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IU archaeologists begin rescue excavation of major Native American site
Oct. 24, 2000
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University archaeologists are beginning a two-year rescue excavation at the Bone Bank site on the Wabash River, where a large prehistoric Native American village was once located. The Bone Bank project has received the first grant awarded by the State of Indiana for rescue investigations at an endangered archaeological site.
Funded by a grant from Indiana's Wabash River Heritage Corridor program, the project is being carried out in cooperation with Four Rivers Resource, Conservation and Development Area Inc. of Petersburg, Ind., as the grant coordinator. Archaeologist Cheryl Ann Munson, research scientist in the IU Department of Anthropology, is directing the investigation.
"Letters of support and contributions of matching funds from organizations and individuals in the region were important elements in obtaining this grant," Munson said.
The Bone Bank site, located in Posey County, Ind., has nearly been lost to erosion by the Wabash River. Many human burials were washed out from there in the 1800s, giving the site its name. More information about the Bone Bank site including photographs can be found at http://www.indiana.edu/~archaeo
The village's refuse dumps have been located, and they are a valuable source of information about the daily life and diet of the villagers. But Munson said the study of the dumps "is a logistical challenge for the research team. After the village was abandoned, the river changed its course and washed in one to two meters of silt over the dump areas."
Although the village's cemeteries have long since been destroyed, Bone Bank is still one of Indiana's most significant prehistoric archaeological sites and is listed on the Indiana Register of Historic Sites. The village was oriented toward a backwater lake on the east side of the Wabash River, now a nature preserve known as Big Cypress Slough.
For nearly a century, people thought the Bone Bank site had been completely destroyed by the migration of the Wabash River's channel, Munson said. However, IU's archaeological surveys and testing from 1997 to 1999 demonstrated that small portions of the site are still intact.
"Every high water washes away more of the site. What remains at the Bone Bank village today is probably only 1 percent of what existed about 500 years ago, when hundreds of Native Americans lived there," Munson said.
"It would be wonderful if we could preserve what is left of this important site," she added, "but there is no way we can stop the river from eroding its banks. Archaeological rescue excavations are the only alternative. This research will save part of the remaining archaeological record of the village."
Bone Bank was one of several large villages of the Caborn-Welborn culture, which developed about A.D. 1400 in the area around the confluence of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers, Munson said. This development coincided with the decline of the regional Angel culture and the abandonment of its political and religious center at Angel Mounds State Historic Site near Evansville.
"We don't yet know when the Bone Bank village was first settled, nor how long it was occupied before it was abandoned, but this village was probably at least partly contemporary with the village at Hovey Lake," Munson said. Radiocarbon dating will be used to learn about the age and duration of occupation at the Bone Bank village.
Bone Bank was first recognized as an archaeological site in 1807, when land surveyors saw human burials and pottery jars eroding from the river bank. In 1828, the French naturalist Charles Alexandre Lesueur, based in New Harmony, made a small excavation at Bone Bank to learn about the culture of ancient Native Americans, and he took artifacts, notes and drawings back to France. The artifact collections were destroyed during World War II, but a number of Lesueur's drawings have survived and provide information about a part of the site that no longer exists. His study is historically significant as the first archaeological excavation in the state of Indiana, and one of the earliest in the United States.
The goal of the rescue excavation project is to recover artifacts and food remains from the surviving remnant of the village's residential area and its refuse dumps, so archaeologists can gain an understanding of the way of life of the village inhabitants. This fall, archaeologists will excavate in the north refuse dump to collect artifacts and radiocarbon samples. In a second phase of excavation in 2001, they will focus on the south refuse dump and also search for remains of houses, walls, cooking pits and storage pits that may still be present in the last remnant of high ground.
The Indiana Geological Survey is assisting the project by drilling soil cores in strategic locations in the area of the south refuse deposit. Munson will analyze the content and depth of the refuse layers revealed in the cores to plan the location of the areas to be excavated in 2001.
Munson can be reached at 812-325-3407 (cell phone), 812-838-6064 (field headquarters -- leave a message or call in the evening), after Nov. 20 at 812-855-0528, or at munsonc@indiana.edu