About

Sissel Schroeder is the Bradshaw Knight Professor of Environmental Humanities at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She earned her Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and joined the UW-Madison faculty in 2000. Her research encompasses archaeological and historical ecology, with a focus on emerging sociopolitical complexity among ancient societies in the midcontinental and southeastern United States. She investigates ancient resource productivity, reconstructs anthropogenic landscapes, and conducts microhistorical studies of households, architecture, and built landscapes as expressions of social order, integrating cosmological and vernacular traditions of design and construction. Additionally, Schroeder explores the history of archaeology in the United States during the early 20th century, analyzing how archaeological evidence was used to establish cultural narratives. Her fieldwork and collections-based analyses are conducted at sites including western Kentucky, Cahokia and the American Bottom in Illinois, and southern Wisconsin. She teaches a broad range of courses, from large lectures on world prehistory and archaeological methods to small seminars on landscapes, material culture, and archaeological theory, as well as a summer field course on excavation techniques.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• Geography
• History
• Geology
• Sociology

Selected publications

• Cultural-Environmental Systems and the Archaeology of Climate Change and Social Complexity: Midwest and Southeast United States

  Annual Review of Anthropology · 2024-10-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The investigation of dynamic fully integrated cultural-environmental systems is one grand challenge facing archaeologists in this century. In the Midwest and Southeast United States, archaeologists recently increased their study of Mississippian social systems (ca. AD 1000–1600) in relationship to paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental data. Significant differences in chronological control between archaeological chronologies and paleoenvironmental records pose challenges to the study of cultural-environmental systems in this region and often result in equifinal results. Three major lines of paleoenvironmental records are reviewed: bald cypress tree-ring records, the Living Blended Drought Atlas (LBDA), and lake-bottom sediment cores. The strongest approaches include local and regional multiproxy environmental records from the same location as a well-investigated archaeological site(s) or region(s). In the rare case where the cores also encode a regional population history, it may be possible to develop stronger inferences that consider variation within and between communities and their vulnerability to climate change and environmental catastrophes.

  PublisherDOI

• Revisiting Aztalan:

  Oxbow Books · 2023-02-23

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community. Erin S. Nelson. 2019. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. xv + 186 pp. $80.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-68340-112-4.

  American Antiquity · 2023-03-31

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community. Erin S. Nelson. 2019. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. xv + 186 pp. $80.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-68340-112-4. - Volume 88 Issue 3

  PublisherDOI

• Regional Migration and Cahokian Population Change in the Context of Climate Change and Hydrological Events

  2022-01-01 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Partial Charred Wooden Bowl From Aztalan (47JE1), Wisconsin

  Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology · 2020-07-15 · 3 citations

  article

  Fragments of a charred wooden bowl were recovered from Aztalan during excavations by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (SHSW) in 1964. Recent advances in analytical methods facilitated a multidimensional study of these fragments. Radiocarbon-dated to cal AD 994–1154 and found in association with Late Woodland, Mississippian, and hybrid forms of ceramics, the bowl augments our understanding of perishable technologies in these cultural contexts. 3-D models of the fragments allow for a virtual reconstruction of a portion of the bowl, which was carved from a solid piece of ash. Strontium isotope analysis of the wood indicates that the bowl was manufactured from wood locally available to the people at Aztalan.

  PublisherDOI

• Reply to Skousen and Aiuvalasit: On the Primacy of Archaeological Data

  American Antiquity · 2020-12-30 · 2 citations

  article

  Skousen and Aiuvalasit critique our article on the post-Mississippian occupation of the Horseshoe Lake watershed (White et al. 2020) along two lines: (1) that our findings are not supported due to a lack of archaeological evidence, and (2) that we do not consider alternative hypotheses in explaining the lake's fecal stanol record. We first respond to the matter of fecal stanol deposition in Horseshoe Lake and then address the larger issue, the primacy of archaeological data in interpreting the past.

  PublisherDOI

• A Partial Charred Wooden Bowl From Aztalan (47JE1), Wisconsin

  Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology · 2020-10-01

  article

  Abstract Fragments of a charred wooden bowl were recovered from Aztalan during excavations by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (SHSW) in 1964. Recent advances in analytical methods facilitated a multidimensional study of these fragments. Radiocarbon-dated to cal AD 994–1154 and found in association with Late Woodland, Mississippian, and hybrid forms of ceramics, the bowl augments our understanding of perishable technologies in these cultural contexts. 3-D models of the fragments allow for a virtual reconstruction of a portion of the bowl, which was carved from a solid piece of ash. Strontium isotope analysis of the wood indicates that the bowl was manufactured from wood locally available to the people at Aztalan.

  PublisherDOI

• After Cahokia: Indigenous Repopulation and Depopulation of the Horseshoe Lake Watershed AD 1400–1900

  American Antiquity · 2020-01-24 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  The occupation history of the Cahokia archaeological complex (ca. AD 1050–1400) has received significant academic attention for decades, but the subsequent repopulation of the region by indigenous peoples is poorly understood. This study presents demographic trends from a fecal stanol population reconstruction of Horseshoe Lake, Illinois, along with information from archaeological, historical, and environmental sources to provide an interpretation of post-Mississippian population change in the Cahokia region. Fecal stanol data indicate that the Cahokia region reached a population minimum by approximately AD 1400, regional population had rebounded by AD 1500, a population maximum was reached by AD 1650, and population declined again by AD 1700. The indigenous repopulation of the area coincides with environmental changes conducive to maize-based agriculture and bison-hunting subsistence practices of the Illinois Confederation. The subsequent regional depopulation corresponds to a complicated period of warfare, epidemic disease, Christianization, population movement, and environmental change in the eighteenth century. The recognition of a post-Mississippian indigenous population helps shape a narrative of Native American persistence over Native American disappearance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fecal stanols show simultaneous flooding and seasonal precipitation change correlate with Cahokia’s population decline

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2019-02-25 · 40 citations

  articleOpen access

  A number of competing hypotheses, including hydroclimatic variations, environmental degradation and disturbance, and sociopolitical disintegration, have emerged to explain the dissolution of Cahokia, the largest prehistoric population center in the United States. Because it is likely that Cahokia's decline was precipitated by multiple factors, some environmental and some societal, a robust understanding of this phenomenon will require multiple lines of evidence along with a refined chronology. Here, we use fecal stanol data from Horseshoe Lake, Illinois, as a population proxy for Cahokia and the broader Horseshoe Lake watershed. We directly compare the fecal stanol data with oxygen stable-isotope and paleoenvironmental data from the same sediment cores to evaluate the role of flooding, drought, and environmental degradation in Cahokia's demographic decline and sociopolitical reorganization. We find that Mississippi River flooding and warm season droughts detrimental to agriculture occurred circa (ca.) 1150 CE and possibly generated significant stress for Cahokia's inhabitants. Our findings implicate climate change during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly to Little Ice Age transition as an important component of population and sociopolitical transformations at Cahokia, and demonstrate how climate transitions can simultaneously influence multiple environmental processes to produce significant challenges to society.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Migration, Population Change, and Climate at Cahokia

  The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Samuel E. Muñoz

  NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center

  11 shared

• A.J. White

  California State University, Long Beach

  7 shared

• Lora Stevens

  6 shared

• Lynne Goldstein

  3 shared

• Varenka Lorenzi

  3 shared

• Christopher C. Widga

  East Tennessee State University

  2 shared

• John W. Williams

  2 shared

• Emilia Oddo

  1 shared