- Today, we are pleased to introduce Robert A. Birmingham as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum's employees. Now retired, Robert Birmingham served as the State Archaeologist of Wisconsin for many years and received the Increase Lapham Research Medal from the Wisconsin Archeological Society. He's the author of "Spirits of Earth: "The Effigy Mound Landscape of Madison "and the Four Lakes," and "Skunk Hill: A Native Ceremonial Community in Wisconsin," among other books. His book, "Indian Mounds of Wisconsin," coauthored with Wisconsin Historical Society archeologist, Amy Rosebrough, was recently released in a second edition. So now please join me in welcoming Robert Birmingham.  [audience applauding]   - Well, thank you. And it's that time of year when for Wisconsinites, temperature doesn't make any difference. The sun's out, it's a nice day, beautiful day. You can tell, you know? So, thank you very much for coming out today. I'm gonna talk about my book, or the book that I wrote along with Amy Rosebrough of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the new edition. But I wanna go back to the first edition, and that which was published in 2000, and why a second edition was necessary. Back in the 1990s, when I was State Archaeologist, this was a time when mound preservation began. New laws had been passed, starting in '89 or so, that protected burial places of all people and no matter how old they were. Before that, interestingly, Native American graves were not protected by law, cemeteries and ancient ones. So this law sought to correct that and included mounds because so-called Indian mounds are burial sites. So this created a great deal of public interest. And constantly, I was getting calls asking a few questions. And that was, those were, "So, how old are these mounds?" "Who made the mounds?" "What do they mean?" "What were they used for?" Every day,  [chuckles]  asking the same questions. "How old are these mounds?" "Who made them?" "What were they used for?" You know, and so on. So I was giving the answers. We were all giving the answers as best we knew, but it occurred to me, I should write this down, you know? There's so much interest that what we need to do is to put this together in book form. And the first edition of Indian Mounds of Wisconsin in fact turned out to be the first synthesis of Indian mounds published in 150 years. No one had put together the complete story before. And that was, of course, very popular. Now, since then, and I think because of the book, there has been a great deal of additional research. Not archeological excavations, 'cause mounds are protected, but people are going back, developing new hypotheses, looking at new angles. For example, universities, Madison, Milwaukee, and so on, they assign their graduate students who are looking for topics to go back and look at excavations that took place 50, 60 years beforehand, but now with fresh eyes and now with new insights and so on. So, dozens of theses and publications are derived by just going and looking at old data, but with new insights. My coauthor, 2010, wrote the encyclopedia of effigy mounds. They literally looked at every single mound group. Thousands of mound groups ever recorded and compiled all the data on each one. And again, for the first time, we had the full record in which you could go back, whereas before, you really had to search and scratch and do that, which has been an unbelievable boon. New technologies have developed, which I'll be showing you in a few minutes, that have given us incredible insights. So basically, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, number one, is out of date. And it was important to keep it updated, not just for the public interest, but this is being used as a textbook. You want students to always be having the most current information. So that led to Indian Mounds of Wisconsin II, with all of this new information, some of it qui  - Glacial Lake Yahara. Yeah. But the glaciers are melting and so on. And people started moving in the area, and they made some artifacts that are pretty spectacular and pretty special, like these. These are projectile points used to hunt extinct game. Probably these were used to hunt woodland caribou. And they come from the largest site, we call these Paleo-Indian sites, in the whole Midwest, if not whole North America, which is on the Yahara River near McFarland, another thing that makes this whole area special. This in fact shows you, these little triangles are where the earliest people live, these Paleo-Indians live. And as you can see, that white area is Glacial Lake Yahara. It's all on the shores there; they were living on the shores of this great glacial lake. Through time, the climate warmed, population grew, and with them again becoming a great deal of complexity. For example, trade for exotic items developed, already starting about 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, often bringing in, again, very exotic and symbolic items to the people themselves. About 5,000 years ago, in fact, the people started to trade copper, especially in Wisconsin, which is bizarre because there's no copper deposits in Wisconsin. They were getting the copper from Lake Superior. But as I pointed out in the book, the copper items that are being traded are almost identical. I mean, they're trading similar objects for similar objects, basically. But when you think about it, if you're giving a gift, it doesn't matter what it is. And in fact, again, I pointed out in the book, in Native American belief systems, copper is a source of power. Great power, great supernatural power. In fact, some of the water spirits in the Great Lakes, monsters, are known for their copper tails. But these are powerful. So people were exchanging gifts of power and therefore, binding people together. So this theme religious beliefs keeps moving right down the line. The first mounds occur, as I mentioned, about 500 or 600 AD and are associated with other developments. For example, the first pottery. Now, they've been around for thousands of years. Why would pottery, as for cooking and other containers, only come now? Well, the answer is because before that, they're very mobile. And what's the last thing you wanna have when you're moving? And that is something you could break. Alright, everybody stop. Gotta make some new pottery. So it was only when people started to live in more permanent communities, and then bingo, pottery starts. But, as I point out in the book and other works, they're decorated with special designs that relate to the powers of the earth, air, and the underworld and so on. So we see these themes keep being elaborated on. And at the same time, we see these first mounds, these conical mounds that I talked about. People were buried in pits below the mounds. People weren't buried in the mounds. Starting about 300 BC, we see a great influence in the cultures here in Wisconsin from Ohio. In Ohio, about 300 BC and going to about 200 AD, we have the development of a very complex culture that is called Hopewell. And Hopewell people had, again, a very complex society, but most visibly built huge earthworks in circles and in squares, along with mounds and sacred roads leading to these. And what you're seeing right here covers many square miles. I mean, these are huge. This covers 18 acres. This covers 20. This is a huge ceremonial center, but earthen ceremonial center. Hopewell was, in fact, like this exchanging of copper, a religious movement. But a part of that religious movement also included the trade for exotic items from throughout Eastern North America. So, trade. This is from a mound in Wisconsin that was built because the Hopewell influence reached into Wisconsin at the time. People here did not build these giant earthworks, but they did build burial mounds. Basically, the mounds were covered, covered a mausoleum. The idea here would be to dig a big pit, or if the bedrock was too close to the surface, make a room out of stones. And that became a family mau