The Dodge County Historical Society is beginning celebration of its 75th anniversary a little early with an archeological dig in Waterworks Park.
Next year will mark the dodranscentennial of the society. Historical society curator and Wisconsin Archeological Society president Kurt Sampson said the society is planning to have at least one event per month starting in December that will invite the public to get involved in the history of the area.
However, Sampson got started a little early with the dig.
“Being an archeologist, this is right up my alley,” Sampson said of the undertaking. “This is a good spot to dig, just because it’s a fairly undisturbed area with a long history of known Indian occupation.”
He said he wants to start digging this fall and, once the ground freezes, he will wait until spring to finish the work.
“May is archeology month in Wisconsin,” Sampson said. “We’re shooting for May to do an excavation here.”
He said that the main information about the park comes from a book published in 1941 about the history of Dodge County.
“It just claims that Denning’s Point here, near Waterworks Park, was an old Indian encampment and that there was a large amount of stone artifacts, arrowheads, things of that nature, that were found in this area,” Sampson said.
He said he’s hoping to find not only pre-historic (before recorded history) occupation, but also some evidence of early historic (recorded history) occupation by Potawatomi or Winnebago Indian tribes.
“Those types of artifacts would include any type of early trade goods, from iron, glass beads, musket balls, any kind of stuff that they would have been trading with the Indians early on that would have survived in the soil,” Sampson said.
He said the digging is a system of testing spots in lines every three meters hoping to find artifacts. The testing spots are holes dug approximately 30 centimeters deep and 25 centimeters across.
“This whole process of shovel testing is really kind of hit or miss,” Sampson said. “I’m hopeful.”
He said that they do tests in three meter intervals. If they find something, they will then do test holes one meter away from the original test hole.
Sampson said even doing tests that way, there might be something in between the test spots that gets missed.
However, he said that usually doing test spots systematically allows archeologists to identify areas where there is something significant to excavate.
Sampson started digging on Tuesday and has already found a few small artifacts, including small pottery shards and what he calls “waste flakes” which are small pieces of stone that would have been flaked off of a larger stone when shaping something.
He said there is a long history of archeological activity in Dodge County, dating as far back as the 1840s and 50s.
“I’m just hoping to continue that and identify more sites,” Sampson said.
The process of digging in the park took a little bit of time, requiring the Historical Society to gain permission from the city and, because the dig is on public land, permits from the state. He said before issuing permits, the state likes to know that archeologists have a reason for wanting to dig in a specific place.
“They don’t like you just to go out and dig anywhere,” Sampson said. “Usually, you want to do some background research on the property you’re digging on to see if there is something that makes it more likely that there’ll be something that you’ll find there. You have to know what you’re doing, basically.”
He said if they find any kind of human remains, they will have to stop digging.
“There’s a possibility that there could be human remains in this park that are ancient remains,” Sampson said. “If I were to find any type of human remains in this park, I would have to stop. The police department would have to be contacted and the state archeologist. They would send somebody out from the state and probably a forensics person to look at those bones to determine if in fact it was an ancient burial or a more recent burial.”
He said there is a slight possibility that they could find human remains, especially since there is a possibility that there are unidentified effigy mounds in close proximity.
He said he tries to dig on Mondays and Tuesdays from around 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. when it isn’t raining heavily.
“There may be a Sunday or two, but I don’t like to miss the Packer games on Sunday,” Sampson said. “They do have a bye week coming up pretty soon, so we might be out here on that bye week.”
He said anyone in the community who is interested in helping can contact him at the Historical Society at 887-1266.
Sampson said they are hoping to be able to do other events next year as well, including a reception and possible open house events at the museum.
“We’re trying to put together engaging public events every month for the next year to get the word out about the historical society, about what we do in the community, about preserving the history and engage people in the history in their community,” Sampson said.
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