![\"Patricia](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2016\/03\/remains_3-1.jpg\")
The program hires scientists and archaeologists, in addition to 51ÁÔÆæ graduate and undergraduate students, to work the sites and conduct research. Many of those students go on to earn graduate degrees at 51ÁÔÆæ or work for other cultural resource management organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d been working for CRM more or less consistently for the last two or three years,\u201d said doctoral student Marcus Schulenburg, a field tech for the program. \u201cI was very excited for a chance to be a part of it, to work on-site and get experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schulenburg was among the crew excavating Gruenhagen Cemetery, and he and his colleagues found a wealth of information hidden in the bones. Remember the German immigrant? He was probably middle-aged and malnourished. His spine was compressed, which hints at a life of hard labor and back pain.<\/p>\n
Bone analysis typically determines the approximate age of an individual, as well as gender and any obvious traumas or pathologies that might give hints as to his or her lifestyle. Such information from any burial site provides insight into the lives of the state\u2019s early settlers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learn a lot about lifeways, patterns of disease, the effects of poverty on particular populations, those kinds of things,\u201d Richards said.<\/p>\n
After analysis, the Wisconsin Historical Society determines whether the bones will be reinterred. If not, they are laid to rest in boxes that line the sliding shelves in the basement of Sabin Hall, where 51ÁÔÆæ-CRM\u2019s \u201carchive\u201d is housed.<\/p>\n
Upstairs, 51ÁÔÆæ-CRM\u2019s storage rooms are lined with bottles from a 19th-century Irish homestead in Waupaca County and artifacts from other sites. In a laboratory, a scientist analyzes the chemical compounds in a clay pot. Tables are blanketed in arrowheads dating to 100 B.C., recovered during a reconstruction of Highway 57 in Door County.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things about Wisconsin in the prehistoric period was that there were people moving through here, coming from the south, coming from the north down the Mackinac Straits through the Great Lakes. We get a lot of odd pottery, and one of the things that we try to determine is where it came from,\u201d said John Richards, 51ÁÔÆæ-CRM\u2019s director.<\/p>\n
Although\u00a0that information is useful for learning more about Wisconsin\u2019s past, Patricia Richards said, 51ÁÔÆæ-CRM is about more than just excavations and research.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe charge cost and materials. That\u2019s all it is for us,\u201d she said. \u201c(We) feel very strongly that folks that were recovered from these cemeteries that were forgotten \u2026 had their own story. It\u2019s our responsibility to tell that story.\u201d
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