Paleopathology and Nutritional Health at the Nitschke Effigy Site Dodge County, Wisconsin

by Melissa Bradley
Abstract of Masters Thesis
Department of Anthropology 
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
December 2005

The focus of this thesis is to provide evidence for dietary information for the Late Woodland builders of effigy mounds from a site in Dodge County, Wisconsin. The effigy mound skeletal samples from the Nitschke Mound site in Dodge County, excavated by W.C. McKern in 1928, were examined for the paleopathological signs of a dependency on maize agriculture in order to determine the subsistence strategy of the people who were buried in effigy mounds in this section of southeastern Wisconsin. Although the skeletal remains have been inventoried previously for Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act purposes (Ruth 1997), they have not been examined in depth.

Paleopathological anomalies, such as dental caries, linear enamel hypoplasia, porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, Harris lines, and arthritis should appear in significant amounts if the population at Nitschke was dependant on maize as agriculturalists. In this study, paleopathologies related to the shift to maize agriculture were looked for while examining the Nitschke site remains at the Milwaukee Public Museum. A complicating factor in this study is that the Nitschke mound builders were almost definitely collecting and consuming wild rice (Zizania aquatica). Wild rice may have provided people at Nitschke with a nutritious dietary staple, preventing the typical pathological signs of maize horticulture on the skeleton.

The results of the study included 1.) a review of the osteological data and conclusions made during the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act inventory at the Milwaukee Public Museum; 2). the identification of relatively small levels of pathologies on the Nitschke skeletal remains; 3.) an approximate determination of the level of starchy plant foods in the subsistence strategies of the people buried at Nitschke; and 4.) an intersite comparison of the Nitschke population to other forager and agriculturalist groups.