We’ve only scratched the surface in unearthing the remains of an ancient people and one of our great cultural mysteries at Aztalan State Park. Natasha Kassulke s temperatures climb into the mid-80s, about A35 people are standing alongside the Crawfish River in the shade of an immense stockade wall. In the distance, chil - dren race up the steps of a large ter - raced, flat-topped mound. Couples hold hands, don sunscreen and carry digital cameras. About a thousand years ago on this same day — the summer solstice — the plaza below the mound might have been bustling with a different event. Perhaps a heated game of “chunkey” would have been waged. Certainly the Native American Indian city of about 500 would have been abuzz preparing food for the impending solstice celebration marking the first day of summer and longest day of the year. Today, though, quiet picnics unfold on freshly mowed grass instead of the great an - nual Green Corn Ceremony of the past. Aztalan State Park is Wisconsin's pre - Aztalan was inhabited from about 1000-1300 AD by Mississippian mier archaeological site. It’s a national land - culture Native Americans whose scattered settlements stretched from present-day Mississippi up through Missouri north to Wisconsin and west to mark and listed on the National Register of the Great Plains. They farmed river bottomlands and were mound builders. Historic Places. It’s a prehistoric marvel and This painting depicted what village life might have looked like at Aztalan. a mystery. 20 Wisconsin Natural Resources K K E E S S U U O O L L A A B B N N I I T T S S I I R R K K Friends group director and former State Archaeologist Robert Birmingham (center with hat) This reconstructed mound at Aztalan shows an area archaeologists believe led this tour at the historic site in Jefferson County that is preserved as a state park. He may have been the home site of a chief. Research and found artifacts indicate dubs Aztalan as Wisconsin’s first documented farming town that housed Wisconsin’s first it was customary to build houses for the chiefs on terraced hills. sports stadium. The Wisconsin Department of Nat - mounds and a stockade around their dians would have shared the region’s ural Resources is the largest guardian of village. Decades of archaeological re - resources with Late Woodland Indians, state archaeological properties, and search, including carbon dating and a people indigenous to the Upper Mid - DNR archaeologist Mark Dudzik calls tooth samples found at the site that west who built the effigy mounds Aztalan “the crown jewel” of the state’s were traced back to Cahokia, have pro - found in the Aztalan area. collection. Located in a glacial drift re - vided some clues to the culture that “I found over 450 sites, but they gion in Jefferson County, Aztalan is a created these mounds. It was once a were not related to Aztalan,” Goldstein cultural landscape that has hinted at, village and ceremonial complex of says. During her studies she also but not yet given up many of its secrets. about 500 people that thrived between learned a great deal about how people Cultural landscapes are the worlds 1000 and 1300 AD before the site was place themselves on a landscape. we create around our homes and in - mysteriously abandoned. “Aztalan’s location is very interest - clude a mix of natural features such as Lynne Goldstein, professor in the ing,” she says. “It had a lot going for hills and rivers, and monuments such Department of Anthropology at Michi - it.” The inhabitants hunted, fished and as cemeteries or ball parks. These fea - gan State University, has spent 30 years farmed on the floodplain of the Craw - tures define what we think is impor - studying Aztalan from burial sites, to fish River. The river here is shallow, tant about our surroundings and how the plaza and midden (garbage dump), and the people who lived here moved and why we use them. and has surveyed a 70-square-mile area glacial boulders into the stream to form During a tour of the site organized around Aztalan. Her primary interests narrow rock barriers called weirs. Fish by the Natural Resources Foundation, have been site layout and structure. funneled through and sometimes were Dudzik and former Wisconsin State Ar - “One thing that really struck me trapped by these fish weirs, remnants chaeologist Bob Birmingham who also is that people kept pointing to Aztalan of which can be found today during directs the Aztalan Friends group, ex - and had lots of the - plain that the Indian occupants who ories about the site, built these stockade walls have been but those theories traced to a mother site at Cahokia, a were based on very Y T E I large Middle Mississippian settlement little information,” C O S L in west-central Illinois located near pre - Goldstein says. A C I R sent day St. Louis, Missouri. Cahokia For nine years O T S I H housed 20,000 people and covered five she conducted a sys - N I S square miles. At the north end of Ca - tematic random sur - N O S C N S A hokia’s “urban” center is the 14-acre vey in the surround - I V W E ” . B N O Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric ing area. She looked I R S N Y O B earthen construction in North America. for evidence of re - C G S I N I W T “You are at the northern outpost of lated Missis sippian N F I O A P a great civilization and very complex sites and artifacts S E M I T U I E society,” Birmingham tells the Aztalan like shell-tempered U S Q I U T M N tour group. “I think that the Mississip - pot tery, tri angular A C “ I L B pian civilization is comparable to the projectile points and U P A great civilizations around the world.” rectangular-shaped Scientist and geologist Increase A. Lapham mapped the Aztalan site in 1850. At the H S O time he recorded 76 mounds in the area. Few remained by 1912 after the area had N The people who settled Aztalan trench houses. E been sold as cropland and souvenir hunters had hauled away artifacts. K built large, flat-topped pyramidal The Aztalan In - 21 October 2009 low water. One side of the river was a This tableau from the Milwaukee Public Museum envisions what the walled city might have looked wide open prairie rich with flowers like. The museum conducted formal digs at and grasses. The other side was wood - Aztalan from 1919-20 and in 1932. ed providing timber for building and wildlife for hunting. The area has dozens of springs, which to Indian people are sacred entrances to the fer - tile underworld. Corn, a staple food source for the Mississippian Indians, also would have grown well in the area. Birmingham calls Aztalan “Wisconsin’s first farming town.” And because chunkey, a game that involves throwing spears at a disc- shaped stone, was played here, it also is “Wisconsin’s first sports stadium.” Discovery Aztalan’s remnants were discovered in Podcast Stops 1836 by Wisconsin settler Timothy Johnson. Soon after, Nathaniel Hyer, a Milwaukee judge, heard reports of the village and traveled on horseback to 4 map the site. Hyer believed the village was built by Aztec descendants from the ancient Mexican city of Aztlan, thus, he named the Wisconsin site, Y T I S “Aztalan.” Though he did not get the R E V 3 I N spelling quite right and the Indians U E T A who settled here have no known links T S N to Aztec culture, the name stuck and A 2 G I H survives today. C I DNR Archaeologist Mark Dudzik M 1 , Recently, a letter from Hyer de - N I explains that protecting cultural E T scribing Aztalan in 1838 surfaced on e- S resources like Aztalan includes D L protecting the “viewshed” O Bay. The Wisconsin Historical Society G E or visual landscape of the N acquired it and you can see a copy on - N surrounding area to preserve Y L the look and feel of an area. line at wisconsinhistory.org/turning The walled community had different areas for Dudzik stands before the residences, a public plaza, ceremonial locations, points/search.asp?id=1709. reconstructed southwest sports, chiefs, priests, a burial area and garbage In 1850, author, naturalist, scientist mound at Aztalan. (a midden). Our podcast has stops at the four sites and “The Father of Wisconsin Archae - shown above in purple. ology,” Increase A. Lapham, investi - gated the site. At that time the proper - and animal bone, food remains, stor - separate the site into an area where ty was mostly unfarmed and Lapham age and refuse pits, burial sites, garbage was dumped, a housing area, urged its preservation. Lapham's re - chipped stone tools and pottery. Scat - a plaza that functioned as a public or search results were published by the tered human bones and remnants of a ceremonial open space, and a pyra - Smithsonian Institution in an 1855 heavily fortified city and behemoth midal mound area. The flat-topped landmark book titled “The Antiquities clay and heavy timber stockade wall mounds were constructed in stages of Wisconsin, as Surveyed and De - were, for Barrett, evidence of likely and sometimes were topped with a cer - scribed.” This was the first published violence in the region. emonial building. book on Wisconsin archaeology.