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Excavation sturgeon bones Former UWL archaeology student Matt Hill (now Associate Professor at Iowa State University) excavating the parasphenoid and a few other dorsal cranial bones of a lake sturgeon from a refuse pit at the Pammel Creek site in the late 1980s.  Fish were an important food source and were harvested throughout the summer.  This sturgeon has an estimated live weight of 50 pounds.  Lake sturgeon would have been easiest to harvest in the spring during spawning.  The Pammel Creek site (located south of La Crosse, Wisconsin) was occupied during the Fifteenth century, A.D. by a culture we now call Oneota.