The Anthropology Laboratory (ISUAL) is a unit of the Department of Geography, Geology, and Anthropology at Indiana State University. The Laboratory, directed by Dr. C. Russell Stafford (Professor of Anthropology), is one of four major university based research facilities conducting archaeological investigations in Indiana.

Established in 1966 by Robert Pace, the primary mission of the Laboratory is to:

• provide undergraduate and graduate students with hands-on experience in archaeology,
• conduct research in the prehistory of western and southern Indiana, and
• provide services for federally mandated cultural resource management (CRM) projects.

The Laboratory, with 8 full-time staff archaeologists, conducts projects throughout Indiana. Experienced graduate and undergraduate students also participate in field and laboratory work. Laboratory personnel have special expertise in geoarchaeology and subsurface reconnaissance studies, but conduct CRM projects of all types.

The Laboratory has equipment and vehicles to conduct a wide range of field work, including large scale survey, subsurface reconnaissance, test excavations, and data recovery projects. ISUAL has dry and wet laboratory facilities covering 2000 square feet, located in Holmstedt Hall Rooms 003, 15 (maps & records) and 105, that are used for processing, stabilizing, and analyzing archeological materials and sediments recovered from the field. Additional laboratory space for artifact analysis and solid sediment core descriptions is located the basement of Root Hall. Equipment includes two 4WD vehicles, a Giddings trailer-mounted soil probe, a Geoscan FM-36 fluxgate gradiometer, eight WinIntel workstations, large format HP DesignJet 800 ink-jet printer, HP 5000N LaserJet printer, Tektronix 950N Phaser color printer, HP high-resolution scanner, large-format digitizing tablet, Zeiss 2000 Stereomicroscope, Topcon Total Station, Pentax Rotating Laser Levels, FLOTE-TECH flotation tanks, Trimble Geoexplorer3 GPS, Nikon 990 Coolpix digital camera.

As a State recognized curation facility, ISUAL holds site survey records and collections on over 5000 sites and excavated remains from more than 20 sites, mostly from western and southern Indiana. Research collections are especially strong in Archaic (Bluegrass site, Caesars Archaeological Project) and Middle Woodland (Allison-LaMotte) excavation and survey materials.  Collections are housed in a 2100 square foot facility in the basement of Root Hall.