The city of Monona had marked off suspected effigy mounds on the San Damiano property in 2021. A new report says there are likely from construction of the Frank Allis house and a former tennis court.
Maps of previously identified effigy mounds, with the current San Damiano property highlighted. Researchers determined that none of the mapped mounds were within the property. (Screenshot from Phase One report)
The city of Monona had marked off suspected effigy mounds on the San Damiano property in 2021. A new report says there are likely from construction of the Frank Allis house and a former tennis court.
Archaeologists commissioned by the city of Monona found no evidence of Native American mounds or human burial sites on the San Damiano property, according to their report.
The authors did not recommend any restrictions in public access to any part of the property, but noted they could not say definitively that burial sites or other archaeological artifacts are not present. An archaeologist had identified mounds in the area in the 19th century, but the report concluded they were not within the San Damiano site.
“Without intensive testing of the property using shovel-tests for sampling the area it cannot be determined if and where there are archaeological remains located on the San Damiano Property,” the report states.
The researchers did not conduct any digging on the property. Initial plans to use ground penetrating radar were deemed “not productive” due to the ground conditions.
The results come as the city undertakes a planning process to determine future uses for the site, which it purchased last year. The study was commissioned as part of an initial survey of the property’s existing conditions.
City leaders tasked with plotting the way forward for Monona’s San Damiano property last week hosted a public information meeting presenting t…
Phase One Archaeological Services, the Madison-based consulting firm hired by the city, reviewed historical documentation about San Damiano and its surroundings and inspected the site itself alongside William Quackenbush, a tribal historic preservation officer with the Ho-Chunk Nation.
San Damiano is believed to have hosted encampments of indigenous people, including ancestors of the Ho-Chunk Nation, long before the arrival of Europeans in the region. The property sits within the boundaries of a larger human burial site identified in 1850 by archaeologist Increase Lapham.
Lapham mapped mound structures in that burial site, known as the Monona Drive mound group, though they were already fading due to farming in the area. By the 1920s, many of those mounds were destroyed, and studies of the site since 1979 have been unable to identify any mounds, according to the report’s literature review.
By fitting a set of historical maps to more modern ones, the researchers concluded that none of the mounds mapped by Lapham were located in what is now the San Damiano property.
“There was no evidence that there were ever mounds inside the actual park area, only somewhere in the general area of the eastern lake shore,” John Hodgson, the project’s principal investigator, wrote in an email.
Maps of previously identified effigy mounds, with the current San Damiano property highlighted. Researchers determined that none of the mapped mounds were within the property. (Screenshot from Phase One report)
The report concluded that the small hills visible near the Frank Allis house at San Damiano probably came from leveling and grading for the house or a tennis court.
“Any mound-like features that are currently visible on the surface are highly unlikely to be Native American mounds,” the authors wrote.
Mayor Mary O’Connor told the Herald-Independent she was not surprised by the study results but was glad to have investigated the possibility of effigy mounds on the property.
“I don’t think there was anything real startling here,” she said. “I think we know that there are most likely Native American artifacts there, because Ho-Chunk people and their predecessors lived on the land for thousands of years. But we wanted to make sure there are no existing mounds, and there are not.”
Any future construction on the site will have an archaeologist on call in the event that artifacts are discovered, O’Connor added. Under federal and state law, if grave markers or human remains are found, any activity in the area must stop until the site can be investigated.
Planning for the future of the site continues, as the city has hired engineering consultant MSA Professional Services to assist in the design process.
For more than four decades, Reverend John Sheild has tended to San Damiano’s vegetable garden. Now, he's looking forward to its future.
In October, the city’s San Damiano Project Steering Committee hosted a public input session and presented the results of a public survey on possible uses for the property. The committee is now working with MSA to define three possible concepts for the site.
The committee will host another public meeting to discuss those concepts when they are ready, likely in March or April, O’Connor said.
