How A Facebook Group Became A Hub For Identifying, Preserving Wisconsin Historic Artifacts

In 2016, an archivist from Wisconsin digging through old newspapers came across an article in the Stevens Point Daily Journal from the 1930s, identifying a location where a man’s remains had been found as a Native American burial ground.  The archivist posted the information to a Facebook group devoted to old and ancient artifacts that have been found across the state called Wisconsin Archeological Artifacts. The group’s founder Ryan Howell, an archeologist himself, saw the post and passed the information along to a professor at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The result was the rediscovery of a long-forgotten burial site, an unexpected find that soon took on a life of its own, Howell said. Soon after, historians and Native Americans formed a committee to develop plans for a monument to memorialize the dead.  “That was all from that page — just people connecting over the internet and stories getting passed down…from an amateur archivist to an archeologist to another archeologist to a Native American. And now it’s leading to the protection and preservation of a burial ground,” Howell said. That sort of response is an example of how the group has evolved into a community devoted to education and awareness of the land’s historic people and artifacts since it first launched in 2014.  » Read More