Vincennes is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Indiana, United States. It is located on the lower Wabash River in the southwestern part of the state, nearly halfway between Evansville and Terre Haute. Founded in 1732 by French fur traders, notably François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, for whom the Fort was named, Vincennes is the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in Indiana and one of the oldest settlements west of the Appalachians.
Angel Mounds State Historic Site, an expression of the Mississippian culture, is an archaeological site managed by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites that includes more than 600 acres of land about 8 miles (13 km) southeast of present-day Evansville, in Vanderburgh and Warrick counties in Indiana. The large residential and agricultural community was constructed and inhabited from AD 1100 to AD 1450, and served as the political, cultural, and economic center of the Angel chiefdom. It extended within 120 miles (190 km) of the Ohio River valley to the Green River in present-day Kentucky. The town had as many as 1,000 inhabitants inside the walls at its peak, and included a complex of thirteen earthen mounds, hundreds of home sites, a palisade (stockade), and other structures.
The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, earthen platform mounds, and often other shaped mounds as well. It was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages linked together by loose trading networks. The largest city was Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center located in what is present-day southern Illinois.
Wickliffe Mounds is a prehistoric, Mississippian culture archaeological site located in Ballard County, Kentucky, just outside the town of Wickliffe, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Archaeological investigations have linked the site with others along the Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky as part of the Angel phase of Mississippian culture. Wickliffe Mounds is controlled by the State Parks Service, which operates a museum at the site for interpretation of the ancient community. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is also a Kentucky Archeological Landmark and State Historic Site.
A number of pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks which indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period, Woodland period, and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters.
The Angel phase describes a 300–400-year cultural manifestation of the Mississippian culture of the central portions of the United States of America, as defined in the discipline of archaeology. Angel phase archaeological sites date from c. 1050 - 1350 CE and are located on the northern and southern sides of the Ohio River in southern Indiana, such as National Historic Landmark Angel Mounds near present-day Evansville; northwestern Kentucky, with Wickliffe Mounds and the Tolu Site; and Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois. Additional sites range from the mouth of Anderson River in Perry County, Indiana, west to the mouth of the Wabash in Posey County, Indiana.
The Stoner Site is a substantial archaeological site in the far eastern portion of the U.S. state of Illinois. Discovered during the Great Depression, the site has produced large numbers of artifacts from a prehistoric village that was once located there, and archaeological investigations have shown it to be one of the area's most important archaeological sites for the Allison-Lamotte culture. After more than a decade of fruitful research and predictions of potentially rich results from future work, it has been designated a historic site.
The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site c. 1050–1400 CE, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its significant role in native North American prehistory and for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at least 11 substructure platform mounds, and 8 other monuments.
The Upper Mississippian cultures were located in the Upper Mississippi basin and Great Lakes region of the American Midwest. They were in existence from approximately A.D. 1000 until the Protohistoric and early Historic periods.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Knox County, Indiana.
The Briscoe Mounds, officially Illinois Archaeological Survey No. Wi-25, is an archaeological site in Channahon, Illinois. The mound site is located along the north edge of the Des Plaines River and is the largest mound site in northern Illinois.
Stone box graves were a method of burial used by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture in the Midwestern United States and the Southeastern United States. Their construction was especially common in the Cumberland River Basin, in settlements found around present-day Nashville, Tennessee.
The Allison-Lamotte culture was an archaeological culture that inhabited the Wabash River valley in the United States during the later portion of the Woodland period. Flourishing approximately from AD 100 to 600, the culture's sites are common near the modern city of Vincennes, Indiana. First defined in 1963, the culture was originally described as being divided into two phases — Allison and LaMotte — although some later authors have taught a single unified phase.
The Duffy site is a substantial archaeological site along the Wabash River in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Illinois. Located near the village of New Haven in Gallatin County, it is the type site for the Duffy Complex, a group of similar sites on the Illinois side of the Wabash near its confluence with the Ohio River. Duffy is distinctive largely because of its pottery: the site's inhabitants typically produced ceramics of various thicknesses and comparatively few decorative elements, tempered with grog. What decorations exist are typically limited to one or two rows of simple lines or bars that have been incised or stamped on the side of the piece of pottery. Projectile points found at the site are small triangular "Mounds Stemless" points, and the inhabitants produced celts of a vaguely rectangular shape. The site is believed to have been inhabited circa AD 1000.
The Hubele Mounds and Village Site are an archaeological site in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Illinois. Located near the community of Maunie in White County, the site has received recognition from the federal government because of its archaeological value. Due to the lack of recent excavations, the site's dates of habitation are debated, ranging from 400 BC in some estimates to AD 1000 in others, but all agree on the site's significance to understanding the prehistory of the region.
The Yankeetown site (12W1) is a substantial archaeological site along the Ohio River in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Indiana. Inhabited during the prehistoric Woodland period, 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 for more than thirty years.
The Griesmer site (La-3) is located on the Kankakee River in Lake County, Indiana, about a mile southeast of Schneider, in Northwestern Indiana. It is classified as a Prehistoric, multi-component site with Middle Woodland, Late Woodland and Upper Mississippian occupations. The deposits were not stratified, but observation of the types of artifacts present, together with radiocarbon dates, helped to define the sequence of occupations at the site.
The Fifield Site (Pr-55) is located on Damon Run Creek in Porter County, north-western Indiana. It is classified as a late prehistoric, single-component Upper Mississippian Fisher village.
The Vincennes phase is a Mississippian culture phase dating from 1100-1350 CE. This poorly-understood phase occupied much of the Lower Wabash Valley in western Indiana and eastern Illinois. Robert Barth proposed that the Vincennes phase evolved from the Allison-Lamotte culture, however this isn't universally agreed upon. The Vincennes phase people were agriculturalists, dependant on maize to sustain their population. They were a multi-ethnic people, composed of cultural traits from Middle Mississippian, Upper Mississippian, Fort Ancient, and Woodland cultures.
