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ALMA CENTER SITE RECEIVES NATIONAL DESIGNATION
Friday, February 24th, 2006 -- 11:25 am
Posted by Riley Hebert-News Director
A site that’s been called Wisconsin’s “oldest, largest and most significant” archaeological site is getting some national recognition.
Silver Mound, located between Alma Center and Hixton, was distinguished as a National Historic Landmark this week.
Ernie Boszhardt (BOZE-hart), the regional archaeologist with the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of La Crosse, says Native Americans gathered a special kind of stone, “Hixton Quartzite", from the 200-acre hill.
"It's sandstone that's become cemented to form a very brittle rock that's perfect for chipping stone tools," Boszhardt explains. "Prehistoric people going back 12,000 years in this area had to find their spearpoints and their knives."
“12,000 years ago, we’re at the end of the Ice Age so there are Mammoths and Mastodons roaming the landscape. That’s what those people were hunting,” Boszhardt says.
Archaeologists have known about Silver Mound since the 1920’s, but excavations didn’t begin until the 1970s. Boszhardt says the hundreds of quarry pits are the most impressive feature of Silver Mound – some of the hand-dug pits stretch 40-feet wide and 15-feet deep - but researchers have uncovered other impressive elements.
"There are several rock shelters where there are slabs of this quartzite material that hang out and provide a shelter that people lived underneath," Boszhardt says. "That's where people camped. On some of those shelters, there's rock art. In one of those shelters, there's a series of carvings; in another, there's a series of red paintings."
Silver Mound is privately owned, but the MVAC sponsors almost annual events at the site. The site is protected through the U.S. Department of Interior, so there is no pressing need to do more excavations, Bosahardt says.
Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center
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