Sculpting a Mississippian Aztalan: A Landscape Perspective

Author(s): Thomas Zych; Brian Nicholss

Year: 2017

Summary

The culmination of over a century of research at the Aztalan site in south-central Wisconsin has highlighted the drastic extent of landscape modification by the site’s inhabitants. Notably, with the arrival of Middle Mississippians by the end of the 11th century A.D. these modifications included construction of earthen platform mounds, formal plazas, and landscape reclamation. Utilizing publicly available LiDAR derived surface data for Jefferson County, Wisconsin, this poster presents a summary of the terrain and morphometric analyses of the site and its surrounding environs. The analysis of the landscape along the Crawfish River Valley adjacent to the site aims to further underscore the scale of landscape modifications associated with the socio-religious practices of Middle Mississippian populations in the Eastern Woodlands.

Cite this Record

Sculpting a Mississippian Aztalan: A Landscape Perspective. Thomas Zych, Brian Nicholss. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 428976)

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Keywords

General
Gis Landscape LiDAR

Geographic Keywords
North America - Midwest

Spatial Coverage

min long: -104.634; min lat: 36.739 ; max long: -80.64; max lat: 49.153 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17300