13 Year Old  Donald  Baldwin who discovered the Copper Culture Burial ground in June 1952.

Oconto County Reporter Reuben LaFave, Oconto County Archaeologist, Police Chief Henry Toole Oconto, and George E. Hall, President of the Oconto County Historical Society inspecting relics at the Old Indian Burial Grounds a short time after the discovery was made.

Their burial complex consisted of interment in a cemetery (no mounds) and the employment of the bundle burial method as most common, but partial cremation was also practiced. Their type of implements indicate an economy based on  hunting and fishing.

With this rather meager picture of Old Copper culture the Oconto Site was approached. One chief objective was to obtain enough charred wood for a Carbon 14 analysis as to accurately date this group. We were also interested in getting information on house type, ground-stone work, and in obtaining data which could be compared with Osceola in terms of burial practices, and types of copper and  chipped-stone artifacts.
 

Diagram of the archaeological dig site

General View of Site

The site lies within the western limits of the city of Oconto with the burial area about 150 yards north of the Oconto River. Specifically it is within Part 4 of Government Lot 8, Section 24 of Oconto Township, and is now the property of the Oconto Historical Society. The area was formerly a fairly level one1, but commercial gravel operations during the 1920's removed and disturbed a large area and there is little doubt that a considerable portion of the burial site was destroyed in the process. It is probable that the burial site originally enclosed an area at least 100 feet square. There is no indication of mounds. Beneath the eight-inch topsoil lie several feet of Plainfield fine sand, underlain by gravel.
 
 

They had been dug into the gravel, the burials laid-in and covered with sand, so the pits were discernible by the gravel outline when approached from above. The cremation pits appeared as roughly circular when seen from above,  basin-shaped in cross-section, and in instances did not penetrate into the gravel layer. Each pH was given a feature number.

They were basin-shaped in vertical cross-section and from one to two feet in depth. Most were "custom dug." just large enough to  house the individual or individuals interred. Of the twenty-one burial pits, one contained nothing, eleven contained a single individual, seven contained two  individuals, one contained three, and one contained five. A variety of burial  positions were sometimes found to occur in a single pit. In Feature 7, for example,  there were three bundle burials, one partially flexed, and one extended. In the two instances in which the secondary burials occurred in the same pit with primary ones, the secondary burials were above the primaries. Apparently the individuals who died in the winter were kept until the spring thaw made digging possible. Then the recently dead were interred in the flesh and the bones of those  left over from the winter were thrown on top as secondary burials. In eight of the pits one or more artifacts were found, but there was no consistent or significant  position of artifacts in relation to the skeleton.

(Out of respect for the Ancestors, photographs of their burial excavations have been removed). Feature 5  Double burial in pit showing whistle at back of head of child.

The bone whistle, however, lay at the back of the head of the child. (See Webb, 1950, p. 291, for a similar occurrence.) Thirteen of the pits were  orientated with the longitudinal axis running in a roughly north-south direction, but there seems to be no significance to it, as some had an east-west orientation and others fell somewhere in between. Furthermore, there seemed to be no pattern as to how the individuals were faced. A total of seven cremation pits were discovered plus one reported by the LaFave excavation. They were roughly circular as seen from above, and basin-shaped in vertical cross-section. Their diameters ranged from two to four
 

 

Method	Number of Individuals
	certain        probable
Extended	9 (2 of these were prone positions)
Partially flexed	4                      3
Fully flexed	3                      1
Bundle	12
Partial cremation	8 pits (number of individuals un-known)
(Unidentified)	5
Total	45 individuals

 

 Physical type:
 A study of the skeletal material has yet to be made, but it is readily apparent that they were a fairly robust group, of average stature for Wisconsin Indians, but  with well-developed musculature. The state of bone preservation ranged from fair to very poor.
 
 

AWLS

FOUR CRESCENTS

THREE CLASPS (bottom)

BRACELET

PIECE OF SPIRAL-COILED TUBING (top)

SPATULA (right), FISHHOOK, RIVET (left bottom), and 4 UNIFENTIFIED PIECES

The types are listed as follows:
             Seven awls , four crescents, three clasps, and one each of the following: spear-point with broken tang, fishhook, bracelet, section of spirally-coiled tubing, rivet, and spatula.

There were also four  small unidentified pieces.

           As with Osceola, awls were the most numerous type of artifact, but the Oconto specimens were of smaller size.

           Crescents were more numerous at Oconto, but in contrast with Osceola no spuds  were found and only one socketed-tang spear-point. At both sites utilitarian products were much more numerous that the ornamental.

Somewhat surprising, in contrast to Osceola, was the paucity of chipped-stone implements. A total of seven such artifacts were found, with only three being associated with burials. Of the remaining four, one, a straight-stemmed point fragment, occurred in the humus layer and could represent a different culture, one was found in a disturbed area and stratigraphy could not be determined, and two were near the top of the sand layer. All were projectile points with the exception of one, a triangular scraper found with a burial. Of the two points found with burials one was triangular in basic shape with the side notches, but the sides of the blade appear to be re-chipped; the other was ovoid with a straight base and  side notches. The latter was the nearest in type to the Osceola type, but none were characteristic Osceola points. Besides the variation in type, the Oconto  points were smaller, none being over two inches in length. Like Osceola, however, the technique of primary flaking with secondary retouching along the edges was employed.

Bone:
 

WHISTLE

AWL

Two bone artifacts were found, the first bone Implements to be associated with the Old Copper complex thus far. The most interesting was a fine specimen of a whistle made from a leg bone of a swan. It was six inches long with a rectangular opening near the center, and three rows of short, incised lines running the full length as decoration. The second specimen was a awl 2  5/8 inches in length and made from a portion of a fish jaw.
 
 
 

ANTLER TIPS

 
 
 
 Antler:

Two well-preserved antler tips, suitable for use as flaking tools although the polished ends gave no indication of such use, were found together in a burial bit. A third specimen, a charred short end-section occurred in a concentration of charred wood.
 
 
 
 

 

POND SNAIL BEADS

 
 
 

Shell: 

A series of 14 pond snail (Campeloma decisum) beads plus fragments of several more were found with a burial before our arrival. They were reported as occurring at the wrist of the skeleton and apparently 1/8 inches in diameter near the center with the stringing presumbably done through this hole and the natural aperture.
 
 
 
 

Portions of two unworked shells were also found in a burial pit. One was a fresh-water clam {Unio ellipsis), the nearest present source of which is the Mississippi River. The second was part of the shoulder of a large lightning shell, a type of whelk (Fulgar perversus) the present distribution of which is the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Florida. It was from a shell originally about a foot  in length, and its importance lies in its indication of trade or contact with a region over a thousand miles away.
             Hematite:
Two lumps of iron ore were found near the head of the extended child burial, with which the bone whistle was found. A rounded facet, apparently of natural origin, appears on the smaller of the two.

           Pottery:
No pottery was found. 

           Animal Remains:
 Near the head of an extended burial in a pit, Feature 4, were found a number of small bones. They were indentified as parts of turtle and a duck (unidentified asto species but about the size of a mallard).

To a considerable extent it is merely the absence of a trait, such as bone work for Osceola, that creates the difference, and it is very possible that what we have here are inadequate inventories of the culture at both places. Future excavation might fill in these gaps to the extent that such negative variations will cancel out. The variations apparent at this point could be theoretically accounted for on either special or temporal grounds, or both. Considering the special approach the two sites are at opposite ends of the state some 210 miles apart as the crow flies. If contact were lacking, the variation could easily occur within a relatively short period of time. As to a temporal difference, there is no evidence to indicate either that one is older than the other, or that they were contemporaneous. It might be noted that Oconto is near the heart of the Old Copper center as indicated by distributional studies based on surface finds (Wittry, 1951, pp. 14, 18) while Osceola exists as a lonely outpost, but it is impossible at this point to determine  which group was the earlier.

Concerning the problem of dating, there was nothing at either site to dispute the theory that Old Copper represents an archaic horizon in Wisconsin, and that these were the earliest Indians to occupy the site. The Oconto site, in fact, bolsters this theory because of such evidence as the absence of pottery and the bone whistle of a type found in archaic sites outside the state (see Ritchie, 1944, p. 294, and Webb,  1946, p. 305). As for more precise dating, enough charred wood was obtained at Oconto for a carbon 14 analysis and it is hoped that the forthcoming analysis will  provide the answer to the problem of the age of the Old Copper culture in Wisconsin.