36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mounds of mystery, September 7, 2009
This review is from: Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi (Penguin's Library of American Indian History) (Hardcover)
Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi (Penguin's Library of American Indian History)
I am a lay reader and know very little of archeology, but I have a special affinity for Cahokia. In 1967 my friend and I camped at what was then Cahokia Mounds State Park and were able to observe close-up a dig then in progress, with helpful explanations provided by the lone archeologist on-site. It seemed so painstaking, performed with fine instruments and brushes and, in so far as we could see at the time, it uncovered only shards and fragments.
Back then archeologists still had not grasped much of the significance of the site as it is now understood. At one time they believed it to be a ritual center, occupied only briefly by a few inhabitants. It is now known to have been a major eleventh- and twelfth-century populous urban center supported by surrounding farms, an early example of a government-sponsored urban renewal, a culture that marked a radical transformation in the history of indigenous Americans.
Well-told non-fiction accounts of archeological enterprises can draw in readers much like a good mystery, and Timothy Pauketat displays something of a novelist's touch here (although do not expect "Indiana Jones"). He recounts dozens of discoveries, generally in sufficient detail for readers to evaluate for themselves the evidence the archeologists were accumulating. Pauketat, himself a noted archeologist of the Cahokia site, clearly admires many of his predecessors and he gives us enough information about several to add an appealing human element to the narrative.
What most fascinates me is the breadth and detail of what archeologists are able to infer from what they find. Consider some of the more remarkable findings from Cahokia, the skeletal remains of females buried in groups in mounds and showing signs of violence (one such sign being clenched hands and feet, indicating spasms at the time of death). Many of these women seem to have been from someplace else, not Cahokia, based on their dental morphology and bone characteristics. Via isotope studies bioarchelogists can tell something about the women's diet (generally different than that of Cahokians), and they even venture judgments about the women's beauty based on their bone characteristics. These findings form one large piece of a body of evidence that enables the archeologists to conclude that notable features of Cahokian society included human sacrifice, political theater, and social inequality.
Sometimes the inferences can go too far, beyond the evidence. It seems to me, for example, that Pauketat is not on very solid ground in some of his speculations about the purposes or effects of the ritual sacrifices (although he is careful to present them only as possibilities, not certainties).
Of course not all of the mysteries of Cahokia are solved, including such major ones as where the people came from, why they disbanded (around the end of the twelfth century), and where they went. Pauketat says that most archeologists believe the Mississipian phenomenon, including Cahokia, was home-grown independent of Mesoamerican culture, but he seems to leave open the possibility of connections.
I was left wondering, for example, whether advances in skeletal DNA technology might help answer some of the remaining questions about the origins and destiny of the Cahokian people. The story is likely to have further chapters.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful Introduction, October 2, 2010
Cahokia is the modern name for the remarkable prehistoric mid-Missisippi urban center that flourished from around 1050 and the subsequent 2 centuries. While population estimates vary, Cahokia proper and its immediate hinterland probably boasted a population in the 10,000s. Cahokia was unprecedented north of Mesoamerica and there were no comparably sized urban centers north of Mexico until the Colonial period. Remarkably, Cahokia appears to have emerged preciptiously in the mid-llth century without any clear precursors. The author is a leading expert on the archaeology of Cahokia and prehistoric America. Pauketat primarily focuses on the archaeology of Cahokia and how these archaeological findings can be interpreted to reconstruct crucial features of Cahokia. There is some discussion of changing perspectives in archaeology and the history of Cahokia archaeology. Pauketat makes strong efforts to place Cahokia in a very wide perspective, trying to link Cahokia to Mesoamerican civilizations and to explore the possible long-term consequences of Cahokian culture for subsequent cultures. Pauketat suggests that Cahokia arose as a "Big Bang," probably as a result of a major cultural-religous innovation that produced a major ceremonial center and a relatively complex and violent polity. Pauketat suggests that Cahokian culture and the fall of Cahokia resonated across eastern and central North America for subsequent centuries. A prominent feature is the fragmentary nature of the evidence about Cahokia and prehistoric North America. Beyond the intrinsic limitations of the archaeological record, knowledge of Cahokia is limited by the fact that much of Cahokia and related sites were destroyed prior to modern archaeological investigations. Like other books in this series, the bibliography is excellent and a nice guide to further reading.
While this book contains a lot of interesting information, there are some significant limitations. Pauketat's general approach is to mix descriptions of important excavations with discussions of Cahokian history and culture. Unfortunately, this method results in information about Cahokia emerging implicitly rather than explicitly. A more conventional narrative approach supplemented by analysis of archaeological findings would probably have been better. Pauketat also focuses too much on the history of Cahokia archaeology; its really not that interesting to know about the personal quirks of some of the archaeologists involved. Finally, Pauketat's efforts to place Cahokia in larger context are admirable and interesting but not always convincing because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Spellbinding Book, October 7, 2009
This review is from: Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi (Penguin's Library of American Indian History) (Hardcover)
Pauketat is an archeologist of the Cahokia site, a 1000 year old native American city opposite present day St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi River. This book provides an excellent introduction to Cahokia and to the Mississippian culture. The author presents current anthropological theories and archaeological data in this single account.
Written for the general reader, the book brings considerable scholarship to a fascinating topic. Pauketat places Cahokia in a large regional context and incorporates the history of the site both as a living center and the largest and most important Native American city north of Mexico.
Pauketat's writing is far from a dry recitation of archaeological fact and trivia. He holds the lay reader's attention with his descriptive ability. Whether he is describing life as it was in this great city, explaining the game of chunkey or crediting Preston Holder, Melvin Fowler, Warren Wittry and others who were a part of the earlier generation of archaeologists of Cahokia, the narrative is not merely adequate, but spell-binding.
I highly recommend the book for general readers and specialists, alike.
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