A Collaborative Future:
Changes and Trends in Museum Practice

Molli A. Pauliot, M.S.W., M.A.
PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Friday, February 23 2024 @ 3:30 pm, Sabin Hall G-90, UW-Milwaukee

Molli Pauliot is a doctoral candidate at UW-Madison in the Department of Anthropology. Ms. Pauliot is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Buffalo clan. She has professional experience on collaborative projects with tribal, county, state, and federal officials addressing critical social needs in the state of Wisconsin. Ms. Pauliot’s research interests within anthropology include Native American populations in the Great Lakes Region, material culture, Native American art, museum anthropology, indigenous resilience, climate change, and United States American Indian policy. Ms. Pauliot has a PhD minor in art, and she is an accomplished designer and bead worker.

Ms. Pauliot holds a BA in Sociology with a Human Services emphasis with a Psychology minor coursework in drug and alcohol counseling from Viterbo College, La Crosse Wisconsin. She holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with an emphasis in child welfare. At UW-Madison, she has completed a graduate certificate in Material Culture and a Masters of Anthropology.

Come join us for our first-ever virtual colloquium presented by Dr. Patricia B. Richards on October 9th at 2:30 PM via Zoom!

A Retrospective: Twenty-Eight Years of the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project

From 1878 through 1974 Milwaukee County utilized four locations on the Milwaukee County Grounds in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin for the burial over 10,000 individuals, primarily paupers, the institutionalized, and the unidentified. Two archaeological excavations in 1991-1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from one of those cemetery locations. Curated by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Archaeological Research Laboratory, the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) individuals, artifacts, and associated archives represent one of the largest, if not the largest, archaeologically recovered, permanently curated skeletal collections in the United States. In addition to generating a substantial osteological data set, this project offers a model for crossing boundaries between cultural resource management, academic research, and social engagement at a time when the exhumation of the United States’ forgotten historic cemeteries has become increasingly common. As a project focused on a late 19th and early 20th century cemetery, the MCPFCP is situated not only within the history of historical archaeological research but is also influenced by the recent bioarchaeological trend of engaging with social theory to examine social identity and lived social experience. This talk summarizes the project to date within the overarching goal of returning a voice and an identity to individuals robbed of both by burial in the MCPFC.

Patricia Richards

Dr. Patricia B. Richards is a senior scientist in the Anthropology Department at UWM. She is also a Principal Investigator for UWM-CRM and has conducted cultural resource studies in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois since 1973. Her specialties include mortuary analysis and historic period archaeology in the Great Lakes region. She has served as project director of the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project since the collection was permanently moved to UWM in 2008 and directed the original excavations in 1990s.

How to Attend Meeting:

This meeting will take place virtually via the web conferencing app, Zoom. Please follow the instructions below to attend on the day and time of the colloquium. Thank you.

Join Zoom Meeting at 2:30 PM on October 9th.

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Sunday, September 30, 3 PM, Sabin Hall G90

Abstract

Coinciding with the dawn of the Middle Mississippian Culture at the ancient city of Cahokia nearly 1,000 years ago, a group canoed over 500 miles up the Mississippi River to establish a settlement at Trempealeau, Wisconsin. Antiquarian records alluded to distinct platform mounds and exotic ceramics, but only recently has the age, extent, and purpose of Trempealeau’s very early Mississippian expression been thoroughly explored. Ongoing excavations since 2010 have revealed that the Cahokians carried ceramic vessels and a variety of flint stones from their homeland along with their architecture and religion to this far-flung yet short-lived outpost; and why they came to Trempealeau.

Bio

Robert “Ernie” Boszhardt is a Wisconsin archaeologist with over 40 years of experience. His research has focused on the unglaciated Driftless Area of western Wisconsin where he has studied and written extensively about nearly all aspects of that region’s archaeological heritage, including Paleoindian, Hopewell, Effigy Mounds, Oneota, rock art, and most recently Middle Mississippian. He currently is co-owner of Driftless Pathways LLC. with his wife Danielle Benden who together direct the Trempealeau Archaeology Project.

Boszhardt-authored books on the Trempealeau research and regional rock art will be available for purchase and signing at the talk.

Lecture Program