This ambitious book provides a theoretical explanation of how prehistoric Cahokia became a stratified society, and ultimately the pinnacle of Native American cultural achievement north of Mexico. Considering Cahokia in terms of class struggle, Pauketat claims that the political consolidation in this region of the Mississippi Valley happened quite suddenly, around A.D. 1000, after which the lords of Cahokia innovated strategies to preserve their power and ultimately emerged as divine chiefs. The new ideas and new data in this volume will invigorate the debate surrounding one of the most important developments in North American prehistory.
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"Pauketat has set a benchmark for future synthetic treatments in the region. . . . Ascent of Chiefs stands as a welcome challenge to address complimentary issues in a comparable fashion."
—American Antiquity
"Pauketat enriches our understanding of Cahokia and stimulates productive debate."
—Warren DeBoer, The City University of New York
About the Author
Timothy R. Pauketat is an assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great research,now on to the book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,
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This review is from: The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America (Paperback)
the traditional view of the mississippian culture implies that these superchieftanships emerged along the mississippi river drainage areas and controlled vast territories from 1000 A.D. to 1400 A.D. then suddenly crashed due to warfare,drought,famine,cultural exhaustion,(or add your own cause here).This book refines this interpretation to where a completely different and complex picture emerges.The Mississippian complex at Cahokia is broken down into different phases,Lohman(early emergent Mississippian)to late Stirling phase and a couple in between each phase representing a distinct development that occurred at Cahokia.A book could undoubtedly be written on each of these phases alone. In even the earliest emergent phase Cahokia localities were already controlling nearby villages.As proof the author offers evidence from waste deposits(directly linked to this phase),that the "most desirable cuts of deer meat were being consumed at the Cahokia site".The author carefully uses this type of evidence and alot more examples to show the progression from early to late phases. There is also a well explained chapter on pottery that leaves on in awe.Since reading this book I can imagine the immense numbers of potters employed in this never ending labor,it must have struck one as one entered Cahokia during this period.I had previously imagined hunters filling the plaza with hunting or war trophies as a never ending game of Chunkey progresses in the plaza.Now I see the plaza covered with thousands of incised jars filled with about anything a person could think of. Pauketat also straightens out,using archaeological evidence,the question of populations of these Mississippian towns. In the 60's,it was said that Cahokia was a town of 38,000.Now that figure has been vastly downgraded as the Mississippian culture has been separated into phases and at its peak the population of Cahokia,was only a few thousand.Lastly Pauketat challenges the power and influence of these chieftanships,in actuality they controlled only a small local area and would have been in constant competition with other high ranking villages in the areas.There were apparently numerous rises and falls before the sites were abandoned permanently in the 1400's.Could it be the ceremonial complex at Cahokia no longer met the needs of the people who supported it?I have read previously in other works that the American Indian,"Sundance" ceremony of the plains Indians was probably instituted at Cahokia and as tribes abandoned this site and went west,they took this ceremony with them.The book is a fascinating read though i will admit i had trouble understanding the graphs and still don't.I had also never realized how many mounds were on the other side of East St. Louis and across the river where the city of St. Louis resides.Between the looting and destruction of so many of the mounds.one could wonder if a true picture of the Missippian culture around Cahokia could ever be completely accurate,but this book is a fresh attempt at it.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, But Misses Part of the Point....,
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This review is from: The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America (Paperback)
This book concerns the largest still-existing Mississippian site in North America, the Cahokia site in Illinois. While the book is very good, Pauketat misses a rather obvious piece of the puzzle, in my opinion - or at least, gives a big part of Cahokian society short shrift.
Mississippian cultures, of course, are those cultures building platform mounds, largely based on maize agriculture, with what appear to have been elements of a common belief system known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. They began to thrive in the late prehistoric era (roughly 900 A.D. until European contact. These cultures had hierarchical societies with commoners, nobles, and paramount leaders, and were the most complex cultures north of Mesoamerica. Cahokia is the largest known of the Mississippian cultures. Pauketat does a fantastic job correlating the purely material elements of Cahokian society, and mathematically correlating the different phases of Cahokian culture. But it is fairly clear from the archaeological record and historic accounts of the Mississippian cultures, such as those from the De Soto expedition, that Mississippian cultures were based on a common SYSTEM OF BELIEF. Pauketat's work, while highly useful and relevant, does not delve deeply enough into this aspect of Cahokian society nor fully extrapolate the ways in which the material evidence in the archaeological record would have been based on the Cahokian system of belief and cosmology, in my opinion. An good book for anyone wanting to learn more of Cahokian society - but one that could have been excellent with more attention to a critical part of this ancient culture.
4.0 out of 5 stars
purchas review,
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This review is from: The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America (Paperback)
i was hoping for more details on the sociology of the mississippians then the book provided. It did have good information about the evolution of the research done on mound buliding.
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