Cahokia

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-->:This article is about the Native American city. For the modern city located about ten miles to the southeast, see Cahokia, Illinois.

The site was first settled around 650 during the Late Woodland period. Mound building did not begin here until 1050 at the beginning of the Mississippian period, and the site was abandoned between 1250 and 1400. The original name of the city is unknown and the inhabitants left no evidence of writing. The name Cahokia is that of an unrelated clan of Illiniwek that was living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the early 17th century. The Osage Nation, Omaha, Ponca, Quapaw and others are believed to be the direct descendants of the Mississippian culture, but no stories referring to the city of Cahokia were ever recorded among the tribes.

Monk's Mound is protected as part of Illinois' Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

Monks Mound in July

Monk's Mound is the largest man-made earthen mound in North America at about 100 feet (30.5 m) high and a base of 1,037 by 790 feet (316 by 241 m). A large building, possibly the residence of the city's paramount chief, originally stood on the top of the mound. This single building was 105 feet long, 48 feet wide and about 50 feet high. A 50 acre (200,000 m²) plaza stood in front of the mound. In addition to Monk's Mound, the Cahokia site contains several types of mounds - flat-top, conical and ridge-top mounds, which possibly had different functions. More than 120 mounds are thought to have existed. Of these, 109 have been located and 68 are preserved in the park.

During the Pre-Columbian era, Cahokia was, for a time, the largest North American city north of the Mesoamerican cities of central Mexico. It was one of the major centers of the peoples known now as the Mississippian culture or Moundbuilders.

The city population is thought to have been around 1,000 until about the year 1050 when the population exploded to possibly as many as tens of thousands. Estimates of the city's peak population range from 8,000 to 40,000, with scattered farmsteads and farming villages surrounding and supplying it. There were trade links between Cahokia and sites as far away as southern Minnesota and the Gulf Coast. Pottery and stone tools in the Cahokia style were common as far away as the Silvernail archaeological site near Red Wing, Minnesota. Until c. 1800, no North American city north of Mexico would be larger than Cahokia had been at its peak (Around 1800, Philadelphia broke Cahokia's record).

Environmental factors, such as overhunting and deforestation, have been proposed for the city's decline and abandonment. Another suspected culprit is destruction by nomadic tribes moving into the area and wiping out the thus-weakened civilization. However, no direct physical evidence of warfare has been found, excepting the existence of a high wall with guard posts. Diseases such as cholera and typhoid, with vectors facilitated by large, dense populations are other possible causes of the rapid depopulation of the Cahokia area. More current models propose political collapse as the primary cause of the Cahokian decline.

The city and its more than 100 mounds (not all of them surviving) is laid out on a diamond-shape area approximately a mile from end-to-end. The flatness of this plaza was originally thought to be due to the fact that the city sits on an alluvial flood plain created by the nearby Mississippi River, but soil studies revealed that original soil was undulating and had been expertly levelled. This means that Cahokia can boast the largest man-made earthen plaza in the world to this day.

During the excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound, archaeologists found the remains of a male individual in his 40's who was probably an important ruler. He was buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads laid in the shape of a falcon. Since the falcon warrior or "birdman" is a typical motif of the Mississippian culture, this is held to have iconographic/ ideological significance. Nearby were caches of arrowheads of a variety of materials and styles, indicating a widespread geographic origin. The arrowheads were separated into four types, each from a different region in North America, indicating extensive trade links. Over 250 other skeletons were recovered from the mound. Many were recovered from mass graves, while some individuals were missing hands and heads in a pattern seeming to indicate human sacrifice. The chronological and depositional relationship of these other burials to the central burial is unclear, but it is unlikely that they were all deposited at the time of the important ruler's burial. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to 950–1000 AD.

See also

• Mississippian culture
• Monk's Mound
• American Bottom
• Cahokia, Illinois

External links

• [Cahokia Mounds Homepage]
• [ArchaeoBlog] Cahokia Mounds Photo Gallery
• Nathan Seppa, [Metropolitan Life on the Mississippi], Washington Post, March 12, 1997.
• [LostWorlds.org | Why Did Etowah & Cahokia Collapse Around Same Time Period?]

• [Maps and aerial photos]
• * WikiSatellite view at [WikiMapia]
• * Street map from [MapQuest] or [Google Local]
• * Topographic map from [TopoZone]
• * Aerial image or topographic map from [TerraServer-USA]
• * Satellite image from [Google Maps] or [Microsoft Virtual Earth]

World Heritage Sites in the United States of America

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