Angel Phase - History of Research

History of Research

The history of research concerning Angel Phase and Mississippian archaeology is chiefly focused on the study of shell-tempered pottery. The first accounts of the process of shell-tempered pottery in the Southeast were described by Dumont. In his historical account, Dumont described how women were in charge of the process. He described in rich detail the skill and elements involved in the creation of shell-tempered pottery. Pottery of the region has been studied by archeologists both to define chronology of sites and to understand cultural relationships. Fay-Cooper Cole, et al. (1951:229) grouped the lower Ohio Valley Mississippian towns of Angel, Kincaid, Tolu and Wickliffe into the “Kincaid focus”. The geographic distribution of Angel and Caborn-Welborn settlements, their classifications, and their relationships with each other were examined by Thomas J. Green and Cheryl Ann Munson in a series of publications; the key Angel Phase sites in their work were Angel and Ellerbusch, a small site near Angel.

Radiocarbon dating was used together with analysis of regional trends of assemblages to fill in aspects of the temporal range of the Angel Mounds site. As the discipline of archaeology changed, the focus of research in Mississippian archaeology changed with it. Chronology by seriation became an essential step towards answering more complex questions, instead of being only the final result of a study. “The second major change in Mississippian studies is that pottery analysis is addressing new questions – compositional, technological, functional and stylistic…” Compositional studies include:

• the first thin-section analyses conducted by Porter;
• microscopic examination of paste and temper in order to identify non-local vessels and improve the classification of sherds; and
• more recent studies focused on resources and exchange patterns.

Breakthroughs in Mississippian archaeology technology studies include:

• detailed information on manufacture of pottery by Million and van der Leeuw;
• Stimmel's finding that sodium chloride improves the workability of shell-tempered clay; and
• studies conducted by Steponaitis, Bronitsky and Hamer to assess the resistance of fine shell-tempered versus coarse shell-tempered pottery to thermal and mechanical stresses.

Functional studies include:

• the difference between ceremonial pottery and utilitarian pottery by Sears and Childress;
• “Smith noted that a number of innovations in pottery technology are associated with the cultivation, storage, processing and preparation of maize.”
• Hally's use of vessel morphology and surface to describe how the vessel's function was altered.

Stylistic advances in Mississippian pottery related to the Southwestern Ceremonial Complex group defined by Waring and Holder. Mississippian pottery, especially from Angel and Kincaid, has been grouped with Southeastern pottery because they shared the same motifs.