Angel Mounds

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Angel Mounds
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
Angel Mound Site, Evansville, Indiana.
Angel Mound Site, Evansville, Indiana.
Nearest city: Evansville, IN
Added to NRHP: October 15, 1966
NRHP Reference#: 66000124 [1]
Governing body: State

Angel Mounds State Historic Site is located on the Ohio River in Vanderburgh County, Indiana adjacent to Evansville. It is part of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Indiana State Museums and Historic Sites. It is one of 16 state museums and historic sites in Indiana and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is named after the Angel Family who settled in this location along the Ohio River in the early 1800s.

For over a thousand years, Southwestern Indiana was home to many Native Americans. Today, Angel Mounds State Historic Site is nationally recognized as one of the best preserved prehistoric Native American sites in the United States. From 1100 to 1450 A. D., a town on this site was home to people of the Middle Mississippian culture, who engaged in hunting and farming on the rich bottom lands of the Ohio River. Several thousand people lived in this town protected by a stockade made of wattle and daub. Because Angel Mounds was a chiefdom (the home of the chief) it was the regional center of a large community that grew outward from it for many miles.

This settlement was the largest known town of its time in Indiana, but the Mississippian people eventually deserted it. No one today knows why. Fortunately, preservation and archaeological efforts at Angel Mounds State Historic Site offer a glimpse into this highly developed culture of the distant past. For 60 years, this living museum has told the story of one pre-contact Native American culture on the Ohio River.

Archaeological work is ongoing at Angel Mounds, conducted by the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University. This institution is named after Glenn Albert Black, the archaeologist who conducted most of the excavations at Angel Mounds, and who brought the site to the attention of the discipline of archaeology. His two volume set on the site remains the definitive work.

In May 2006, a probable pottery-making workshop was discovered at the Angel Mounds. This discovery revealed the artistic skills of the Indians that inhabited the area. Found during the 2006 excavation were pottery tools and masses of prepared slightly fired clay awaiting shaping into bowls, jars or figures.

[edit] See also


[edit] External Links

[edit] References

  1. ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
  • Black, Glenn Albert. 1967. Angel Site, An Archaeological, Historical and Ethnological Study (with James H. Kellar). Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis. 2 volumes.
  • WISH-TV


This article about a Registered Historic Place in Indiana is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
v • d • e
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
National Park Service logo