Cahokia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search

This article is about a Native American site at Cahokia Mounds. For the modern city about 10
miles (16 km) to the southwest, see Cahokia, Illinois. For the former Native American tribe
unrelated to the builders of the Cahokia Mounds, see Cahokia tribe.

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Monks Mound, the largest earthen structure at Cahokia (for scale, an

adult is standing on top)

Location St. Clair County, Illinois, U.S.

Nearest city Collinsville, Illinois

38°39′14″N 90°3′52″WCoordinates:  38°39′14″
Coordinates
 N 90°3′52″W

Area 2,200 acres (8.9 km2)

Governing body Illinois Historic Preservation Agency

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Official name Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Type Cultural

Criteria iii, iv

Designated 1982 (6th session)

Reference no. 198

State Party United States

Region Europe and North America

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Official name Cahokia Mounds

Designated October 15, 1966[1]

Reference no. 66000899

U.S. National Historic Landmark

Official name Cahokia Mounds

Designated July 19, 1964[1]

The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site /kəˈhoʊkiə/ (11 MS 2)[2] is the site of a pre-

Columbian Native American city (which existed circa 1050–1350 CE[3]) directly across
the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in
western Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville.[4] The park covers 2,200 acres
(890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles (9 km2), and contains about 80 mounds, but the
ancient city was much larger. At its apex around 1100 CE, Cahokia covered about 6
square miles (16 km2) and included about 120 manmade earthen mounds in a wide
 range of sizes, shapes, and functions.[5] In population, it may have briefly exceeded
contemporaneous London.
Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian
culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central
and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European
contact.[6] Today, Cahokia Mounds is considered the largest and most
complex archaeological site north of the great pre-Columbian cities in Mexico.
Cahokia Mounds is a National Historic Landmark and a designated site for state
protection. It is also one of the 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within the United
States. The largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas north of Mexico,
[5]
 the site is open to the public and administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation
Division and supported by the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. In celebration of the
2018 Illinois Bicentennial, the Cahokia Mounds were selected as one of the Illinois 200
Great Places[7] by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component (AIA Illinois)
and was recognized by USA Today Travel magazine, as one of AIA Illinois's selections
for Illinois 25 Must See Places.[8]

Contents

 1History

o 1.1Development

o 1.2Rise and peak (13th century)

o 1.3Decline

 2Notable features

o 2.1Monks Mound

o 2.2Urban landscape

o 2.3Mound 72

o 2.4Copper workshop

o 2.5Cahokia Woodhenge

 3Related mounds

 4Cahokia Museum and Interpretive Center

 5Designations
 6See also

 7Notes

 8References

 9Bibliography

 10Further reading

 11External links

History[edit]
See also: Ramey state

Development[edit]

A map showing approximate areas of various Mississippian and related cultures. Cahokia is located near the
center of this map in the upper part of the Middle Mississippi area.

Although some evidence exists of occupation during the Late Archaic period (around

1200 BCE) in and around the site,[9] Cahokia as it is now defined was settled around 600
CE during the Late Woodland period. Mound building at this location began with the
emergent Mississippian cultural period, about the 9th century CE. [10] The inhabitants left
no written records beyond symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood, and stone, but the
elaborately planned community, woodhenge, mounds, and burials reveal a complex and
sophisticated society.[11]
The city's complex construction of earthen mounds required excavation, movement by
hand using woven baskets, and construction involving 55 million cubic feet of earth,
much of which was accomplished over a matter of just decades. Its highly planned
ceremonial plazas sited around the mounds with homes for thousands connected by
laid out pathways and courtyards suggest the location served as a central religious
pilgrimage city.[12]
The city's original name is unknown. The mounds were later named after the Cahokia
tribe, a historic Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived
in the 17th century. As this was centuries after Cahokia was abandoned by its original
inhabitants, the Cahokia tribe was not necessarily descended from the earlier
Mississippian-era people. Most likely, multiple indigenous ethnic groups settled in the
Cahokia Mounds area during the time of the city's apex. [13][14]
Historian Daniel Richter notes that the apex of the city occurred during the Medieval
Warming Period. This period appears to have fostered an agricultural revolution in
upper North America, as the three-fold crops of maize, beans (legumes), and gourds
(squash) were developed and adapted or bred to the temperate climates of the north
from their origins in Mesoamerica. Richter also notes that Cahokia's advanced
development coincided with the development in the Southwest of the Chaco
Canyon society, which also produced large-scale works in an apparent socially stratified
society. The decline of the city coincides with the Little Ice Age, although by then, the
three-fold agriculture remained well-established throughout temperate North America. [15]
Rise and peak (13th century)[edit]
Cahokia became the most important center for the people known today
as Mississippians. Their settlements ranged across what is now the Midwest, Eastern,
and Southeastern United States. Cahokia was located in a strategic position near the
confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers. It maintained trade links with
communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north and the Gulf Coast to the
south, trading in such exotic items as copper, Mill Creek chert,[16] and whelk shells.

Artists recreation of central Cahokia. Cahokia's east-west baseline transects the Woodhenge, Monk's Mound,
and several other large mounds

Mill Creek chert, most notably, was used in the production of hoes, a high demand tool
for farmers around Cahokia and other Mississippian centers. Cahokia's control of the
manufacture and distribution of these hand tools was an important economic activity
that allowed the city to thrive.[17] Mississippian culture pottery and stone tools in the
Cahokian style were found at the Silvernale site [18] near Red Wing, Minnesota, and
materials and trade goods from Pennsylvania, the Gulf Coast and Lake Superior have
been excavated at Cahokia. Bartering, not money, was used in trade. [19]
At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the
great Mesoamerican cities in Mexico and Central America. Although it was home to only
about 1,000 people before circa 1050, its population grew rapidly after that date.
According to a 2007 study in Quaternary Science Reviews, "Between AD 1050 and
1100, Cahokia's population increased from between 1,400 and 2,800 people to between
10,200 and 15,300 people".[20] an estimate that applies only to a 1.8-square-kilometre
(0.69 sq mi) high density central occupation area. [21] Archaeologists estimate the city's
population at between 6,000 and 40,000 at its peak, [22] with more people living in outlying
farming villages that supplied the main urban center. In the early 21st century, new
residential areas were found to the west of Cahokia as a result of archeological
excavations, increasing estimates of area population. [23] If the highest population
estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States
until the 1780s, when Philadelphia's population grew beyond 40,000.[24] Moreover,
according to some population estimates, the population of 13th-century Cahokia was
equal to or larger than the population of 13th-century London.[25]
One of the major problems that large centers like Cahokia faced was keeping a steady
supply of food. A related problem was waste disposal for the dense population, and
Cahokia became unhealthy from polluted waterways. Because it was such an unhealthy
place to live, Snow believes that the town had to rely on social and political attractions
to bring in a steady supply of new immigrants; otherwise, the town's death rate would
have caused it to be abandoned earlier. [17]
Decline[edit]

Mississippian period showing the multiple layers of mound construction, mound structures such as temples or
mortuaries, ramps with log stairs, and prior structures under later layers, multiple terraces, and intrusive burials

The population of Cahokia began to decline during the 13th century, and the site was
eventually abandoned around 1300. [26] The area around it was not reoccupied by
indigenous tribes[27] until around 1350.[clarification needed][28] Scholars have proposed environmental
factors, such as overhunting, deforestation, and flooding, as explanations for
abandonment of the site.[26]
Another possible cause is invasion by outside peoples, though the only evidence of
warfare found are the defensive wooden stockade and watchtowers that enclosed
Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct. There is no other evidence for warfare, so
the palisade may have been more for ritual or formal separation than for military
purposes. Diseases transmitted among the large, dense urban population are another
possible cause of decline. Many theories since the late 20th century propose conquest-
induced political collapse as the primary reason for Cahokia's abandonment. [29]
Together with these factors, researchers found evidence in 2015 of major floods at
Cahokia, so severe as to flood dwelling places. Analysis of sediment from
beneath Horseshoe Lake has revealed that two major floods occurred in the period of
settlement at Cahokia, in roughly 1100–1260 and 1340–1460. [28][30]

Notable features[edit]
The original site contained 120 earthen mounds over an area of 6 square miles
(16 km2), of which 80 remain today. To achieve that, thousands of workers over
decades moved more than an estimated 55 million cubic feet [1,600,000 m3] of earth in
woven baskets to create this network of mounds and community plazas. Monks Mound,
for example, covers 14 acres (5.7 ha), rises 100 ft (30 m), and was topped by a massive
5,000 sq ft (460 m2) building another 50 ft (15 m) high.[5]
Monks Mound[edit]
Main article: Monks Mound

An 1882 illustration of Monks Mound showing it with fanciful proportions

Incised sandstone tablet of a Birdman found in 1971 during excavations into the east side of Monks Mound

Monks Mound is the largest structure and central focus of the city: a massive platform
mound with four terraces, 10 stories tall, it is the largest man-made
earthen mound north of Mexico. Facing south, it is 100 ft (30 m) high, 951 ft (290 m)
long, 836 ft (255 m) wide and covers 13.8 acres (5.6 ha).[31] It contains about
814,000 cu yd (622,000 m3) of earth.[17] The mound was built higher and wider over the
course of several centuries, through as many as 10 separate construction episodes, as
the mound was built taller and the terraces and apron were added. [31]
Monks Mounds was named for the community of Trappist monks who resided there for
a short time, after Euroamericans settled in the area. Excavation on the top of Monks
Mound has revealed evidence of a large building, likely a temple or the residence of
the paramount chief, which would have been seen throughout the city. This building was
about 105 ft (32 m) long and 48 feet (15 m) wide, and could have been as much as 50 ft
(15 m) high. It was about 5,000 sq ft (460 m2).
The east and northwest sides of Monks Mound were twice excavated in August 2007
during an attempt to avoid erosion due to slumping. These areas were repaired to
preserve the mound.[32]
Urban landscape[edit]
Early in its history, Cahokia underwent a massive construction boom. Along with the
early phase of Monks Mound, an overarching urban layout was established at the sit