Courtesy Photo | A fishing net weight that was found in a past archaeological dig at Fort McCoy, Wis.,...... read more read more
Subscribe
Archaeologists with Colorado State University’s Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands investigated a site at Fort McCoy in 2014 which was utilized numerous times by Native Americans during the Woodland period.
The Woodland period spanned from approximately 2,550 to 650 years ago. The people from this time are generally recognized as the first in Wisconsin to have used ceramic vessels for cooking or food storage, and to build earthworks for burial of the dead.
Native Americans from this time were also expert hunters and fishermen. This is known because of the artifacts found that indicate these activities.
One of the artifacts recovered in 2014 was a net weight, which demonstrates that people either fished, or hunted small animals, on Fort McCoy thousands of years ago.
Net weights were used as their namesake implies, to weigh down nets in order to catch fish or other small animals.
Nets are not frequently recovered from archaeological sites in Wisconsin because they were made from materials which degraded quickly.
The nets themselves were likely made from plant fibers, and this is known from other places across the globe where the nets have been found preserved, or where they have been depicted in iconography, such as in Egypt.
Hunting with nets can be performed in water or on land.
If used on land, nets may have been set up in an arc pattern and a group of hunters walking in a line would the drive animals toward the net to capture them.
Numerous ethnographic studies from around the world demonstrate the continued use of hunting with nets even to this day.
Ethnographic studies and archaeological investigations have also demonstrated that net weights for fishing were fashioned and utilized in much the same way regardless of the location.
In North America, net weights were most frequently fashioned from river cobbles, although a wide variety of other materials including limestone, sandstone, and flint have been identified.
In South America and southeastern Asia, net weights have been found made out of clay or old broken pottery fragments.
Net weights, such as the one found at Fort McCoy, were fashioned from stone that was commonly notched on opposite sides.
These notches in the artifacts were made using another stone as a hammer and allowed the cobbles to be tied securely to the net so that they would not slip off and be lost.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was sponsored by the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Visitors and employees are reminded they should not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals.
Any person who excavates, removes, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any historic or prehistoric site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services each year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
(Article prepared by the Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands)
| Date Taken: | 05.22.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 05.22.2019 14:29 |
| Story ID: | 323495 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 366 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy ArtiFACT: Net weight, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
