Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective

6. Aztalan Mortuary Practices Revisited

6 Aztalan Mortuary Practices Revisited Lynne G. Goldstein The Aztalan site (47JE1) sits on the banks of the Crawfish River in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, between the modern cities of Milwaukee and Madison (see Figure 6.1). The site has been protected as a state park for more than 50 years. While several occupations have been discovered at this multicomponent site, Aztalan is best known for its Late Woodland and Middle Mississippian components that range from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1200. Grit-tempered collared wares represent the majority of the Late Woodland occupation, and shelltempered ceramics indicate the Middle Mississippian occupation. Prominent architectural features such as a substantial stockade and platform mounds are believed to date to the Mississippian Period (Barrett 1933; Birmingham and Goldstein 2005; Goldstein and Freeman 1997; Richards 1992). The first published description of Aztalan appeared in 1837 (Hyer 1837). The first excavations at Aztalan took place in 1838 and were carried out by W. T. Sterling in an attempt to ascertain the nature of the “ruins” of the stockade (Sterling 1920). Sustained investigations began in 1850 with the work of Increase A. Lapham, Wisconsin’s prominent antiquarian. His work consisted of some limited exploratory excavations as well as a detailed mapping of the site (Figure 6.2; Lapham 1855). The first modern excavation came early in the twentieth century with the work of Samuel A. Barrett of the Milwaukee Public Museum. This research culminated in the publication of Ancient Aztalan (Barrett 1933), a seminal work that is the most complete description of the site and has had a lasting effect on interpretations of the site. In the 1950s and 1960s, a variety of excavations were related to the development of the site as a state park, some of which were done in the context of reconstructing a portion of the stockade and two of the platform mounds. Much of this work was conducted under the auspices of the Wisconsin Archeological Survey in the 1950s and later under the direction of Joan E. Freeman, then state archaeologist . Beginning in 1976, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, under Lynne Goldstein’s direction, initiated a sustained research effort directed at the site Aztalan Mortuary Practices Revisited 91 and its regional context (Goldstein and Freeman 1997; Goldstein 1997; Richards 1992), and this research tradition has continued under Goldstein’s direction at Michigan State University (Goldstein and Gaff 2002). A number of other researchers have conducted specialized excavations and analyses at the site, but these projects have generally been limited in extent and duration. This long history of research at Aztalan, while of immense importance, has inadvertently had a deleterious effect on the generation of new knowledge about the site for two primary reasons. Older interpretations often haunt our current understanding and perceptions of the site by permeating the process of knowledge production. Particular views of the site, in part generated and sustained by the prominence of and fascination with the Aztalan site, have long structured research design. The very name of the site itself, Aztalan, encapsulates this notion. Nathaniel Hyer, who reported the site in 1837, named it on the mistaken belief that it was the ancestral home of the Aztecs. Hyer based his assessment on his reading of Alexander von Humboldt’s travel narratives about the Aztecs and their ancestral home, Aztlan. Despite Hyer’s erroneous judgment, the name, Aztalan (which in itself was incorrect) persists today (cf. Hall 1986). Another reason that the long history of research at the site has had a deleterious effect on knowledge generation is less obvious. For many years, each new researcher at Aztalan accepted a number of the interpretations of previous reFigure 6.1. Location of the Aztalan Site in the State of Wisconsin Figure 6.2. Increase A. Lapham’s 1855 Detailed Map of the Aztalan Site. From Lapham 1855: Plate 34. Aztalan Mortuary Practices Revisited 93 searchers, but individuals rarely examined the artifacts and other information excavated by those archaeologists. Barrett excavated more area of the site than anyone else, and his collections are readily accessible at the Milwaukee Public Museum, yet because those artifacts were excavated in the early 1900s, few archaeologists gave them more than a cursory examination until the 1980s. Researchers focused on their own investigations and findings and did not integrate what they found into a larger picture. One long-standing interpretation about Aztalan involves the idea that the inhabitants of the site regularly...