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.
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. Radiocarbon dating will be used to learn about the age and duration of occupation at the Bone Bank village.