ROI023, 1987 Excavations at Mounds State Park

Summary

This is the tDAR Project page that represents Reports of Investigation 023 from the Applied Anthropology Laboratories, Ball State University. Between June 1 and June 26, 1987, students participating in the annual Ball State University Archaeological Field School carried out test excavations at Mounds State Park, Anderson, Indiana. The excavations were conducted under the guidelines of a proposal submitted to the Division of State Parks of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and within the framework of the Park's Archaeological Resources Management Plan (Buehrig and Hicks 1982).

Three goals were identified for the 1987 project:

1. To establish a dating sequence for the earthworks within the park.

2. To delineate unclear earthworks at the south end of the park.

3. To provide interpretative data for the park.

These goals were identified as a means of testing whether earthwork construction occurred serially over a period of time, perhaps several hundred years, rather than within a short period of time as had been assumed by previous researchers. The field school excavations tested the proposed model by conducting limited testing of three enclosures, auger testing of the reported location of one earthwork, and the preparation of two contour maps to delineate earthwork features. The third goal of the project was realized through a compilation of the data generated through the project.