Old surveyor’s maps overlaid with current satellite imagery helped David Pacifico pinpoint the locations where buildings of 19th century farms used to stand in what is now the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee County Archaeology Project.
“What’s really cool about them is they show property lines. They show ownership names, and they have dots where the buildings were,” Pacifico said. “That’s a big clue as to what was there beforehand. And when you have names, you can start asking, who are these people? You can find records of them and start chasing the trail a bit.” He overlaid the historical maps with modern satellite imagery and found an approximate location for certain buildings, like the De Swarte barn. Then he approached Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, asking to explore. He and the center’s director of conservation, Marc White, stumbled upon a pit relating to the farm house almost immediately when they began to search, and they found the remains of a barn in March of 2018 during a public lecture and hike at the Audubon Center. Reporter Susan Bence from the WUWM Radio Station, who was on the hike, captured and broadcast the barn discovery. “Nobody at the Nature Center knew of this barn foundation,” Pacifico said. “They just didn’t know to look for it. There’s oftentimes lots of stuff in plain view that’s a clue, the tip of the proverbial iceberg.” Now Pacifico needed help to excavate his discovery. Luckily, Schlitz Audubon had a reliable membership network of people who were eager to get down in the dirt. Almost 100 attended an interest meeting when White asked for volunteers to participate in this archaeological dig. The dig was set for November 2018. A veritable army showed up – everyone from UWM graduate students who work as archaeologists in the university’s Cultural Resource Management program to high school anthropology students to local retirees. “We had a lot of people come and they excavated in the worst conditions I think anyone has ever excavated in. It was the first weekend in November and we had a snowstorm,” Pacifico recalled with a laugh. The mud still hasn’t been entirely scraped from his boots, he added.
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