The beautiful wooded hills and river valleys of Southern Indiana have been home to generations of people. For at least twelve centuries and probably more, people have lived and died, hunted, farmed and foraged in this magnificent part of the continent. Civilizations have risen and fallen–a trend that is likely to recur. To understand where we fit into this picture we need to look at it from the beginning.

The prehistory of the eastern part of North America is generally divided into four categories or Periods: The Paleo-Indian Period, The Archaic Period, The Woodland Period and The Mississippian Period.

Paleo-Indian Period

The earliest human inhabitants of North America is one of the most hotly debated subjects in archaeology. For years the accepted theory was that the first people were nomadic big-game hunters of Mongolian stock who crossed the land bridge from Asia to Alaska at the close of the last ice age. According to the theory this would have happened anywhere from 12,000 to 8,000 years ago with the older date being the most likely. These people are referred to as the Clovis people after a site in New Mexico where they were first identified.

The Clovis people were skilled hunters of the large animals that inhabited this continent at the time; many of which are now extinct. The Clovis hunters are identified by their distinctive, fluted stone spear heads. Evidence of these people spans the entire continent and they certainly would have inhabited Southern Indiana as well. The Clovis Culture is clearly one of the early cultures to inhabit North America, however, there is increasing evidence that they were far from the first to inhabit our continent. Much of this new evidence is still thought of as ‘controversial’ and is not generally accepted by the archaeological community, but I suspect that it will eventually be accepted that numerous pre-Clovis cultures existed in the Western Hemisphere.

It seems that since the very beginnings of human history, America has been a ‘melting pot’. Much of the new evidence suggests that human occupation of the Americas dates back much further and involves a much more racially diverse population than had previously been suspected. New technologies and techniques are allowing archeologists to determine racial characteristics of people based on measurements of skulls. This new technique is turning up evidence that human remains found in some archaeological sites have more similarities to Europeans or Africans than modern Native Americans. Recent excavations in South America have found a people that seem to be most closely related to Australian Aborigines or the people of Melanesia.

While none of these discoveries have been made in Indiana, with new theories about human occupation of the continent placing people here as early as 60,000 years ago - some of them would surely have been the original Hoosiers. For now the Paleo-Indian Period generally focuses on the Clovis culture. These people followed the game and didn’t settle in one spot for very long. As a result of their nomadic lifestyle they didn’t develop things like agriculture or pottery. We know them primarily from their weapons. These primitive people were the predominant culture on the continent until the beginning of the Archaic Period sometime around 5 or 6 thousand years ago.

The Archaic Period

Around this time a change seemed to be occurring among the people of eastern North America. At the beginning of the Archaic Period the people were still nomadic hunters, gatherers and collectors, but they relied on a much greater variety of plant and animal resources and they started demonstrating a tendency to establish longer-term or at least more frequently used settlements. These people were beginning to develop important innovations for the advancement of civilization. In the Archaic Period we begin to see the making of pottery, the development of agriculture and by the end of the period, burial of the dead in earthen mounds. They were developing the traits that would come to be associated with the Adena and Hopewell people who are known as the mound builders. This period lasted until about 3,000 years ago.

Sometimes artifacts are discovered after they are uncovered by animals. Painting by Wm. Zimmerman (see "Contemporary Treasures - an interview with William Zimmerman")

The Woodland Period

This period is often subdivided into three more divisions: the Early, Middle and Late Woodland Period. In the Early Woodland Period we find the development of the Adena culture. Many of the traits of these people were beginning to be seen by the end of the Archaic Period, but by the Early Woodland Period a distinctive culture of mound builders developed in an area encompassing southeastern and eastern Indiana, most of Ohio, northern Kentucky and even southwestern Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia.

By the Middle Woodland Period the Hopewell culture begins to emerge. More likely an elaboration on the earlier Adena culture than a whole new culture, the Hopewell were culturally similar, but even more advanced than the Adena. The Hopewell people not only built mounds, but began to create very elaborate earthworks in various geometrical shapes and in some cases even resembling animals. The Adena people existed from around 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 100 and the Hopewell from 150 B.C. to about A.D. 500. Unfortunately the reasons for their disappearance are not clear, but the characteristics of these cultures seemed to come to an end. Some of the later tribes who later came into contact with the Europeans were probably descendants of the Adena and Hopewell people, but their history is unfortunately lost to us. We have to rely on the archaeological record for all our information about these fascinating early inhabitants of Southern Indiana.

The late Woodland Period lasted until European contact in the 17th and 18th centuries and would include many of the tribes who’s names many of us are familiar with. These will be covered in more detail next month in Part II of Southern Indiana History.

The Mississippian Period

Further west, another culture of mound builders appeared about 1,200 years ago along the Mississippi River and some of its tributaries, including some settlements that reached into what is now southwestern Indiana. The Mississippians built mounds not just for burials, but as temple mounds and ceremonial centers. They seemed to have built large cities around these ceremonial centers. In many ways they seemed to have similarities with some of the great empires of South America. Traces of this culture, though in decline, survived up until European contact.

For more information on the Mississippian Period visit the Angel Mounds State Park website at www.angelmounds.org. Angel Mounds State Park is in Vanderbergh County.