AR01, Archaeological Investigations of the New Castle Hospital Grounds (Hn-1): A 1965 Summer Field School in Henry County, Indiana

Part of: BSUAAL Archaeological Reports

This is the tDAR collection page that represents Archeological Report 01 (Archaeological Investigations of the New Castle Hospital Grounds (Hn-1): A 1965 Summer Field School in Henry County, Indiana), from the Applied Anthropology Laboratories, Ball State University.

Ball State University conducted its first annual Archaeological Summer Field School from June 14 to July 16, 1965. The New Castle site, Hn1 IAS-BSU, located on the New Castle State Hospital grounds, just north of the town of New Castle, Henry County, Indiana, was selected for excavation. This site was described in Lilly's Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana (Lilly 1937: 68-71) and is relatively well known to both professional and amateur archaeologists.

The site consists of twelve mounds, three being burial mounds and the other nine sacred circles. Mounds 5, 10, and 11 were destroyed by hospital construction about 1908. Mounds 3 and 6 are cut by roadbeds. Mound 6 looks questionable, and Mound 9 could not be located due to dense undergrowth. Mound 12 is not on Lilly's map.

Thomas B. Redding, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution, excavated portions of Mounds 1 and 4 in 1890 (Redding 1892). A trench was dug into the north side of Mound 4 by hospital employees in 1937. This was discontinued when discovered by hospital authorities. Some surface disturbance of the top of Mound 4 was caused by Boy Scouts in recent times.

The site was excavated by a twelve-man crew, three graduate and nine undergraduate students. Three teams were established, composed of a graduate student and three undergraduates each. These were assigned to specific areas and the graduate student in charge was held responsible for the excavation of his area of the site. The following reports on the programs are the results of their work.

Due to the intense cooperation of the New Castle State Hospital a permanent Ball State University research facility is being established at New Castle and the Third Annual Summer Field School will be housed at the area of excavation. It is hoped that this program will be expanded into a regional study of the available archaeological resources.


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