‘Indian Mounds of Wisconsin’ wins Steinberg Prize

“Indian Mounds of Wisconsin,” authored by Robert Birmingham and Leslie Eisenberg, has won the Elizabeth A. Steinberg Prize. The annual prize is awarded by the UW Press to honor top-quality books with Wisconsin connections.

When published by the UW Press in 2000, “Indian Mounds of Wisconsin” was the first comprehensive book on mounds of the Midwest published in 150 years. In it, Birmingham and Eisenberg present an important new interpretation of effigy mound groups as cosmological maps that model ancient belief systems and social relations. They based this interpretation in evidence drawn from archaeology, ethnography, ethnohistory, the traditions and beliefs of present-day Native Americans in the Midwest and recent research and theories of other archaeologists.

Birmingham recently retired from his longtime post as state archaeologist in the division of historic preservation at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Eisenberg, a forensic anthropologist, coordinates the Burial Sites Preservation Program at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

The prize is named for Elizabeth A. Steinberg, the retired editor in chief of the UW Press who worked there nearly 40 years. In odd-numbered years (such as 2005) the prize is given for a UW Press book by a Wisconsin resident on a Wisconsin topic. In even years, it is awarded to UW Press authors who are faculty or staff at a UW System campus.