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An apparent late woodland boundary in Western Wisconsin
Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Fall 2000 by Boszhardt, Robert F, Goetz, Natalie
Effigy Mounds
Further research above Prairie du Chien has revealed other distinctions, most specifically pertaining to the Effigy Mound culture. Late Woodland effigy mounds have been recognized as a discrete southern Wisconsin manifestation since Lapham's (1855) classic Antiquities of Wisconsin. In the mid-twentieth century, Chandler Rowe extended the range of the Effigy Mound culture northward along the Mississippi River to encompass the Diamond Bluff terrace (Figure 1). Diamond Bluff/"Mero" is home to an extensive Silvernale phase (A.D. 1025/11001200) Oneota occupation and hundreds of conical mounds, along with three effigy mounds (Gibbon and Dobbs 1991; Rodell 1991). Mound 26, a long-tailed "panther," was excavated by the Wisconsin Archeological Survey in 1948 and was found to contain two small shell-tempered pots, at least one of which was attributed by Maxwell and others to the Emergent Oneota Silvernale phase (Rodell 1997:108-113). While long-tailed "panther," "lizard," or "turtle" mounds are common in glaciated eastern Wisconsin, where Salkin (1987) has affiliated them with the Horicon phase, these forms are extremely rare in the southwestern portion of the state. The enigmatic panther at Diamond Bluff has always been intriguing in terms of understanding the end of Effigy Mound and the beginning of the Oneota culture.
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Along the Mississippi River, the number of effigy mounds decreases dramatically from Prairie du Chien to La Crosse (Figure 2). A tabulation of recorded animal-shaped effigy mounds (excluding small conicals, linears, and compound mounds) per county along the river finds high densities in Crawford (which encompasses Prairie du Chien) and Vernon counties and a sharp decrease in La Crosse County. Trempealeau County, just north of La Crosse, contains a slight concentration of effigy mounds, but counties further upriver contain few recorded effigy mounds.
Examination of individual tributary valleys reveals that the decrease in effigy mound frequency between Prairie du Chien and La Crosse occurs in dramatic fashion between the adjacent Bad Axe and Coon Creek drainages. The Bad Axe Valley is the northernmost drainage on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River in the constricted portion of the trench. Coon Valley, on the other hand, is the southernmost drainage joining the wider segment of the Upper Mississippi valley. The Bad Axe and Coon Creek valleys are otherwise nearly identical in size and environmental resources. However, the Bad Axe Valley (BAV) contained at least 69 animal-shaped effigy mounds at 21 individual sites, while Coon Valley (CV) has only three possible effigies reported from two groups. Furthermore, the effigy mounds in the Bad Axe Valley occur from its mouth to deep interior locations and were constructed on terraces, steep slopes, and upland ridge tops. The possible effigies along Coon Creek occur only at its mouth, in actuality, within the Mississippi trench.
Many of the effigies reported in the Upper Mississippi Valley are based on 1880s surveys by Theodore Lewis. Lewis mapped over 13,000 earthworks as part of the Northwestern Archaeological Survey, focusing on animal-shaped mounds (Keyes 1928). He visited many mounds on the basis of tips provided by local informants. So concentrated were the effigies in and around the Bad Axe Valley that Lewis wrote in April 1884 that the area "is lousy with them, and I saw them all the way from Victory [a river town one mile below the mouth of the Bad Axe Valley] over to the bluffs." The dearth of effigies in Coon Valley is implied by the fact that Lewis apparently never even ventured into it and is verified by the fact that none were located during a 1980s systematic survey (Sasso 1989).
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