Sherri L. Hilgeman, (Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University,
Bloomington)
"AND THEN I MEASURE THEM IN LOTS, AND LOTS OF DIFFERENT WAYS":
AN OVERVIEW OF THE ANGEL POTTERY DATABASE
Eight new tables (relations) have been created in the Angel database (Figure
1) which hold coded attributes and measurements of individual potsherds from
the Angel site, 12Vg1, Vanderburgh County. These data will be used to build a
formal description of the variability of the Angel pottery assemblage and to create
a ceramic chronology for the site. The formal descriptions will be invaluable
in comparing the Angel assemblage to other Late Prehistoric Mississippian assemblages
in the lower Ohio Valley, the Tennessee and Cumberland Valleys, and the central
Mississippi Valley. The ceramic chronology win enable archaeologists to assign
ceramic "dates" to portions of the Angel site and the smaller sites of the Angel
phase on the basis of their pottery assemblages. Thus, it will be possible to
chart the growth and decline of the Angel site and polity.
Late Prehistoric Mississippian pottery assemblages exhibit a greater variety of
vessel forms, sizes, secondary features, and surface treatments or decorations
than do earlier Woodland pottery assemblages. This vessel diversification began
during the Emergent Mississippian, Yankeetown phase in southwestern Indiana and
continued into the Angel phase. Five different basic vessel forms-jars, bowls,
pans, plates and bottles--were made and used by the Mississippian period Angel
potters and cooks.
Mississippian potters and cooks made and used a great deal of pottery. More than
99%, or more than 1.8 million, of the artifacts recovered during the Angel excavations
were pottery sherds. Of this number, 99% were temporally undiagnostic. The remaining
1% exhibit the surface treatments, decorations, and various kinds of attachments
(handles, lugs, nodes, rimriders, etc.) which would be useful in describing the
Angel pottery assemblage and which, singly and in combination, change through
time.
The organization of the tables (and the classification of the Angel popery) is
based in part on the broad patterns of Mississippian pottery across the Southeast
and the two computerized schemes for the Moundville and Summerville sites and
phases in western Alabama. The other part of the organization was derived more
specifically from previous work on Mississippian pottery assemblages from sites
in the Ohio Valley: Kincaid, Angers "sister" town and the next Mississippian center
down the Ohio River; the lower Tennessee-Cumberland Tinsley Hill and Jonathan
Creek sites; western Kentucky Jackson Purchase sites of Adams, Wickliffe, and
Sassafras Ridge; in addition to preliminary descriptions of the Angel ceramics. [return to 1989 abstracts menu][continue to next]