Thomas C. Pleger, Ph.D.
UW-Fox Valley Anthropology
Copyright © 2000
One of the most common questions that I am asked as a Great
Lakes archaeologist is when did people first arrive in the area that we now
call Wisconsin? Students and lay people are surprised to learn that we have
conclusive evidence to indicate Native Americans first entered the state from
the south during the end of the Pleistocene (last ice age) at least 11,500 years
ago. The ancestors of these people probably migrated from northeast Asia around
13,000 years ago via a land bridge that connected the two continents in the
area that is now the Bering Straits. Once in North America, they continued to
push east and south as they followed game. Within 1,000 years populations reached
the East Coast and the tip of South America.
Wisconsin's climate, flora (plants), and fauna (animals) were substantially different than those we are accustomed to today and the northern third of the state was still covered by glacial ice. These first inhabitants are referred to as Paleo-Indians by archaeologists. They were small groups of specialized hunters and gatherers that depended upon the hunting of giant ice age game such as the mammoth, mastodon, giant bison, and other megafauna. The earliest of their distinctive weaponry is known as Clovis technology. Clovis peoples made finely flaked stone spearpoints that have been recovered on the Plains embedded in the remains of extinct ice age animals such as those mentioned above. Where these sites have been radiocarbon dated, they date to between 9500 and 9000 BC. Archaeological data from the Plains sites and from the few sites that have been well excavated in the Midwest suggest that these people were relatively nomadic and that they lived in small groups of extended families. There is no evidence of any type of permanent or semi-permanent structures; cemeteries are also absent. We have Clovis materials here in Wisconsin, most of these artifacts have been recovered by amateurs as surface finds.
The traditional theory has been that Clovis culture represents the earliest human habitation in the Americas. Recently however, several sites excavated in Kenosha County, Wisconsin by Dr. David Overstreet of the Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center in Milwaukee challenge this traditional view. Overstreet has discovered the remains of a series of mammoth butchering sites. Cut marks are present on some of the bones and flaked-stone tools have been recovered in close association with the remains, however, no Clovis spearheads have been found. Overstreet radiocarbon dated the bones to between 12400 BP (10400 BC) and 13400 BP (11400 BC) making these sites the oldest possible mammoth kill sites in North America. If the dates are correct, it suggests that there may have been people in the Midwest of North America at least 1-2000 years earlier than what we had previously thought. The debate over the arrival of the first Americans and the first people in Wisconsin continues, but we can clearly conclude that Native Americans have lived in our area for at least 11,500 years. The descendants of these first nomadic cultures developed new technologies and life ways that enabled them to settle into the landscape once the ice age was over. Modern Indian cultures in our region represent nearly 12,000 years of adaptation to an ever-changing environment.
For more information about Wisconsin archaeology, please visit the UW-Fox Valley Anthropology web site at: www.uwfox.uwc.edu/academics/depts/ant.html.
*Originally published in the Appleton Post-Crescent
Birmingham, Robert A., Carol I.
Mason, and James B. Stoltman (editors)
1997 Wisconsin Archaeology. The Wisconsin Archeologist, Volume 78, Number
1/2, The Wisconsin Archeological Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.