Ongoing Exhibitions

Dan Joyce:
Hi, I’m Dan Joyce, Director and Archaeologist at the Kenosha Public Museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin, located on Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Today we’re going to talk about some of the mammoths discovered in Kenosha County that show evidence of interaction with people at the end of the Ice Age. In total, we’ll discuss one mastodon and three mammoths. We’ll look at the evidence we have for human activity and some of the things we still don’t know.

We’ll start with the Mud Lake Mammoth, the second Ice Age animal discovered in Kenosha County. In the early 1930s, workers dug a drainage ditch through a marsh so the land could be used for cattle grazing. During the excavation, they uncovered the front leg of a juvenile mammoth.

The bones were eventually placed in the Kenosha History Center. In the 1990s, amateur archaeologist Dave Waison and I examined the bones and discovered cut marks made by stone tools.

These marks show where people used wedges and tools to separate bones while butchering the animal. This is strong evidence that people processed the mammoth—whether they hunted it or scavenged it after it died.

Additional cut marks appear across several bones in the foot. Mammoths stood on their toes and had a large fat pad beneath the foot supported by a massive tendon. To butcher the foot, people would have had to cut through this tendon, likely to reach the fat pad as a food source.

In 2004, the Kenosha Public Museum partnered with the Center for the Study of the First Americans to return to Mud Lake and try to locate the original discovery site.

That year was unusually dry, which helped us excavate in what is normally a cattail marsh. We could still see the drainage ditch dug in 1936, which helped us narrow down the search area.

Even so, finding the original location was like searching for a needle in a haystack. We dug multiple trenches and discovered preserved spruce wood that had not grown in this region for about 12,000 years. Radiocarbon dating confirmed its age.

Although we did not find additional mammoth bones, we did uncover a mastodon tooth from another Ice Age animal.

The Fenske Mastodon is the earliest Ice Age discovery known from Kenosha County. A railroad crew discovered it in 1919 about six miles from the Kenosha Public Museum.

They uncovered a large femur, the upper rear leg bone. Mastodon bones tend to be thick and heavy, while mammoth bones are longer and slimmer, making it possible to distinguish between the two species.

In the late 1990s, we attempted to locate the original site using geophysical techniques such as electrical resistivity and electromagnetic surveys. Unfortunately, railroad debris buried in the area interfered with the readings.

However, the bone itself shows butchering marks. Specialists who study these marks believe the Mud Lake and Fenske animals were likely scavenged rather than freshly hunted.

The Schaefer site is one of the most significant Ice Age discoveries in North America.

In 1964, farmer Frank Schaefer was installing drainage tile in a wet field when the machine struck something extremely large. The digging wheel cut through the tusk and femur of a mammoth.

Some bones were recovered and given to the Kenosha Public Museum. Amateur archaeologist Phil Sander also created a detailed map of the site.

In 1992, Dave Waison and I used that map to relocate the area and begin excavations. Within three days, we discovered the first bone, confirming we had found the site.

Over two seasons, we excavated approximately 60 cubic meters of soil and uncovered a large concentration of mammoth bones.

The mammoth appears to have been deposited in shallow water or quickly submerged by a glacial lake. Many mammoth kill sites across North America are found in shallow water environments.

Water helps preserve bones, which may explain why these remains survived for thousands of years.

At the site, we found not only bones but also preserved spruce wood. Scientists conducted 33 radiocarbon tests on the bones and wood. All results showed the mammoth was killed about 14,500 years ago.

This makes the Schaefer site the oldest known mammoth kill site in North America.

The bones were scattered and disarticulated, indicating extensive butchering. Many bones were not in their natural positions.

For example, the two halves of the pelvis were found far apart, and the skull and jaw were separated. Stone tool flakes were also discovered beneath the pelvis, providing strong evidence that people butchered the animal at this location.

Another mammoth site in Kenosha County, known as the Hebior Mammoth, is located about three-quarters of a mile from the Schaefer site.

This animal was a fully mature 40-year-old male and also shows evidence of butchering. Four stone tools were discovered at the site, and the mammoth dates to roughly the same period—about 14,500 years ago.

These discoveries demonstrate that humans were interacting with mammoths in this region much earlier than previously believed.

Researchers reconstructed the butchering process using cut marks, bone positions, and comparisons with other mammoth sites.

The front legs were likely removed first because mammoths had large muscles there to support their massive skulls. Cut marks on the inside of bones also suggest that people entered the body cavity to remove internal organs.

The murals and exhibits at the Kenosha Public Museum are based on scientific research. The plants, animals, and landscapes depicted are reconstructed using geological, paleontological, and pollen studies.

These reconstructions help us better understand what this region looked like at the end of the Ice Age.

Visit the Kenosha Public Museum to learn more about these incredible discoveries.