Angel Mounds

Angel Mounds State Historic Site (12 VG 1), an expression of the Mississippian culture, is an archaeological site managed by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites that includes more than 600 acres (240 hectares) of land about 8 miles (13 km) 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 120 miles (190 km) 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 (stockade), 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 500-acre (200-hectare) 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 480 acres (190 hectares) 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 120,000 square feet (11,000 m²) 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.