The Sugar Creek site is a Late Prehistoric village site located on a flat outwash plain immediately east of Sugar Creek in Blue River Township, Johnson County, Indiana (Figure 4.1). Sugar Creek itself is fairly shallow adjacent to the site, affording an easy crossing point for access to the uplands located west of the creek. The site is a nearly level surface with a southern portion that slopes gently to the south. The site is bordered by a creek, or ditch, to the north, deep swales on the east and southeastern edges, and the Sugar Creek floodplain to the west. The western one half of the site is located in a former campground within the Atterbury State Fish and Wildlife Area. The eastern portion of the site is privately owned and at the time of the investigation was in hay crop.

Sturm (1979) identifies the soils on the site as belonging to the Fox series. Fox soils are loamy and typically found on relatively level to gently sloping surfaces that form on outwash plains and terraces along the floodplains of drainageways. The high density of waterworn gravel on most of the site (the broad level portion) conforms with the identification in the Johnson County soil survey (Sturm 1979) of this landform as an outwash plain. However, along the southern slope, the density of waterworn gravel is drastically reduced, indicating that these soils were alluvially deposited. (See Table 4.1 and Figure 4.9.)

The site was first reported to Brian G. Redmond of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology (GBL) by Jack Weddle in 1992. The eastern portion of the site had been plowed after years of being in pasture, and numerous dark midden stains and scatters of Late Prehistoric cultural materials were visible (Plate 4.1a.) Plans to return to the site and map the dark anomalies were unsuccessful, and subsequently the site was replanted in another hay crop.

Excavations at the Sugar Creek site (12 Jo 289) were conducted between August 30 and November 2, 1995, by personnel from the GBL and numerous volunteers, under DHPA permit number 950051 and a Fish and Wildlife special purpose excavation permit number 95059. At the time of the excavation at 12 Jo 289, the eastern half of the site was still in pasture, and the western half was an abandoned campground with no surface visibility. Near the completion of the excavations at 12 Jo 289, the eastern half of the site was plowed, and personnel from the GBL returned to conduct a surface collection.