Introduction

Hello and welcome to the 2012 Angel Mounds Archaeological Field School blog!   The goal of this blog is to allow folks to learn about the archaeological process and to follow the activities of our hard-working students.  Each Saturday a group of students will post a summary of that week’s work here at the Angel site excavations.  Before the first student blog, I would like to tell you a little about Angle Mounds and the archaeological excavations which have occurred there.   If you are already familiar with the Angel site you may want to skip to the students’ first contribution.

What is the Angel Mounds Site?

The the archaeological site of Angel Mounds(site name 12VG1) is located just outside of historic Evansville in Southwestern Indiana.  Nestled in a curve of the Ohio River, this prehistoric site was inhabited for about 300 years between AD 1050 and 1350.  The site was palisaded and containd 11 earthen mounds, a large plaza, and several neighborhoods.  The residents relied heavily on maize (corn) agriculture, a common practice during this time, but also hunted and gathered local food stuffs. Today, the area is the Angel Mounds State Historic Site. 

Artist's representation of the Angel site (from http://www.vanderburghsurveyor.com)

The site is identified as a Middle Mississippian site due to its location, time of occupation, and material culture.  This culture encompassed an exceptional amount of variation and extended across the Midwest and Southeast from about the mid-11^th century to, or almost to, European contact.  A few traits which are associated with the Mississippian culture are intensification of maize agriculture, increased population size and nucleation, increased political complexity and trade networks.  These are general traits that occurred, if at all, at different times and in different ways across the Mississippian world, which is why it is so exciting to learn about each site!

A map of the Mississippian world (I found this image on Wiki)

The Angel site was first excavated between the years of 1939 and 1942 by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers who were led by Glenn A. Black and due to the initial interest of Eli Lilly.  A huge amount of earth was moved during these early excavations and nearly 2 million artifacts were excavated!  Can you imagine?!  Excavations continued throughout the 20^th century in the form of archaeological field schools out of Indiana University, and have been conducted every summer since 2005.  All artifacts and materials from these excavations are curated at the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology (GBL) at Indiana University, whose mission is to increase our knowledge of prehistoric Indiana.   Check out their site here to learn more!

Early WPA excavations at the Angel site (GBL archives)

Glenn A. Black, director of early excavations at the Angel site and namesake of the

archaeology laboratory which curates the cultural material.

 

2012 Excavations at Angel

The 2012 field school is made up of 13 students (graduate and undergraduate) from four Indiana universities and 6 field instructors.  Our two supervisors are Dr. William Monaghan of the GBL and Dr. Jeremy Wilson of IUPUI.  We also have three additional instructors; two Ph. D. students from Indiana University, Tony Krus and Erica Ausel (myself), and a postdoc from the GBL, Dr. Timothy Schilling.  Finally, we are also lucky enough to have IUPUI student Jasmine McClure supervising at water screening.  Our work is also only possible with help from the staff of the Angel Mounds Historic Site museum (who put up with our muddy footprints!).  Check out their website here to learn more about the museum and hours of operation.  All of us are very excited for this season’s excavation!   

The students are excavating in an area known as the East Village, a densely inhabited area of the site just within the palisade wall.  A large portion of the East Village was uncovered by Glenn A. Black in his early excavations, and this summer, as well as last summer, we have placed our excavations on the edge of Black’s.  There were two reasons for choosing this particular area;

1) to identify exactly what Black excavated, or more importantly what he didn’t excavate or record (consider it the archaeology of archaeology!)
2) to learn more about the chronology of the site, especially when and how the palisade was built

A map of the Angel Site.  The gray area indicated on the east site of the map outlines

the early excavations of the East Village.  This is the area of the 2010, 2011, and 2012

excavations.

Through archaeology, which is at its heart a scientific, data and method driven discipline, these two goals will contribute to our understanding of the Angel site and Indiana’s prehistory.  And now I hand it off to our students!