Archaeological Foundations: Works Progress Administration–Era Legacy Collections from Angel Mounds

Excavations at Angel Mounds (12Vg1) began in the late 1800s but accelerated in 1939 with funding from a United States federal government program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which provided job opportunities for unemployed and often unskilled citizens. The WPA project, which ended in 1942 due to World War II, resulted in close to 2.5 million excavated items and thousands of associated paper records and photographic images. These became the foundation for decades of subsequent research and represent the bulk of the Angel Mounds NAGPRA-related collections. This article provides context for the WPA excavations at Angel Mounds, a synopsis of curation challenges associated with an exceptionally large archaeological archive, and the approaches taken to access the NAGPRA-related legacy collection.