The Ashworth Archaeological Site is a significant

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

in the extreme southwestern corner of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

. Located near the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...

of the

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

and Wabash Rivers, it lies near several similar archaeological sites. It was first examined by archaeologists in the middle of the twentieth century and found to be the site of a relatively recent Native American village, and it has been designated a

historic site A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been rec ...

because of its archaeological value.

Geography

The Ashworth Archaeological Site is located in the southern portion of

Section Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sign ...

Township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

8S,

Range Range may refer to: Geography * Range (geographic), a chain of hills or mountains; a somewhat linear, complex mountainous or hilly area (cordillera, sierra) ** Mountain range, a group of mountains bordered by lowlands * Range, a term used to i ...

14W, in the northeastern portion of Point Township, the southwesternmost township in

Posey County Posey may refer to: Places * Posey, California * Posey, Illinois * Posey, Texas * Posey, West Virginia * Posey County, Indiana * Posey Township, Indiana (disambiguation) People * Posey (Paiute) (1860s–1923), Paiute chief * Posey (surname) * Po ...

, the southwesternmost county in Indiana. Another archaeological site, designated 12PO11, is located farther south in the same section; both sites are approximately north of the northern end of

Hovey Lake Hovey may refer to: __NOTOC__ People * Hovey (surname), a list of people * Hovey E. Copley (1869–1946), American politician * Hovey Everett (died 1861), owner of Dr. Hovey Everett House, Chemung, New York, United States Geography * Hovey, India ...

and an equal distance west of a bend of the Ohio River.Adams, William R. ''Archaeological Notes on Posey County Indiana''.

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

Indiana Historical Bureau The Indiana State Library and Historical Bureau is a public library building, located in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is the largest public library in the state of Indiana, housing over 60,000 manuscripts. Established in 1934, the library has gather ...

, 1949. It lies in a field on the eastern side of State Road 69 atop a bluff overlooking a

slough Slough () is a town and unparished area in the unitary authority of the same name in Berkshire, England, bordering west London. It lies in the Thames Valley, west of central London and north-east of Reading, at the intersection of the M4 ...

. Due to its location at the southern extremity of the state, Posey County experiences fewer

frost Frost is a thin layer of ice on a solid surface, which forms from water vapor in an above-freezing atmosphere coming in contact with a solid surface whose temperature is below freezing, and resulting in a phase change from water vapor (a gas) ...

days than most of the rest of Indiana. This favorable weather, combined with its place as the first portion of Indiana to be reached by one ascending the Ohio River, caused the land within the boundaries of the modern county to have one of Indiana's heaviest concentrations of

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

populations. An

archaeological field survey In archaeology, survey or field survey is a type of field research by which archaeologists (often landscape archaeologists) search for archaeological sites and collect information about the location, distribution and organization of past human c ...

published in 1949 found evidence of fifteen different prehistoric villages in Point Township, which has yielded artifacts as old as a

Folsom point Folsom points are projectile points associated with the Folsom tradition of North America. The style of tool-making was named after the Folsom site located in Folsom, New Mexico, where the first sample was found in 1908 by George McJunkin within ...

, and as recent as the Mississippian period.

Excavation

In 1945, the

state legislature A state legislature is a legislative branch or body of a political subdivision in a federal system. Two federations literally use the term "state legislature": * The legislative branches of each of the fifty state governments of the United Sta ...

voted a substantial appropriation to the

. As the Corps of Engineers was considering the construction of a massive

levee A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually soil, earthen and that often runs parallel (geometry), parallel to ...

along Posey County's Ohio River shoreline for flood control purposes, Indiana archaeologists feared the destruction of many riverside sites, and the Historical Bureau accordingly funded an extensive field survey that investigated the county from April to December of the following year. Follow-up surveys continued into 1947, and the results were published in 1949. In early 1947, the surveyors visited northeastern Point Township and obtained permission to investigate a field that had a reputation of producing a wide range of archaeological material. Because the owner had just disked the field in preparation for planting corn, many artifacts had recently been brought to the surface and were readily apparent to the surveyors, such as

lithic flake In archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure,"Andrefsky, W. (2005) ''Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis''. 2d Ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press and may also be refe ...

s, bits of human bone, and

sherd In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels, as well. Occasionally, a piece of broken p ...

s of pottery. By intensively examining the surface of the field, the surveyors collected forty-three pottery sherds (including thirty-six that were shell-tempered), a

projectile point In North American archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have be ...

, seven

scraper Scrape, scraper or scraping may refer to: Biology and medicine * Abrasion (medical), a type of injury * Scraper (biology), grazer-scraper, a water animal that feeds on stones and other substrates by grazing algae, microorganism and other matter ...

s, four other

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

s, and a

phalanx bone The phalanges (singular: ''phalanx'' ) are digital bones in the hands and feet of most vertebrates. In primates, the thumbs and big toes have two phalanges while the other digits have three phalanges. The phalanges are classed as long bones. ...

originating from a

bovine Bovines (subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including cattle, bison, African buffalo, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The evolutionary relationship betwee ...

species, either ''

Bos taurus Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...

'' or ''

Bison bison The American bison (''Bison bison'') is a species of bison native to North America. Sometimes colloquially referred to as American buffalo or simply buffalo (a different clade of bovine), it is one of two extant species of bison, alongside th ...

''. Having found this significant collection of artifacts, the surveyors sought and obtained the owner's permission to excavate any human burials they discovered. Having found a cluster of three skeletons during one day's research, they covered them as evening approached, planning to remove them and to continue their excavations on the following day. The three bodies were those of a child and two adults (one male and one female); they were found because the adult male's

tibia The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

and

fibula The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity is ...

had been unearthed when the owner had disked his field. They had been buried in a rectangular shallow grave dug into a slope; the bodies' heads pointed at a bearing of approximately 305°. Upon their return, the archaeologists learned that their excavations were completed: overnight, the owner's religious beliefs had led him to conclude that no more excavations should be permitted, so as soon as the surveyors had finished sketching the skeletons, they followed the owner's instructions by reburying them.

Conclusions

Based on the evidence it uncovered, the 1940s survey concluded that Ashworth was the site of a prehistoric village. The artifacts found during this survey are useful for identifying the people who lived at Ashworth: shell-tempered pottery is a hallmark of the

Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern United States, Midwestern, Eastern United States, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from appr ...

, Morse, Dan F. ''Report on Excavations at the Zebree Site 1969''. Research Report 4. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, 1975. and the inhabitants are now believed to have been members of the

Caborn-Welborn culture Caborn-Welborn was a precontact and proto-historic North American culture defined by archaeologists as a Late Mississippian cultural manifestation that grew out of – or built upon the demise of – the Angel chiefdom located in present-day sou ...

, a Mississippian subgroup. Very similar results were found at the nearby site 12PO11, the other former village site in Section 1; as a result of the sites' similar artifacts and the extremely small distance between them, 12PO11 was thought perhaps to be an outlying portion of Ashworth. In 1985, approximately of the Ashworth Archaeological Site was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

because of its archaeological value. It is one of five Posey County archaeological sites on the Register and one of three in Point Township, along with an archaeological district near Hovey Lake and the major Murphy Site very close to the mouth of the Wabash.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Indiana Caborn-Welborn culture Geography of Posey County, Indiana National Register of Historic Places in Posey County, Indiana Native American history of Indiana Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Indiana

Geography

Excavation

Conclusions

See also

References