Burt, Allen, Gregory Cook, William Meadows, Seth Shteir (Glenn A.Black Laboratory
of Archaeology, Indiana University)
THE FICKAS FARM PROJECT: MISSISSIPPIAN FARMSTEADS IN THE VICINITY
OF THE ANGEL SITE, VANDERBURGH COUNTY, INDIANA
In May 1987, the Indiana University, Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology
Field School students and staff surveyed approximately 55 acres of the Frank Fickas
farm in Knight Township of Vanderburgh County, Indiana. This tract of land is
situated approximately two miles west of the Angel Mounds site.
The survey located a cluster of 11 sites which extended across a portion of an
arm-like section of eroded terrace that lay just above and outside the limits
of the current floodplain. These sites are situated on the tops and slopes of
finger-like ridges that protrude from this relict terrace. The soils underlying
eight of the sites are Princeton fine sandy loams; the three sites in the northwestern
corner of the area surveyed are on Wheeling loam soils. Both types are deep, well-drained
soils that possess moderate natural fertility.
The ground on which the sites are located lies approximately eight feet above
the average elevation of the lower floodplain and is approximately one and one-third
miles northwest of the current course of the Ohio River. Proximity to the Ohio
River and an elevation that places them above annual flooding possibly explains
the concentration of sites and their prehistoric inhabitants in this location.
As a result of three days of intensive survey by the field school participants,
two sites previously recorded were resurveyed and nine new sites were located
and described. A minimum of 32 prehistoric components were identified on the basis
of diagnostic artifact types. A summary of these components are as follows:
3 Early Archaic, 1 Middle Archaic, 5 Late Archaic; 1 indeterminate Late
Archaic to Early or Middle Woodland; 3 Early Woodland, 3 Middle Woodland,
from 4 to 6 Late Woodland; 2 Yankeetown, and 8 Mississippian.
Historic materials also were recovered from 5 sites.
The Mississippian components were recognized by the presence of diagnostic shell-tempered
ceramics and small polished flakes that resulted from the resharpening of Dover
and Mill Creek agricultural hoes. The Mississippian components at the Fickas farm
probably represent a group of farmsteads. According to Tom Green and Cheryl Munson
(in Mississippian Settlement Patterns, Bruce Smith, editor, Academic Press, New
York, 1978, pp. 293-330), a farmstead is characterized by: 1) small size-less
than .25 hectares, 2) no mounds, 3) low density of surface debris, 4) horticultural
and hunting/ gathering activities, 5) houses present, and 6) an estimated population
of five to ten people. This characterization accurately describes what we presently
know about the Mississippian components located on the Fickas Farm.
The bottoms in which the Fickas sites are situated, as well as the bottoms across
the river in Kentucky, would have been considered prime agricultural land by the
population that lived at the nearby Angel Mounds center. The inhabitants of these
farmsteads may have lived permanently outside of the protection of the fortified
Angel settlement in times of peace, or they may have moved out of Angel seasonally,
during the time of planting, cultivating, and harvesting their crops. In either
case, continued intensive survey of these bottoms should yield important information
on Angel phase settlement and subsistence. Thus far the Fickas tract is one of
the few that has been intensively surveyed in these bottoms. [return to 1987 abstracts menu][continue to next]