*Please note: The printed text includes the telephone numbers of the locals below. They have been deleted here as some were out of date. Please forgive us for any inconvenience this might cause.
Knowledge about prehistory and much of the history of the early European settlement of Indiana relies upon information yet to be identified and recovered from the ground. There are literally tens of thousands of potentially important archaeological sites in the state, but 50 years of concerted effort has succeeded in locating only about 14,000 of these, and many areas in the state are virtually unknown. The remainder will continue to be unidentified if we are totally dependent upon the efforts of the few archaeologists and their limited resources. Therein resides a monumental problem.
Our society has created a technology that can change the landscape almost overnight, and it has been estimated that within another 50 years not a single area in the United States will be untouched by construction of one kind or another. One consequence will be the destruction of almost all the archaeological resources upon which we depend for understanding the past. There is, then, a real urgency in setting about now to record and study these sites so that informed decisions can be made concerning the conservation of information and the preservation of the most significant of these sites.
As has been noted above, there has for sometime been an acute awareness of the need to undertake these tasks and federal and state governments have legal bases for protecting sites and insuring that they are investigated before destruction occurs. Numerous Indiana businesses have co-operated in these efforts. However, despite all the activities, much construction is not covered by the laws affecting historic preservation, and literally hundreds of sites are destroyed each year without a record being made of their presence or content.
You can make an invaluable contribution in the effort to preserve this record! If you know of sites, become aware of situations where artifacts or human burials are uncovered, or encounter questionable situations of possible archaeological relevance, contact the archaeologist at any of the following institutions. By so doing you provide the needed assistance to conserve a rapidly disappearing and irreplaceable historic resource.
Ball State University, Muncie 47306 Archaeology Laboratory
Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology Indianapolis 46204 State Museum 202 North Alabama
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Indiana State University, Terre Haute 47809 Anthropology Laboratory
Indiana University, Bloomington 47405 Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, 9th and Fess Streets
Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne 46805 Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame 46556