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Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site
IUCN Category III (Natural Monument)
Location	Illinois, United States
Nearest city	Collinsville, Illinois
Coordinates	38°39′14″N 90°3′52″W / 38.65389, -90.06444
Area	2,200 acres (8.9 km²)
Governing body	Illinois Historic Preservation Agency

Cahokia is the site of an ancient Native American city (650-1400 CE) near Collinsville, Illinois in the American Bottom floodplain, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri. The 2,200-acre (8.9 km²) site includes at least 109 man-made earthen mounds. Cahokia Mounds is the largest archaeological site related to the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies in eastern North America centuries before the arrival of Europeans. ^[1]. It is a designated site for state protection, a National Historic Landmark, and a World Heritage Site.

World Heritage Site

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	United States of America
Type	Cultural
Criteria	iii, iv
Reference	198
Region**	Europe and North America
Inscription history
Inscription	1982  (6th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Cahokia Mounds was designated a National Historic Landmark on July 19, 1964, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.^[2]Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site was designated a World Heritage Site in 1982. The park protects 2200 acres (8.9 km²), and is the focus of ongoing archaeological research. This is one of only twenty World Heritage Sites designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the United States.

History

Cahokia was settled around 650 CE during the Late Woodland period. Mound building did not begin until about 1050 CE, at the beginning of the Mississippian cultural period. The inhabitants left no written records beyond symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood, and stone.^[3]. The city's original name is unknown.

The name "Cahokia" also refers to an unrelated clan of Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 1600s, long after Cahokia was abandoned. The living descendants of the Cahokia people associated with the Mound site are unknown, although many Native American groups are plausible.

Monk's Mound

Monk's Mound is the central focus of this great ceremonial center. A massive structure with four terraces, it is the largest man-made earthen mound in North America. Facing south, it is 92 feet (28 m) high, 951 feet (290 m) long and 836 feet (255 m) wide ^[4]. The Travel Channel has called it the "world's largest pyramid."

Excavation on the top of Monk's Mound has revealed evidence of a large building — perhaps a temple or the residence of the paramount chief — that could be seen throughout the city. This building was about 105 feet (32 m) long and 48 feet (15 m) wide, and could have been as much as 50 feet (15 m) high.

The east and northwest sides of Monk's Mound were twice excavated by backhoe in August 2007 during an attempt to avoid erosion.^[5][6]

Woodhenge

"Woodhenge," a circle of posts used to make astronomical sightings, stood to the west of Monk's Mound. The name is taken from Stonehenge, as this structure marked solstices, equinoxes and other astronomical cycles. Archaeologists discovered Woodhenge during excavation of the site. They found that the structure was rebuilt several times during the urban center's roughly 300-year history. According to Chappell, "A beaker^[7] found in a pit near the winter solstice post bore a circle and cross symbol that for many Native Americans symbolizes the Earth and the four cardinal directions. Radiating lines probably symbolized the sun, as they have in countless other civilizations."^[8]

Urban landscape

A 19-hectare (190,000 m²) plaza spreads out to the south of Monk's Mound. Researchers originally thought the flat, open terrain in this area reflected Cahokia's location on the Mississippi's alluvial flood plain. Soil studies showed that the landscape was originally undulating and had been expertly leveled by the city's inhabitants. The Grand Plaza of Cahokia measured 40 acres (16 ha). Along with the Grand Plaza to the south, three other very large plazas surround Monks Mound to the east, west, and north.

A wooden stockade with a series of watchtowers at regular intervals formed a two-mile (3 km)-long enclosure around Monk's Mound and the Grand Plaza. Archaeologists found evidence of the stockade during excavation of the area and indications that it was rebuilt several times. The stockade separated Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct from other parts of the city.

Beyond Monk's Mound, as many as 120 more mounds stood at varying distances from the city center. To date, 109 mounds have been located, 68 of which are in the park area. The mounds are divided into several different types — platform, conical, ridge-top, etc. — each of which may have had its own meaning and function. In general terms, the city center seems to have been laid out in a diamond-shaped pattern approximately a mile (1.6 km) from end to end, while the entire city is five miles (8 km) across from east to west.

Ancient city

Cahokia was the most important center for the peoples known today as Mississippians. Their settlements ranged across what is now the Midwest, Eastern, and Southeastern United States. Cahokia maintained trade links with communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north and the Gulf Coast to the south. Pottery and stone tools in the Cahokian style were found at the Silvernail site near Red Wing, Minnesota.

At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the great Mesoamerican cities in Mexico. Although it was home to only about 1,000 people before ca. 1050, its population grew explosively after that date. Archaeologists estimate the city's population at between 8,000 and 40,000 at its peak, with more people living in outlying farming villages that supplied the main urban center.

If the highest population estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until about 1800, when Philadelphia's population grew beyond 40,000.

Prestige burial

A Southeastern Ceremonial Complex image of a falcon dancer or birdman. Based on a shell engraving from Spiro, Oklahoma. Digital illustration by the artist H. Roe.

During excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monk's Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s who was probably an important Cahokian ruler. The man was buried on a bed of more than twenty thousand marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the bird's head appearing beneath the man's head and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. The falcon warrior or "birdman" is a common motif in Mississippian culture. This burial clearly had powerful iconographic significance.

A cache of arrowheads in a variety of different styles and materials was found near the grave of this important man. Separated into four types, each from a different geographical region, the arrowheads demonstrated Cahokia's extensive trade links in North America. Over 250 other skeletons were also recovered from Mound 72 (some so poorly preserved it was not possible to identify their gender).

Four young male skeletons were missing their hands and heads and a mass grave of over 50 women around 21 years old with the bodies arranged in two layers separated by matting were found. Researchers believe that all were human sacrifices. Another mass burial contained 40 men and women who appear to have been violently killed. The suggestion has been made that some of these were buried alive: "From the vertical position of some of the fingers, which appear to have been digging in the sand, it is apparent that not all of the victims were dead when they were interred - that some had been trying to pull themselves out of the mass of bodies.". (Young & Fowler 2000:146-149). The relationship of these burials to the central burial is unclear. It is unlikely that they were all deposited at the time. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to between 950 and 1000 C.E.

Cahokia's decline

Cahokia was abandoned a century or more before Europeans arrived in North America in the early 1500s. Scholars have proposed environmental factors such as over-hunting and deforestation as explanations. Another possible cause is invasion by outside peoples, though the only evidence of warfare found so far is the wooden stockade and watchtowers that enclosed Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct. Due to the lack of other evidence for warfare, the palisade appears to have been more for ritual than military purposes. Diseases transmitted among the large, dense urban population are another possible cause of decline. Many recent theories propose political collapse as the primary reason for Cahokia’s abandonment.^[9]

See also

• Mississippian culture
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
• Monk's Mound
• Chunkey
• American Bottom
• Mound builder (people)
• List of known Missisippian Chiefdoms
• Tumuli
• World Heritage Site

References

Further reading

• Introductory Bibliography of Published Sources on Cahokia Archeology
• Scholarly Bibliography of Published Sources on Cahokia Archaeology
• Chappell, Sally A. Kitt, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

• Emerson, Thomas (1997). Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama. ISBN 0-8173-0888-1. 

• Emerson, Iseminger; L. Michael Nance, Madeline Winslow, and Marilyn Gass (2001). Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site Nature/Culture Hike Guidebook, 4th revised edition. Collinsville, Illinois: Cahokia Mounds Museum Society, 79 pp. 

• Emerson, Thomas; Barry Lewis (1991). Cahokia and the Hinterlands: Middle Mississipian Cultures of the Midwest. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois. ISBN 0-252-06878-5. 

• Fowler, Melvin L., Jerome Rose, Barbara Vander Leest, Steven R. Ahler. "The Mound 72 Area: Dedicated and Sacred Space in Early Cahokia." (1999).

• Milner, George R. (2004). The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.. 

• Mink, Claudia Gellman (1992). Cahokia, City of the Sun: Prehistoric Urban Center in the American Bottom. Collinsville, IL: Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. ISBN 1-881563-00-6. 

• Pauketat, Timothy (1994). The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama. ISBN 0-8173-0728-1. 

• Price, Douglas T. and Gary M. Feinman. Images of the Past, 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-07-340520-9. pg. 280-285.

• Young, Biloine; Melvin L. Fowler (2000). Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois. ISBN 0-252-06821-1.  full text available at [2]

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Cahokia

• Cahokia Mounds Homepage and Map of the Site
• Cahokia: World Heritage Site, National Park Service
• Illinois Historic Preservation Agency: Cahokia Mounds.
• Cahokia summary
• "Metropolitan Life on the Mississippi", Washington Post, March 12, 1997.
• Mississippian Art and Artifacts
• Visitors' perspectives
• Woodhenge and the Cahokia Mounds

Maps and aerial photos

• Cahokia is at 38°39′31″N 90°03′41″W / 38.658611, -90.06138Coordinates: 38°39′31″N 90°03′41″W / 38.658611, -90.06138

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