Cahokia
Overview
Cahokia is a Mississippian cultural site located in Collinsville, Illinois, about thirteen miles from St. Louis, Missouri. Occupied from around AD 800-1350, estimates of the population at its height range from 10,000 to 25,000 people, making it equivalent to London and Paris at the same time. This massive city, composed of monumental architecture that still strikes awe into visitors, arose from being a small settlement of only a few houses into a full blown city dominating an entire region and connections all over Eastern North America through an extensive trade network.
Environment
Cahokia sits within an area now known as the American Bottom. The American Bottom is one part of the Mississippi River Valley in which the floodplain opens up just south of where the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi River, right around the area across the Mississippi from modern day St. Louis, Missouri. Thanks in part to the meandering nature of the mighty Mississippi, the American Bottom is an interesting mix of floodplain, oxbow lakes, and streams flowing from nearby uplands. Woodlands lay scattered around the lakes and streams of the floodplain composed of cottonwood, willow, and maple trees; meanwhile, denser forests lay in the nearby bluffs, composed of primarily hardwoods such as oaks and cedar.
Economy & Food Subsistence
Cahokia, like almost all Mississippian cultural sites, was primarily driven by maize agriculture. Different from earlier cultural periods which were predominantly semi-sedentary horticulturalists relying on local plant and animal resources, Mississippians at Cahokia were sedentary agriculturalists. The rich soil of the American Bottom Region helped produce widespread cultivation of maize and other crops, such as beans and squash, that maintained a majority of Cahokias population's diet. The varied environmental zones available to those living in the American Bottom meant that a large amount of wild resources could be exploited through hunting, fishing, and gathering local, wild plant populations.
Cahokia was partly able to become such a dominating city through the ability to take advantage of a complex trade network connecting together the policies and sites of the Mississippian world. Cahokia owed much of its importance due to the manufacture and trading of local salt and chert, of which could be obtained from the nearby bluffs bounding the American Bottom, and was a major trading center from which artifacts traveled massive distances all over the Mississippian world.
Technology
Local chert was an important lithic resource for people living within the Cahokian area. An important stone tool for Mississippian people was the hoe. First appearing with the emergence of maize as a dietary staple, stone hoes made out of local cherts were more effective than hoes made from wood or freshwater mussel shells. Also important lithic tools possibly found in a Cahokian's tool kit were large thin knives known as Ramey knives for cutting and scraping, as well as microdrills for drilling shells to make beads.
New ceramic forms also appeared at Cahokia during the emergence of the Mississippian cultural period. One diagnostic sign of Mississippian pottery is that it tends to be shell tempered. Shell was burned, crushed, and then mixed into the clay before it was shaped and heated to create a ceramic vessel. Increased variations in surface treatments and decorations also occured during the height of Cahokia.
Social Organization
As maize farming starts to become more important to the emerging Mississippian diet, we also see a rapid change in the Mississippian social organization. Populations quickly start to expand at Cahokia around A.D. 1050 in what has been dubbed the "Mississippian Big Bang" by many researchers. While many argue the estimates of the population size at Cahokia's height during the Stirling phase (A.D. 1100-1200), estimates fall within 10,000 to 20,000 people. Craft specialization occured, with several areas of the site containing what appears to be areas for manufacturing specific items, such as beads, indicating that certain people could make a living without having to produce their own food directly. Smaller communities away from Cahokia appear to have been somehow under the influence of the emerging leadership of Cahokia, and would trade agricultural surpluses for these craft goods produced by the specialists.
Cahokia had over 100 large earthen mounds, several plazas, and a two-mile long palisade around the central part of the site. This central precinct consisted of a large plaza defined on the edges by 18 mounds surrounded by a palisade. Within these walls were the residential areas of the elites and the center of Cahokia's economic and of the political power of the region. Control over the exchange network within the region and contacts with distant lands meant that a select group of individuals at Cahokia had some control over raw materials and iconographic symbols, making the controller powerful in his ability to redistribute the limited goods.
One of the most recognizable features of the site now is the monumental architecture in the form of the large, earthen mounds. In order to construct these mounds, the amount of manpower and resources must have required quite an immense amount of planning and control. For example, Monks Mound, the largest at the site, covers over 14 acres and stands almost 100 feet tall. Remains of structures are usually found on the top of these flat-topped platform mounds, indicating that elites lived and governed from these locations. Some mounds, such as Mound 72, were important sacred spaces as indicated by the elaborate mass burials found within them.
Ideology
One burial in the small ridge topped mound (Mound 72) at Cahokia provides us evidence of a burial of a very important person associated with some ideological symbols. The “falcon warrior”, as he is called, was buried on top of a bed of thousands of shells in the shape of a bird figure, and was found with several hundred of arrowheads of several distinct variations and materials associated with groups in places as far away as Oklahoma, Tennessee, southern Illinois, and Wisconsin. This exchange network connecting Cahokia and the rest of the Mississippian world helped to spread the common symbolic themes and motifs that have become part of the shared ideology making up what archaeologists have dubbed, the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Along with this one elite burial was a mass burial of other individuals, some indicating that they were human sacrifices. Several symbols can be repeatedly seen throughout artwork found at Cahokia, including: the open hand, the winged serpent, circle and cross, and the falcon warrior. All of these motifs can further be found, with some local variations, across most of the Mississippian world.
One more important feature at Cahokia is the existence of at least five woodhenges. This large circles of tall wooden posts placed in the ground could have held several important functions. The most obvious is that the posts are laid out according to solstices, and are thus indicative of a large solar calender. Ceremonies, especially ceremonies associated with when to plant maize, would have needed these woodhenges. Furthermore, these woodhenges held a special sacred meaning. The circular shape could have indicated the sun, of which the device was measuring. The sun was also associated with the chief, who lived closest to the sun on the top of Monks Mound and possibly helping to establish his authority over these important ceremonies.