Mississinewa Reservoir Survey 1980-1982

In the summers of 1980 and 1981 William Wepler led a survey project of the Mississinewa Reservoir. The Mississinewa Reservoir is located in the Lower Mississinewa drainage between Peoria and Marion, Indiana in Miami, Wabash, and Grant counties. The survey spanned all three counties, and due to the size of the area being investigated, was performed as a non-random pedestrian survey. To help increase the likelihood of finding sites the crew conducted landform based surveys, where the survey area was broken down into landform types and certain types of landforms received greater attention based on their probability to have sites. The survey was conducted in order to “locate and evaluate the archaeological resources of the reservoir” and “evaluate the impact of the reservoir and its management on the archaeological record of the area” (Welper 1982).

Archival records for this investigation date from 1980 through 1982, hence why the investigation name has the date range 1980–1982. However, Wepler (1982) suggests that archaeological work for this investigation was only performed during 1980 and 1981, which is why these are given as the years of investigation. While processing, a few artifacts were found with dates of collection in 1986, but it was decided to keep them with the Mississinewa Reservoir Survey 1980–1982 investigation.

The digital materials in this collection were processed by the Veterans Curation Program (VCP), and include the artifact database, select artifact photographs, artifact report, finding aid, investigation report, and scanned asset key. Additional digital materials held by the VCP include additional artifact photographs, box labels, document folder listing, initial data sheet, and notes. For additional information on these materials, refer to the Finding Aid.