Angel Mounds
Angel Mounds State Historic Site, an expression of the Mississippian culture, is an archaeological site managed by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites that includes more than of land about southeast of present-day Evansville, in Vanderburgh and Warrick counties in Indiana. The large residential and agricultural community was constructed and inhabited from AD 1100 to AD 1450, and served as the political, cultural, and economic center of the Angel chiefdom. It extended within of the Ohio River valley to the Green River in present-day Kentucky. The town had as many as 1,000 inhabitants inside the walls at its peak, and included a complex of thirteen earthen mounds, hundreds of home sites, a palisade, and other structures.
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964, the property also includes an interpretive center, recreations of Mississippian structures, a replica of a 1939 Works Projects Administration archaeology laboratory, and a area away from the archaeological site that is a nature preserve. The historic site continues to preserve and relate the story of pre-contact Middle Mississippian indigenous culture on the Ohio River.
The site is named after the Angel family, who in 1852 began purchasing the farmland on which the archaeological site is located. In 1938, the Indiana Historical Society, with funding from Eli Lilly, purchased of property to preserve it and to use it for long-term archaeological research. From 1939 to 1942, the Works Progress Administration employed more than 250 workers to excavate of the site, which resulted in the recording and processing of 2.3 million archaeological items. After excavation was temporarily halted during World War II, work resumed in 1945 as part of the Indiana University Archaeology Field School during the summer months. In 1946, the Indiana Historical Society transferred ownership of the site to the State of Indiana. It manages the site through the Indiana State Museum. Archaeological research on Angel Mounds, once conducted through the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, is now overseen by the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington.
History
Origins
For thousands of years, the area that was later organized as the eastern United States was home to a succession of native groups who settled near the rivers and used them for travel and trade. The widespread Mississippian culture, which is named in reference to its geographical origins along the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries, developed around AD 900. This culture eventually extended as far west as Oklahoma, as far north as the present-day suburbs of Saint Louis, Missouri, in southwestern Illinois, and ranging east into the Southeastern Woodlands, to present-day North Carolina and as far south as present-day Mississippi.Site development and decline
The people of the Middle Mississippian culture built and lived in a community and the Terminal Mississippian Caborn-Wellborn phase.The Angel chiefdom was the regional trading center in a group of communities within of the Ohio River valley; it extended as far as the Green River in present-day Kentucky. The large residential and agricultural community was also the political, cultural, and economic center of the chiefdom, whose residents traded with other chiefdoms and peoples along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The Angel community primarily inhabited an area bounded by the Ohio River to the south, the White River and its East Fork to the north, the Wabash River to the west, and the Anderson River to the east. Archaeologists have inferred that the smaller communities were politically subordinate to the main Angel site. Continuing excavations at the site have revealed new elements of the complex society.
Laborers built the main Angel site sometime after AD 1000. They also established the surrounding villages and farming areas along the Ohio River and engaged in hunting and farming on the rich bottom lands. In addition, the Mississippian culture is known for its
earthen mounds, designed in shapes including platform, conical, and ridgetop. Working with a variety of soils to create a stable mass, the Mississippian people built major earthworks at the Angel site. The community eventually covered about and included thirteen mounds near the Ohio River. Some of these mounds were built for ceremonial and cosmological purposes. In addition to the mounds, the Mississippians constructed structures and a defensive palisade made of wattle and daub with walls and punctuated with bastions. This settlement was the largest-known town of its time in what became present-day Indiana. Scholars believe the town may have had as many as 1,000 inhabitants at its peak, which Indiana archeologist Glenn Albert Black estimated to be about 200 households.
Archaeologists believe that the Angel community existed from around AD 1100 to around AD 1450, although estimates for the site vary from AD 1000 to AD 1600. Carbon dating of the community indicate it was developed as early as AD 1200 and as late as AD 1500.
The Mississippian people abandoned the Angel site long before European contact; however, it is not known for certain why the Angel civilization declined. Scholars have speculated that it was potentially due to environmental factors, such as an extended regional drought that reduced the maize surpluses, and resulted in increasingly scarce natural resources that had once enabled the concentration of population. In addition, the people may have been overhunting, and reducing forests through the consumption of wood for constructing buildings and making fires. Archaeologists also theorize that with the collapse of the Angel chiefdom by AD 1450, many of the site's inhabitants relocated downriver to the confluence of the Ohio and Wabash rivers. A separate Late Mississippian cultural group subsequently emerged that archeologists named the Terminal Mississippian Caborn-Welborn phase.
Subsequent settlement
Angel Mounds scholars believe that the Mississippians abandoned the site by AD 1400, and the Ohio River valley by AD 1650. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, groups of other native peoples, such as the Shawnee, the Miami, and other historical tribes moved into the Ohio River valley from the east over the next 150 years. European explorers and traders subsequently arrived in the area. Anglo-American settlers who migrated to the area from the east and south remained to farm the land. Both the Native Americans and other settlers were attracted by the rich soil and temperate growing season.Mathias Angel was among these settlers. In 1852 he began purchasing farmland that also included the archaeological site. The Angel Mounds Historic Site is named after the Angel family and their descendants.
Site acquisition
In May 1931, Warren K. Moorehead, a nationally known archaeologist from Ohio State University and the Peabody Foundation; Eli Lilly, who became president of Eli Lilly and Company in 1932 and served as the president of the Indiana Historical Society from 1932 to 1947; and Glenn A. Black and E. Y. Guernsey, Society employees and archaeologists, visited the Angel site as part of a tour to assess Indiana's archaeological sites. Black, who served as the Society's director of archaeology and from 1939 to 1964 supervised excavation and field schools at the Angel site, thought that the mounds would provide an opportunity to conduct a long-term study of a single archaeological site. Although individuals had been surveying the area and digging at the Angel site prior to the beginning of its official excavation in 1939, the archaeological findings were not properly documented. Some individuals also came to the site simply to collect relics.In 1938, the Indiana Historical Society purchased of property from the Angel family descendants and others to protect the archaeological site from destruction. The mounds were in danger of being destroyed due to construction of a planned levee and real estate development. Eli Lilly in his role as a philanthropist interested in Indiana's prehistory, provided the funds for the purchase.
Early excavation
Initial efforts in 1938–39 focused on surveying and clearing the main archaeological site and an outlying camp. From 1939 to 1942, as a project financed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the Works Projects Administration employed more than 250 workers under the direction of Indiana archeologist Glenn A. Black to excavate of the site. These efforts resulted in the recording and processing of 2.3 million archaeological items. Excavation was temporarily halted during World War II, but resumed in 1945 as part of the Indiana University Archaeology Field School during the summer months.In 1946, the Indiana Historical Society transferred ownership of the property to the State of Indiana, but retained the rights to excavate the site. Black remained on the property as its caretaker. Between 1958 and 1962, two National Science Foundation grants provided financial support to assess geophysical applications at the site, including use of a proton magnetometer to trace segments of the site's palisade walls that were not visible from the surface. This project, which extended the work begun by the University of Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, was one of the "first comprehensive tests in the Americas" to assess the instrument's potential on a New World site.
State historic site
Angel Mounds was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964, the same year that the Indiana Historical Society transferred its archeological excavation rights to Indiana University. The site's original purchase was later augmented by Elda Clayton Herts's donation of containing an early Woodland period mound.The Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites is the present-day manager of the site. Research on Angel Mounds is conducted through the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, founded in 1965 at Indiana University Bloomington and named in honor of Glenn Albert Black, the archaeologist who conducted excavations at Angel Mounds from 1939 to 1964, and brought the site to national attention. Since 1945, Indiana University has continued to conduct an archaeology field school at the site during the summer months.
The Angel Mounds State Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark, is recognized as one of the best-preserved prehistoric sites in the United States for understanding Middle Mississippian culture along the Ohio River, and Native American culture before contact with Europeans. The site occupies more than of land and includes an interpretive center, recreations of Mississippian structures, and a replica of a 1939 WPA archaeology laboratory. A area of the property, which does not include the archaeological site, has a nature preserve and recreational trails. Archaeological excavations at Angel Mounds State Historic Site continue through Indiana University's field school.