The IAS logo is a slightly simplified and stylized version of the decoration on a 2000 year old Hopewell bowl excavated in September 1928 from Brangenburg Mound 3 (Vessel #6) by a University of Illinois field party led by J. L. B. Taylor. His excavation project there, and at other mound sites upstream and downstream, was directed by Warren K. Moorehead (see Baker et al. 1941). During the field season Taylor's field party traveled by automobile and was accompanied by a floating residence/dining hall/lab building constructed on a river barge - the Tecumseh.

The three small mounds in the Brangenburg group (located atop the western bluffline of the lower Illinois Valley some three miles north of Kampsville) are unique Middle Woodland mortuary structures in the Lower Illinois Valley. Unlike other Middle Woodland mortuary facilities they were constructed as limestone vaults, covered over with earth. As described, ". . . it is somewhat misleading to classify these structures as mounds, for each contained only a central grave with portions of the projecting above the surface" (Baker et al. 1941:39).

In the 1950s the bowl design - somewhat simplified - was chosen to serve as the IAS symbol. Its decoration consists of three similar serpentine and highly stylized hook billed bird renditions around the vessel sides with a star-like incised pattern at the base. The bowl, along with the other Brangenburg ceramic materials, is currently curated at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.