page_title: Angel Mounds
section_title: Setting
hierarchical_section_title: Angel Mounds / Setting
caption_attribution_description: English: "Angel Mounds", digital illustration, Herb Roe © 2015. An illustration of the Mississippian culture Angel Mounds Site on the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana.
context_page_description: Angel Mounds State Historic Site, 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 of land about 8 miles southeast of present-day Evansville, in Vanderburgh and Warrick County, 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 of the Ohio River valley to the Green River in present-day Kentucky. The town had as many as 1,000 inhabitants at its peak and included a complex of thirteen earthen mounds, hundreds of home sites, a palisade, 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 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 culture on the Ohio River.
context_section_description: The Angel site was the regional trading center in a group of associated settlements and hamlets within a 70-mile (110 km) radius. The town overlooks the Ohio River, which borders the town's south side, and includes terraced land and earthen mounds built above the river's flood plain. The main site is close to agricultural fields and is shielded from the river by what is known in the present-day as Three Mile Island. The community faces south across a narrow channel toward the island and what is present-day Kentucky. The channel and slough, which existed during the time that the archaeological site was inhabited, created a quiet backwater that surrounded the town on the north, east, and west sides. The slough and channel to the Ohio River provided easy transit for canoes, as well as a source for freshwater fishing, potable water, and bathing. (Until nearly the end of the nineteenth century, the Ohio River was clear and potable. In the mid-twentieth century, the channel was known as an excellent fishing area.) When the site was first settled, the slough was deeper and the Mississippian people kept it cleared of brush and trees; however, by 1939, when official excavation of the Angel site began, the stream had dried-up and the channel had eroded, providing a land surface that was often stable enough to walk across.
  The Mississippians found the site along the Ohio River ideal for agricultural purposes. Annual spring floods regularly replenished the nutrients in the soil and allowed cultivation of crops that included maize (corn), beans, and squash. The fertile soil enabled production of surplus crops, which the Mississippian people used for trade and to support a large enough population to develop artisan and craft specialties such as pottery.
caption: Artists conception of the Angel Mounds site
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