Ancient Effigy Mound Landscapes of Upper Midwestern North America

This book provides an overview of the effigy mound phenomenon of the Upper Midwest of North America, centered on southern Wisconsin. Between c. AD 700 and 1100, Late Woodland people of the Upper Midwest used the topography and other natural features to create vast ceremonial landscapes consisting of thousands of earthen mounds sculpted into animals and animal spirits (bears, birds, panthers, snakes, etc.) that mirrored their belief and clan-based social structure and served an important role in mortuary ritual. In so doing, the Late Woodland people created quite visible three-dimensional maps of ancient cosmology and social structures that are similar to the beliefs and social systems of more recent Native people. The effigy landscapes of this region are unique. The author documents the nature of the effigy mound landscapes, describing the use of topography and natural features to create them, and provides the interpretation that these were living landscapes in which ancestral animals and the supernatural were ritually brought back to life in a continuous cycle of death and rebirth of the earth and its people.

Subsistence patterns, artifacts, settlement systems, and changes in these through the effigy building era are examined and effigy mound societies are compared and contrasted with preceding and succeeding societies, as well as contemporaneous societies in adjacent regions. Examples are drawn from throughout the effigy mound region. The book is profusely illustrated with high quality historical and modern maps, photographs of effigy mounds including aerials, and LiDAR imagery providing three-dimensional images.