Mississinewa Reservoir Maps N.D.

This collection is referred to as "Mississinewa Reservoir Maps N.D.” This name is consistent throughout the finding aid, the file folders, and the box labels. The extent of this collection is one half (0.5) of a linear inch. The collection consists of oversized maps of the Mississinewa Reservoir within Grant, Miami, and Wabash Counties, Indiana. The collection was received without any association to a particular investigation. It is likely that this is due to the documents’ large size and cartographic contents.

Specifically, the collection includes oversized Mississinewa Reservoir aerial and draft maps, and map figures with information about the physiography, geology, soil, floral, and faunal composition of the Mississinewa Reservoir area. Four of the documents were labeled with figure numbers and thus a Report Records series folder was created. For the maps that did not appear to be a report figure, an Oversized Records series folder was created.

The collection of records was received in fairly good condition. Two aerial maps (Scanned Assets 1039-0008 and 1038-0009) were in poor condition due to flaking on the front of the maps and brown staining on the back. The images on both map fronts have begun to distort due to this flaking, and they are weak in the areas where they were previously folded in half. Archival mending tissue was only applied to one side of map 1039-0008 to prevent further damage to the images on the front. To prevent any further issues these maps were encapsulated.

This collection also includes an oversized map (1039-0010), which is almost completely covered on one side by acidic tape or laminate. The other side of this map was created by taping together four portions of a map of Mississinewa Reservoir. These four portions were adhered using acidic tape. Due to the abundance of the acidic tape on both sides, it was decided that only surface cleaning would be performed. No tape removal was attempted due to fear of harming the document. Mending tissue was placed over edges that were starting to pull away from the paper to which it was attached. All other records were cleaned with Absorene and archival mending tissue was applied to tears on the borders. A metal contaminant was removed from the note “Wabash/Miami Misc. Mississinewa Res. Maps.” This note was then attached to a sheet of archival quality paper with archival mending tissue.

This document collection may be associated with the following Ball State University projects that focused work on the Mississinewa Reservoir: Archaeological Field Reconnaissance Mississinewa Reservoir Force Main 1979, Archaeological Field Reconnaissance and Intensive Assessment at State Recreation Areas 1979, Archaeological Field Reconnaissance at Miami County Recreation Area 1979, Field School at Sites 12G9 and 12G10 1975-1976, Field School at Sites 12WB90 and 12WB120 1981-1984, Field School at the Biface III Site (12MI18) 1981-1982, Field School at the Conner Mill Site (12G57) 1983-1984, Field School at the Troyer Site (12WB116) 1975-1976, Mississinewa Reservoir Survey 1980-1982, and Miami Occupation of the Upper Wabash Drainage 1984.

From review of the available reports associated with these investigations it appears that some of the current documents match with figures in the final report for the Mississinewa Reservoir Survey 1980-1982 project. Five figures (3, 7, 8, 17, and 23) within this final report match with records within the Report Records series. This supports the conclusion that this collection is likely associated with, at least, the Mississinewa Reservoir Survey 1980-1982 project. There were two goals outlined in the Mississinewa Reservoir Survey report, first to locate and evaluate the archaeological resources of the reservoir and secondly to evaluate the impact of the reservoir and its management on the archaeological record of the area (Wepler 1982).

The digital materials in this collection were processed by the Veterans Curation Program (VCP), and include the finding aid, scanned asset key, oversized material excel spreadsheet, and oversized Mississinewa Reservoir aerial and draft maps and map figures. Additional digital materials held by the VCP include an initial data sheet, document folder listing, oversized material labels, a records removal sheet, and additional notes. For additional information on these materials, refer to the Finding Aid.