‘Voyage of discovery’ a centuries-old pursuit at Wabash River ‘Bone Bank’

Site is one of earliest archaeological excavations in U.S., the first in Indiana

By Susan Williams and Jayne Spencer

The IU team hopes to recover artifacts and food remains from the surviving remnant of the village’s residential area and its refuse dumps. These areas hold valuable information about the daily life and diet of the villa gers, clues toward unraveling the remaining mysteries of Caborn-Welborn culture.

Munson and a team of researchers are charting their own voyage in a two-year rescue excavation on the Wabash River in Posey County. Nicknamed “Bone Bank,” the site was once the location of a large prehistoric Native American village. Still one of Indiana ’s most significant prehistoric sites, Bone Bank was named for the remains of cemetery sites washed out in the 1800s. The location was noted as early as 1807 by land surveyors who saw human burial remains and pottery jars eroding from the riverbank.

During the last century, people feared the site had been devastated completely, but IU’s archaeological surveys from 1997 to 1999 found that small portions of the site are still intact, despite the river’s efforts.

“Every high water washes away more of the site,” said Munson, leader of the project. “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. It would be wo nderful if we could preserve what is left, but there’s no way to stop the river from eroding its banks.

“Archaeological rescue excavations are the only alternative,” she added. “This research will save part of the remaining archaeological record.”

Bone Bank was one of several large villages of the Caborn-Welborn culture, which developed about 1400 A.D. on ground near the fork of the Ohio and Wabash rivers. One of the research team’s goals is to determine more closely the age and duration of occupat ion at the Bone Bank village using radiocarbon dating. The researchers suspect the village may have developed out of the decline of another Caborn-Welborn society centered at the Angel site, now known as Angel Mounds State Historic Site near Evansville. < p> “We don’t know when the Bone Bank village was first settled or how long it was occupied before it was abandoned, but it was probably at least partly contemporary with the village at Hovey Lake,” said Munson, referring to the Angel site, where excavation s till continues.

Munson and crew also hope to recover artifacts and food remains from the surviving remnant of the village’s residential area and its refuse dumps. These areas hold valuable information about the daily life and diet of the villagers, clues toward unravelin g the remaining mysteries of Caborn-Welborn culture.

But first comes the digging. The village dumps have been located under one to two meters of silt left behind as the meandering Wabash changed its course.

So this semester, archaeologists are excavating the north refuse dump, collecting artifacts and radiocarbon samples. Come the second phase of excavation next year, focus will shift to the south refuse dump and to the search for remains of houses, walls, cooking pits and storage pits that may still be present in the last remnant of high ground. Munson will determine exactly where to begin the 2001 excavation by analyzing the content and depth of soil cores drilled by the Indiana Geological Survey, also ba sed at IU Bloomington.

Bone Bank represents an important earlier voyage of discovery—it is the first archaeological excavation in the state and one of the earliest in the United States.

The original site was a small excavation made in 1828 by French naturalist Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, who was studying the culture of ancient Native Americans. Lesueur was a friend of William Maclure, president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philad elphia, who is often referred to as the “American father of geology.”

Two years before, in January 1826, Maclure and Lesueur left Philadelphia, Pa., and traveled with colleagues on the keelboat Philanthropist, later dubbed “The Boatload of Knowledge,” down the Ohio River to the Hoosier town of Mount Vernon in Posey C ounty before setting up residence in New Harmony.

Lesueur collected artifacts, notes and drawings of the excavation, which he took back to France. The artifact collections were destroyed during World War II, but a number of his drawings have survived and provide information about a part of the site that no longer exists.

Interested in reading all about the Posey County Bone Bank? Go to this Web site:

http://www.indiana.edu/~archaeo