Angel phase chiefdom
Mississippian phase in lower Ohio Valley
The Angel phase or Angel Mounds Chiefdom describes a 300–400-year old Mississippian polity in the central portions of the United States of America. 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.
History
Founding of Angel Mounds and The Angel Axis (1000/1050-1200)
Angel Mounds was originally created as a Mississippian Shrine Complex, the Angel Mounds were likely built by multiple peoples influenced by the city of Cahokia. Locals returning from experiences in Cahokia, opportunistic Cahokians, and Cahokian missionaries hoping to spread the corn mother religion, all embarking in this new project. The mounds were built to align with the patterns in the sky for religious purposes. Winter Solstice sunrises, lunar movements, the rising of the milky way, alignments to the four-cornered cosmos based on the cardinal directions, made with calculations and formulas based in the Hopewell Era and Mississippian/Corn Mother astronomy. Astronomical mounds and earthworks continued to be rebuilt and elaborated upon throughout the centuries, legitimizing the rule of the Great Sun and the hereditary Mississippian elite.
This period is known as the Angel I phase.
“Angel phase chiefdom” enters the record as mississippian phase in lower Ohio Valley. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Angel, phase and chiefdom can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4762250. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1050, 1350, 1000 and 1200.
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This entry incorporates text from “Angel phase chiefdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.