University of Wisconsin–Madison

Archaeology

This post was written by Vaneesa Cook, historical research fellow for UW–Madison’s Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project. In the winter of 1944, while many Americans were tracing the progress of Allied island hopping throughout the Pacific, a special unit of U.S. soldiers set out on foot across hundreds […]

The Legacy of the 5307th Merrill’s Marauders: Wisconsin MIAs in ...

July 13, 2020 by Chris Barncard

Today is Mandela Day. It is a worldwide event to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela, a once-political prisoner in South Africa who went on to become the president of that nation and help it cast aside its system of racial oppression called apartheid. Mandela passed away in 2013 but […]

In Madison, honoring Nelson Mandela

July 18, 2018 by Kelly April Tyrrell

The dome of the Southern African Large Telescope against a blue sky — Hello from Day 8! After several days of immersing ourselves in anthropology with UW Professor Travis Pickering, his undergraduate field school students and his South African collaborators, on Sunday, July 16, Justin, Jeff and I gathered our belongings, ate a quick breakfast at our hotel in Johannesburg, and headed to […]

From anthropology to astronomy, stories from the road in South ...

July 19, 2017 by Kelly April Tyrrell

A team of three from University Communications at UW–Madison – videographer Justin Bomberg, photographer Jeff Miller, and me, science writer Kelly April Tyrrell – have traveled 8,779 miles from Madison, Wisconsin to Johannesburg, South Africa in order help tell important UW-focused stories about origins: from the origins of life on Earth, […]

Adventures in South Africa to follow ‘origins’ stories

July 12, 2017 by Kelly April Tyrrell

On Friday, June 16, from 10 am until 3 pm, the UW–Madison Laboratory of Wisconsin Archaeology will host a special public day at Aztalan State Park in Jefferson County, in a showcase of the archaeological artifacts, current excavation work and rich cultural history that can be found at this important prehistoric site in southeastern […]

Public Day at Aztalan State Park offers a glimpse into ...

June 14, 2017 by Mason Muerhoff

It was late in the first millennium (AD). The site, a grassy expanse along the banks of the Crawfish River. A small group of Late Woodland peoples, native to Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, lived off of the land here and built a sense of community alongside migrants from Cahokia. […]

Excavating Aztalan: Ancient people, modern story

June 7, 2016 by Kelly April Tyrrell

Mastodon skull on cart — Many of Wisconsin’s most charismatic fossils are of Ice Age megafauna. The Boaz mastodon is Exhibit A. On display at the UW-Madison Geology Museum since 1915, the elephant like mastodon was recently discovered to be a composite of fossil material collected not only at Boaz, a sleepy town just off […]

A Legacy of Pleistocene Megafauna

June 8, 2015 by trdevitt

impressed clay seal and scale — Like any area of research — but more than most — archaeology lends itself to public interpretation in ways that can take a discrete discovery well beyond what the data actually show. There are lots of reasons for this, but it is probably the romance of digging up the past […]

Do clay seals hint at Biblical era post office?

February 10, 2015 by trdevitt