A soil-geomorphic analysis of the midden deposits at the Aztalan site, Wisconsin

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Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is threefold: first, to develop a framework for the geoarchaeological analysis of aggregated village sites common in the Woodland and Mississippian periods in the eastern United States; second, to illustrate how both primary and secondary source materials can be used in combination to support or generate a hypothesis or to infer environmental conditions at a site; and third, to present a preliminary analysis of an archaeological deposit, a midden, from Aztalan, a Late Woodland-Mississippian site in southern Wisconsin (Figs. 1 and 2). Our analytical framework was developed for the investigations at Aztalan, but is applicable to other Mississippian period village sites as the structure and activities on the sites are similar even though the local géomorphologie settings differ. For example, Mississippian sites have many structural components in common such as mounds surrounding a plaza, palisades, aggregated housing and associated middens, and agricultural fields. Construction and maintenance of these features result in a disturbed landscape surface, which potentially enhances erosion on the site, as well as sedimentation on and around the site. The following analytical framework is designed to aid in the interpretation of the archaeological deposits that result from ground-disturbing activities. The framework has three components: (1) geomorphological context, (2) archaeological context, and (3) geoarchaeological analysis; and is a modification of the contextual approaches proposed by Butzer (1982), Gladfelter (1977), and Stein and Farrand (1985). Our conceptual framework was stimulated by their work. The geomorphic context is the site's landscape setting, including the deposits

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