The Greenfield Man Mound
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by Ed Benck |
Central States Archaeological Societies 2023
October Journal |
Minnetonka, Minnesota |
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This excerpt from "The Greenfield Man
Mound"
published
in the 2023 Central States Archaeological Societies 2023
October Journal
Read the complete column in the Central States
Archaeological Societies 2023
October Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2024
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Survey of 1859 drawing and notes.
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It is now 1000 A.D., about 20,000 years after eastern Sauk County, Wisconsin
experienced the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation Period. With the final retreat
of the Green Bay Lobe of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the Late Woodland Period
is now coming to a close. Located several miles west of the Baraboo River
and just east of what is now Baraboo, Wisconsin, there lies a glacial outwash
plain located between two prominent moraines, running in an east to west
orientation. The eastern end of the washout funnels down to a narrower channel,
now referred to as The Narrows. Lower Narrows State Natural Area currently
lies at the eastern end of the larger northern moraine. Tucked back on the
edge of the smaller southern moraine, just west of The Narrows, lies the
only remaining anthropomorphic effigy mound in the whole world. Built during
the Late Woodland Period circa 1000 A.D., the Effigy Mound Culture was thriving
in the Upper Midwest. Mounds, of which there were thousands constructed,
mostly near rivers, were made by a people who left no written records or
clues as to why the mounds were built. At one time there may have been up
to five man mounds, all located in Wisconsin. Almost all succumbed to the
plow during the late 1800s and into the next century.
An early pioneer of Sauk County wrote, “We were rather irked by the
large number of Indian mounds we had to plow down. There must have been 25
on our land alone. Some were shaped like animals and some like birds, and
all were from three to five feet high. I suppose we should not have destroyed
them.” But they were then regarded as merely obstacles to cultivation,
and everyone plowed them down. The vast majority of the existing outwash
plain is now under intensive agriculture.
Stephen Taylor (1805-1877) from Pennsylvania worked out of the U.S. Land
Office in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, which was the center of the area’s
lead mining district. Around 1840, Taylor made detailed sketches of many
of the mounds located here before they were destroyed by the advance of
agriculture, road construction, and general development. Taylor recorded
at least two more anthropomorphic mounds. Benjamin Silliman’s American
Journal of Science and Art published his drawings in January, 1838, Volume
34.
In 1853, the Man Mound was first carefully surveyed by William H. Canfield.
Originally the mound was 214 feet long, 48 feet wide at the shoulders, and
was raised 2.5 feet above the ground. During the late 1800s, Man Mound Road
was constructed, and pastures created, which destroyed the legs and feet
of Man Mound just below his knees, leaving the mound over 50 feet shorter
than its original length. Man Mound was constructed in roughly a north/south
axis, with the head to the south and the feet to the north. The figure is
posed as if walking to the ...
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