The Yankeetown site ( 12W1) is a substantial

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 ...

along the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

in the southwestern part 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 ...

. Inhabited during the prehistoric

Woodland period In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 Common Era, BCE to European con ...

, the site has yielded important information about Woodland-era peoples in the region, but it has been damaged by substantial erosion. Despite the damage, it has been 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 ...

for more than thirty years.

Geology

Yankeetown lies primarily in

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 ...

21 of Anderson Township in

Warrick County Warrick County is a county located in the U.S. state of Indiana. As of 2020, the population was 63,898. The county seat is Boonville. It was organized in 1813 and was named for Captain Jacob Warrick, an Indiana militia company commander killed ...

. Because of the presence of the Ohio River, this section is a tiny riverside triangle, unlike the mile-square sections to the east and north. The present-day

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

of Yankeetown lies approximately north of the site; a road runs from the town to the riverside, and the road/river junction marks one end of the site's core section. This section extends along the riverbank for about downstream from the road, The riverbank core of the site has experienced extensive damage from

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

by the river: in 1950, landowners along the river stated that approximately of the bank were cut away annually.

Excavations

Glenn Albert Black Glenn Albert Black (August 18, 1900 –September 2, 1964) was an American archaeologist, author, and part-time university lecturer who was among the first professional archaeologists to study prehistoric sites in Indiana continuously. Black, a pi ...

visited Yankeetown in April 1950 with three companions; the four surveyed the site carefully and began cataloging artifacts found there. Heavy erosion permitted them to identify

features Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...

such as pits and hearths, and artifacts such as clay pellets and bits of charcoal and burned clay were numerous. Four months later, a second survey investigated the site. Among its premier findings was the identification of a layer of

daub Daub or Daube is a surname. It may refer to: Daub Daub may refer to: * Adrian Daub (born 1980), Professor of German * Gerti Daub (born 1937), Miss Germany 1957 * Hal Daub (born 1941), American politician and lawyer * Karl Daub (1765–1836), ...

about below the surface at the site's low end; although it was only long, the layer was significant for its composition of burned debris, grass, and weeds, as well as for its place as the location of a depression that could have been the site of a house.

Specific artifacts

Many artifacts found at Yankeetown are curated in the museum at Angel Mounds State Memorial in nearby

Evansville Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in S ...

, although the second 1950 survey kept its findings separate from those at Angel, and the landowner maintained a substantial collection. More than six thousand

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 from Yankeetown are curated at Angel; the majority of those known in 1950 were tempered with clay and/or grit, although six hundred bore evidence of shell tempering, and only about five hundred lacked evidence of a tempering agent. Meanwhile, large numbers of the sherds are plain; hundreds have been found marked with cords or incisions, but approximately 64% of the pottery known in 1950 was completely undecorated. Rarer items found at Yankeetown include flint knives,

hammerstone In archaeology, a hammerstone is a hard cobble used to strike off lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone during the process of lithic reduction. The hammerstone is a rather universal stone tool which appeared early in most regions of the wo ...

s, trowels,

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, bones, objects of

cannel coal Cannel coal or candle coal is a type of bituminous coal, also classified as terrestrial type oil shale. Hutton(1987) Dyni (2006), pp. 3–4 Speight (2012), pp. 6–7 Due to its physical morphology and low mineral content cannel coal is considered ...

, and two damaged pottery effigies of women with everything below the shoulders broken off.

Conclusions

The second 1950 survey named Yankeetown the

type site In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron Age ...

for a variety of pottery that had been subjected both to

appliqué Appliqué is ornamental needlework in which pieces or patches of fabric in different shapes and patterns are sewn or stuck onto a larger piece to form a picture or pattern. It is commonly used as decoration, especially on garments. The technique ...

and to

incision Incision may refer to: * Cutting, the separation of an object, into two or more portions, through the application of an acutely directed force * A type of open wound caused by a clean, sharp-edged object such as a knife, razor, or glass splinter ...

; when found elsewhere, it was called "Yankeetown fillet" or "Yankeetown incised". Yankeetown-like objects have been found far away from Yankeetown; they are known farther north than

Vincennes, Indiana Vincennes is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Indiana, Knox County, Indiana, United States. It is located on the lower Wabash River in the Southwestern Indiana, southwestern part of the state, nearly halfway between Evansville, Indi ...

on the Wabash, at the Great Salt Spring in

Gallatin County, Illinois Gallatin County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 4,828, making it the third-least populous county in Illinois. Its county seat is Shawneetown. It is located in the southern ...

,Muller, Jon. ''Archaeology of the Lower Ohio River Valley''.

Walnut Creek A walnut is the edible seed of a drupe of any tree of the genus ''Juglans'' (family Juglandaceae), particularly the Persian or English walnut, ''Juglans regia''. Although culinarily considered a "nut" and used as such, it is not a true bo ...

: Left Coast, 2009. and in the Illinois side of the St. Louis metropolitan area. It appears to be related to another Late Woodland manifestation known as the Duffy complex, which is known from a small group of sites near the mouth of the Wabash;Winters, Howard D. ''An Archaeological Survey of the Wabash Valley in Illinois''.

Springfield Springfield may refer to: * Springfield (toponym), the place name in general Places and locations Australia * Springfield, New South Wales (Central Coast) * Springfield, New South Wales (Snowy Monaro Regional Council) * Springfield, Queenslan ...

: Illinois State Museum Society, 1963, 82-83. both Yankeetown and Duffy have been found at the Great Salt Spring, but the precise relationship between the two is unclear.

Preservation

Preservation of the Yankeetown site has been difficult, due to erosion by the river, although the curation of artifacts at the Angel museum has assisted in saving information about the site. In order to facilitate further preservation work, the 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 ...

in 1979. It is one of eight National Register-listed locations in

; other county sites with this designation include a portion of the Angel Mounds State Memorial and a nearby Caborn-Welborn Mississippian site, the Ellerbusch site.

References