Mounds for the Future

Mounds for the Future. . , Madison's Ancient Moundscape , Mound builders began constructing mounds 2,700 years ago in Wisconsin and built about 20,000. 4,000 remain. The Madison area–rich in lakes, wetlands, and savanna-covered ridges, was dense with mounds. Out of 1,500, about 200 survive. Increase Lapham, who surveyed Wisconsin's mounds from 1849 to 1852, said of the effigy builders: "they appear also to have had an eye for the beautiful as well as the useful, in choosing their places of abode.", Visit Public Mounds , It's possible to visit some truly spectacular local mounds. A conical mound at the Yahara River outlet of Lake Monona is 60 feet in diameter, seven feet high, and 2,000 years old. Monona's Edna Taylor Conservation Park contains a partial 700-foot-long linear mound., Protecting Our Cultural Heritage , People have lived near Lake Waubesa for 12,000 years and once hunted mammoths, mastodons, and caribou. Here archaeologists have found an impressive number of objects: points, scrapers, drills, food remains, petroglyphs, pottery shards, axes, antler tools, and copper fish hooks., Lake Farm Archaeological District , Placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, Lake Farm Archaeological District protects 30 archaeological sites. Effigy builders were only one of many societies that inhabited Waubesa's shores., As effigy builders turned into settled farmers, cooking and storage pots became thinner and more decorative, Public Mounds in Dane County , Hudson-Elmside Parks , Lakeland Avenue, Madison , Observatory Hill , UW campus, Madison , Picnic Point , Lakeshore Preserve, Madison , Forest Hill Cemetery , Speedway Road, Madison , Edgewood College , Monroe Street, Madison , Vilas Park , Vilas Park Drive, Madison , UW Arboretum , Arboretum Drive, Madison , Governor Nelson State Park , County Highway M, Westport , Indian Mound Park , Burma Road, McFarland , Goodland County Park , Goodland Park Road, Town of Dunn , Outlet Mound , Midwood Avenue, Monona , Woodland Park , Monona Drive, Monona , Burrows Park , Sherman Avenue, Madison , Mendota State Hospital , Troy Drive, Madison , Yahara Heights County Park , Northport Drive, Westport , Bear Mound Park , Vilas Avenue, Madison , Edna Taylor Conservation Park , Femrite Drive, Madison , Pheasant Branch Conservancy , Pheasant Branch Road, Middleton, Mendota Mental Health Institute's bird effigy spreads its 624-foot wings near Lake Mendota., Image Credits: Top left Richard Hurd. Top right Craig Wilson. Bottom left Wisconsin Historical Society WHS-33805. Bottom right Richard Hurd., What Are Effigy Mounds For? , Effigy mounds may be a map of their builders' spiritual universe, in which lower (water), middle (earth), and upper (sky) world forces needed to be in balance to ensure harmony. Animal shapes connected people to their ancestors and to the powerful natural world. Mound shapes may have indicated the clans or families of those buried inside. Possibly mounds also served as guardians at special locations. Long-tailed water spirit mounds coming from springs may protect year-round sources of water and mark an entrance to the lower spirit world., Even after 1,000 years, the altered soil of effigy mounds supports a carpet of wild geraniums in the UW Arboretum.