Ball, Stephen (Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University,
Bloomington)
REMOTE SENSING MAPPING AT THE ANGEL AND GRABERT SITES IN
SOUTHWESTERN INDIANA
During the summer of 1990 archaeologists from the Glenn A. Black Laboratory conducted
geophysical testing of two archaeological sites in southern Indiana. Magnetometry
surveys, using a fluxgate gradiometer, were undertaken at the Grabert site (12
Po 248), a Mann phase Middle Woodland habitation site in Posey County, and at
Angel Mounds (12 Vg 1), a large Middle Mississippian village located in Vanderburgh
County.
At the Grabert site a magnetometry survey of 1600 m supplemented information on
artifact density derived from an intensive controlled surface collection. The
magnetometry survey successfully detected two pit features subsequently uncovered
during excavation. The magnetometer also detected a large anomaly outside the
excavation zone in an area of minimal surface artifact density. A test trench
revealed a complex of interlocking pits that contained a high density of material
remains. The pits had lain undisturbed, beneath the plowzone, and gave no surface
evidence for their existence.
A magnetometry survey was also conducted at Angel Mound2 in an attempt to trace
the buried remnants of the interior palisade. This survey covered 5200 m . It
detected a thirty meter section of the interior palisade, complete with two of
its bastions. It also detected two features, both approximately five meters square,
which are believed to be Mississippian wall trench houses. Mound C, a low rounded
mound included in the survey, appeared as a square on the map generated by the
magnetometry data. This image may represent the remnants of a large burned house
on the mound's summit or may reflect the mounds original shape. The outline of
what might have been the ramp and three round features arranged in a semicircle
on the mound were also detected by the magnetometer. [return to 1990 abstracts menu][continue to next]