1998 Excavations at the Heaton Farm site, 12 Gr 122
Introduction
Personnel from the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, in conjunction with the Indiana University field school in archaeology, conducted excavations at the Heaton Farm site during the 1996-1998 field seasons. The site is located approximately 2 miles northwest of Bloomfield, Indiana, on a sandy bluff overlooking the West Fork of the White River.
The Heaton Farm site is one of the largest Late Prehistoric villages known in the lower West Fork valley, dating to the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries AD. The site area also contains evidence of occupation by an earlier group of people, known to archaeologists as the Allison LaMotte culture, during the 6th century AD. Artifacts dating as far back as 8000 BC have been found on the site, but occupation of the site by people earlier than the 6th century seems to have been short-term and sporadic.
Glenn A. Black originally recorded the site as Richland Township campsite #4 in his 1933 survey of Greene County, Indiana. At that time, the site was covered with vegetation, so only a small amount of chert and fire-cracked rock were visible on the surface. In July 1949, T. L. Willoughby of Bloomfield donated pottery fragments from site to the Indiana Historical Society. Archaeologist Curtis Tomak conducted surveys of the site in 1963 and 1972. Materials recovered from these investigations indicated that the site had been occupied mainly by Allison-LaMotte and Late Prehistoric ("Oliver" or "Heaton") people.
Since 1991, the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology has been conducting research on the Late Prehistoric period (AD 1000-1500) in the White River valleys. Excavations at the Clampitt and Cox's Woods sites in the East Fork valley were conducted in 1991-1994, followed by excavations at the Bundy-Voyles site in the West Fork valley in 1995. See Current Research in Archaeology from the Glenn A. Black Laboratory Research Reports Series for more on this and other excavations. In 1996, the decision was made to excavate farther down the West Fork at the Heaton Farm site.
Two of our main research objectives at the Heaton Farm site were to document the overall community pattern of the Late Prehistoric village and to determine whether or not the village included a defensive structure (palisade or stockade). In addition, we were interested in investigating the relationship between "Oliver" people living in the White River valleys and "Vincennes" people living in the Wabash valley during the Late Prehistoric period. Each group of people made a distinctive type of pottery, and fragments of both types have been reported from the Heaton Farm site.
When we arrived at the site in 1996, we first established a cartesian grid system so that each point on the site could be identified by a unique combination of north and east coordinates, as measured in meters and centimeters. Permanent markers were left in the wooded area of the site at N803 E800 and N787 E800 so that future researchers will be able to re-establish our grid system.
Once the grid system had been established, we proceeded to divide the entire tilled area into 5 x 5 meter squares. All the material that could be picked up in 10 minutes was collected from every other square, in a checker-board pattern. We then sorted, counted and weighed all the materials from each square, and made maps of the distribution of each kind of material. The photos show Indiana University fieldschool students sorting and weighing materials. Click on the image to see a larger version of the same photo.
This particular map shows the distribution of one kind of pottery fragments.
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