless, it served as a base camp for subsistence activities, taking advantage of that wide range of resources that were available in the immediate area, hunting, fishing, foraging, possibly horticultural activities. We're not sure about that at this point. And of course, tool making. One of the most, I think intriguing discoveries so far has been that this is also a burial ground. If you're up in Peninsula Park at Nicolet Bay, you know, this summer, well I'll show you. We'll get to that in a minute. 

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. But we also know the lake levels have risen multiple times since that initial Algoma period of high water right after the glacial retreat. So there are these periods where we know the site itself was actually abandoned because it was inundated under water and not inhabited. This is one of these other kind of interesting relationships between what we can do in terms of geological and hydrological history, and human history. We can kind of refine our knowledge of when people actually lived at Nicolet Bay. 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 present millennia. 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 Nicolet Bay as well. But again, because of the limited scale of the archaeological work that's been done there, we don't have the archaeological evidence yet. 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. The beach front is just below and to the left of that. 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 archaeological resources that were known to be there, since you know, well, known since 1918. One of the most remarkable things, as I said, that Victoria discovered was a burial pit and the remains of what is believed to be an older adult woman, probably at least 45 years old, interred some time between 700 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 occurred some time in the mid-20th century. It is still there. The decision was made not to remove it, not to disturb it any further. So if you do visit Peninsula Park and you're in Nicolet Bay, you can just kind of keep it in the back of your mind that you're not alone, even if you don't see too many people in 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 beach. 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. In this case, the lower right, literal arrowheads. This is the Woodland and Oneota Period. 

In these traditions, they're making use of the bow and arrow, so you end up getting these very distinctive triangular arrowhead projectile points as an indicator of that. From the 1990s, we move on, and this is the work that I can speak most directly about. This is the work that we, with 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. And literally, that little red line with the bend in it, that is our excavation area. This is a little unusual. Probably most of you are used to seeing archaeologists digging in very regularly laid out squares on the Discovery Channel. This is a different situation. The park knew of the existence of the site. They were installing a new bathroom and shower facility, and they needed to run underground electrical service to that. 

They didn't want to disturb anything they didn't need to. You know, again, because we're 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) That's a new one for me, too. (inaudible) No, actually the trench had started to drift a little, so we 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 found as we excavated the trench. You can see that at the very bottom of the trench, we're finding the sand and gravel, the 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. Below that, this leached band which, for various chemical reasons, typically occurs in places where soils have not been significantly disturbed for a long time. Archaeologists like to see those. It indicates that somehow this old living surface, this old top soil, had not been, at least 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 the level of the beach area, to deal with some flooding issues. So that cap has actually been a benefit to us. 

As we excavated down into this sand and gravel soil that was, as far as we know, relatively undisturbed by recent activity, we started to find these dark stains. This one here, these are the remnants of pit features that prehistoric inhabitant would've dug to create fire pits, cooking pits, storage pits where they would preserve foods. Eventually, these would be abandoned and occasionally 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. This is one profile. We actually found about a half dozen. You can see here this slight bowl shape. 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 this was the remains of what we believe is a single ceramic vessel. 

We actually found over 4,000 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 simply with a thumbnail or with a slightly bent crescent shaped tool, produced from a reed or a piece of wood. These look very plain. Just to give you a sense of the overall shape that some of these 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 flawed. They failed frequently. And what we believe happened is this pot actually failed while being used, cracked. 

Maybe the material spilled out into the fire. You know, wasn't good anymore, couldn't be used. 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. We found it 2500 years later. We were able to extract some residues from the soil within this cluster of ceramic fragments. We're hoping that once we get that analyzed, that's actually 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 seasonality of when people occupied the site, potentially, depending on what sort of material they are actually able to put in their pot. 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, I'll run through these. We found a half a dozen of these pit features. We found examples of some later ceramics, what's known as Heins Creek. These are really only in the realm of 1300 to 1000 years old. You can see some elaboration developing. These decorations are applied with the use of twisted cords, either just applied directly to the wet clay surface, or perhaps wrapped around a stick or other rigid structure. To be able to impress along the rim of the pot, as it were. I have a few other examples of 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, so we know they were hunting. Avian bones, thin-walled hollow bones. Lots of fish. One of the more distinctive bits we found was we're pretty sure 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, day to day basic tools that folks used. They're not the really elaborately shaped projectile points that you see, you know, 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 got a bunch of fragments with sharp edges. 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 in their shape. On the lower left, you see what we call bifaces, edged tools, that were shaped by being worked on both sides, both faces of the form. They would've been knives for cutting, essentially. On the righthand side, some more formal shaped scrapers. These would've been used for virtually everything, working bone and wood, and defleshing animals, you know, processing kills for consumption. 

Just to wrap up, a little bit more about stone tools, because it kind of brings us back to why Shanty Bay, why here? 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. Agate, chalcedony, chert, flint. But what's interesting about the 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 of little cobbles, knocked them together until you got something 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 deposits. So, there's almost no definitively non-local stone use for tools in this area. Whether they're isolated and they don't have access to these other tool sources, these other stone tool sources, or they just have what they need and they can get by with what they have locally. 

That's what they chose to do. So that takes us back. Really, the answer to the question, why not here. They pretty much had everything they needed within easy reach. We're still going to have to do some more research to really understand, was this a four-season location, were there actually people living up here in the winter in Door County? It's interesting to think that 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. It formed, and then we have this continuous record of human occupation, not always for the same reasons, but I think what's interesting is, you know, with just a slight twist in perspective, a lot of the same motivations underlying those reasons for bringing people back to this place. I think there's some interesting opportunities for research here in the future. So that's what I have for you. 

Thanks for your patience. It was a little longer than I meant. (applause)