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Woodland Pottery – Maples Mills Even fragments of pottery can reveal cultural connections across space and time. These grit-tempered rim sherds were unearthed during excavations in the Sand Lake area near Onalaska, Wisconsin, in 2008. They all belong to the same Terminal Late Woodland Maples Mills vessel, dated to around AD 1000. This ceramic type designation was based on the vessel’s cord-roughened surface with complex cord impressions and its castellated rim top, with fairly regular grooves or spaces that resemble a castle wall. The sherds represent the first known Maples Mills castellated vessel found in the La Crosse area. The Maples Mills type is tied to central Illinois around AD 800 (Esarey 2000), but examples of the type also come from northeast Iowa at a site dating from around AD 1000 to 1050. Similar pottery with Middle Mississippian connections has been found in far southwest Wisconsin in contexts dating to AD 1100–1150 (Stoltman and Christensen 2000). The Maples Mills pottery fits with evidence of Middle Mississippian contacts, such as ceramics and feasting activity, elsewhere in the Sand Lake area as well.

Esary, Duane
2000    The Late Woodland Maples Mills and Mossville Phase Sequence in the Central Illinois River Valley. In Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation across the Midcontinent, edited by Thomas E. Emerson, Dale L. McElrath, and Andrew C. Fortier, pp. 387–410. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

Stoltman, James and Ralph Christensen
2000    The Late Woodland Stage in the Driftless Area of the Upper Mississippi Valley. In Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation Across the Midcontinent, edited by Thomas Emerson, Dale McElrath, and Andrew Fortier, pp. 494–524. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.