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Fort McCoy Garrison leaders and personnel participated in a visit to the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, on Jan. 26, 2024, at the university in La Crosse, Wis.
The center and Fort McCoy have a long relationship that includes decades of sharing archaeological artifacts, digs, documentation, and more.
Most of the artifacts found at Fort McCoy are curated with the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. From there, archaeology students and other scholars can see material examples of Wisconsin’s ancient past.
“There is so much there, and there is a lot of further study that needs to be done on what has been found,” said Fort McCoy Archaeologist Ryan Howell, who organized this visit.
Fort McCoy also is part of the Driftless Area, also called the Paleozoic Plateau, which escaped glaciation in the last Ice Age, some 11,700-plus years ago.
Combine the location with archaeological work done at Fort McCoy for more than three decades and a greater understanding of early human life in the region and the state has unfolded as more research has been done, said Alexander Woods, Ph.D., an archaeologist with Colorado State University’s (CSU) Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands in partnership with Fort McCoy in 2017.
Tyler Olsen, also an archaeologist with CSU working with Fort McCoy who was part of the visit, said he has worked on dozens of archaeological digs at Fort McCoy over the years, and he said he’s found some amazing artifacts. But, he said, that’s after lots of hard, painstaking work and research, and more.
“Doing this is never easy,” said Olsen. “But it’s a labor of love.”
Olsen said that there has been steady archaeological work ongoing at Fort McCoy for at least the last four decades. He said his work with the Fort McCoy archaeological team has found some interesting items — including a very old fire pit.
“The only thing that we can guarantee at Fort McCoy that’s 10,000 years old is a fire pit that we found that we were able to do radiocarbon analysis on,” Olsen said. “That of course took some time. But we’ve also found plenty, and I mean plenty of actual projectile points.”
In the meantime, archaeological work will continue at the installation as needed. Archaeology efforts at Fort McCoy are governed by federal regulations and the National Historic Preservation Act, said Howell who is with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works Natural Resources Branch. Federal law requires the Army to protect historic properties under its control and to consider the effects of Army actions on those properties. The law further defines the need to find historic properties, including archaeological sites, and determine their importance.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the Digital Garrison app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 01.26.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 02.01.2024 15:44 |
| Story ID: | 462958 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 264 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Photo Story: Garrison leaders visit Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center; learn about archiving Fort McCoy artifacts, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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