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Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi (Penguin's Library of American Indian History)

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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.

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.

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.

I'll be in Cahokia in a week so I'm reading this book to prepare. It's text is fine, but I find it HUGELY frustrating that the author hasn't bothered to illustrate the artifacts he discusses, or the rock art. I have to keep running to the internet to try to see what the heck he is talking about. It's HIGHLY unusual for an archaeological book to have one line drawing and a so so map, and NOTHING more. It seems lazy to me.

Starting somewhere around 1050 AD, the small Indian village of Cahokia suddenly rose up to be the center of a great North-American culture, perhaps the only great culture in pre-Columbian North-America. Not a great deal is known about the culture that Cahokia led, as it had already fallen by the time that European explorers and missionaries arrived. In this little book, anthropologist Timothy R. Pauketat explains all that is truly known about Cahokia, and how it was found out.

Overall, I found this to be an interesting book, as long as you don't expect too much from it. By its small size, you know at a glance that it is not going to tell you too much. My biggest complaint is that I do wish that the author had spent more time putting what is known about Cahokia into the context of what is known about North-American native culture in general. I feel that this would have drawn a fuller picture of Cahokia. However, I must admit that this would have required a certain amount of speculation and assumption by the author, and he clearly wanted to avoid that in this book.

Another complaint against this book is that it contains no illustrations at all, and that is a shame. Certainly images of what the author was describing would have helped in understanding things. But, that said, much of what the author did talk about really did not require illustrations.

I believe that the author did succeed in what he wanted to accomplish, and that is to pen a book about what it *known* about Cahokia, avoiding unnecessary and untenable speculation. I found the book informative and interesting to read, even if it was a little limited in its scope. If you want to really understand Cahokia, then I would highly recommend that you get this book, it is a very good resource.

The Book Report: Where today sits St. Louis, Missouri, there once sat a huge Native American city we call Cahokia, absent any other name for it, relating it to a creek that flows through the five-square-mile extent of the known city and suburbs. There are Indian mounds galore here, and there even is a state park over on the Illinois side of the river. Serious archaeology has been done mostly in front of the bulldozers and the plows of farmers, developers, and the highway builders. Pauketat is one of the region's many dirt archaeologists, the guys who go out and trench interesting sites and keep uber-meticulous notes and drawings and samples of stuff. (GOD doesn't that sound like a painful bore?) Thanks to him and his colleagues, we now know that some sort of major urbanization kick hit the area in 1054 and ended in tears about 1250. Why? (On both counts.) Who? What the hell? Those are the questions raised by the archeology, and treated in concise chapters in this book.

My Review: I am not joking when I say concise. This entire book comes in at 170pp of author's text, plus 15pp of notes and an index. Not a challenging read, right? Wrong. The information conveyed in these pages, with about the expected level of grace from an academic writing about his pernickety, obsessive specialty, is rich and deep. I found myself taking week-long pauses at times, not "oh god what a slog" pauses but "...wait...what...no...wait..." pauses while my inner Bill and Ted tried to work out the IMMENSE and IMPORTANT implications of what I was learning.

Immense indeed. Native Americans are all-too-frequently hagiogrpahized as natural-world-lovin' harmony seekers. Oh really? Explain then, if you please, the six separate sites with as many as seventy sacrificed women buried in the trenches in front of which they were clubbed to death in this MATRILINEAL society? In ranks, meaning the next row stood there while the first row was clubbed to death. Why did the different-genetic-stock neighborhoods outlying Cahokia show the signs of poor diet and overwork that one expects to see in the lower classes, and that are absent from the downtowners? Why is there evidence from as far away as Wisconsin that the Cahokian religion was being proselytized and effectively forced down the throats of the locals via economic might?

Why are these Living Saints, as many counterculture woo-woos have it, suddenly shopping for shoes in the feet of clay department?

I confess that I am uber-gleeful about this. I do not subscribe to a worldview that, once upon a time, before icky-ptoo-ptoo Men got hold of things, there was a beautiful wonderful peaceful womanly world, and matrilineality is the last teensy vestige of that demi-Paradise. Ha! All these sacrifices, hugely overwhelmingly female, in a matrilineal society? Oh dear, got some blood on those girly-hands, don't we?

I also don't for a second buy the "living-in-harmony-with-Mother-Earth" story either. These folks stripped the local landscape bare and planted what supported their chosen life-style. No European involvement possible. When it all came to a halt, the violence of the Plains eternal wars began, and never ended. Massacres (google "Crow Creek" just for giggles), colonization, oh the fun that people have when the lid of powerful neighbors is lifted...all here, present and accounted for in the archeaological record!

So should you read this book? Not unless you're already interested in archeology. If you're a leftover hippie, it's likely to hurt too much. If you're wanting an overview, this ain't it. Definitely for the serious-minded reader.

Journey back to the eleventh century when North America was a wide open continent teaming with wildlife and nature, where the native peoples were in the minority, where natural resources were in abundance, and where life was different. Travel up the Mississippi and when you get to a place near to what would one day be the city of St. Louis, you will find great flat-top pyramids reaching into the sky, and a place teaming with activity and people. You have reached the ancient and once great city of Cahokia.

Excavations were begun in the area of what would turn out to be the city of Cahokia in the early twentieth century, with a combination of some lucky guesses for sites, and with the great revolution to map America with highways, crucial archeological digs were discovered. In some cases, prosperity destroyed some of these sites, but many others were found and excavated. Author and professor of anthropology at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Timothy R. Pauketat, weaves the history and story of this city and culture with the incredible work that was done to excavate and learn about it.

Cahokia is a short book filled with facts and details about a place that few know about, but through crucial research and discovery, it is possible to ascertain through subsequent Native American tribes and populations, what this great city was once like. In this way, readers find out what the stories and mythologies of these people might have been, as well as why the pyramids were built, and why there was such large-scale human sacrifice going on. While there is a lacking in photos and pictures to aid and illustrate in Pauketat's narrative, Cahokia will still startle you and leave you in awe of what was once a great American city that remains relatively unknown.

[...]

A fascinating read describing what may be the most important archeological site in the US. Little known in its own country, sites associated with the Mississippians in the Cahokia area are presently in danger due to highway expansion in the St. Louis Metro area. In the past sites where destroyed through farming,urban sprawl,levee construction and the original interstate highway system.Preserving the remaining sites are an essential part of our historical heritage. Presently the area is primarily under the state of Illinois and funding for expansion and research is limited. As a designated World Heritage Site possibly Federal assistance would be in order.

Cahokia, Illinois dumps any notion of American Indians as "innocent, noble savages" right on its head. It is one of the oldest and most sophisticated examples of urban planning in the New World. Long before white men arrived, Cahokia sems to have attracted thousands of spectators and settlers from far,far away.

Little known is known about how and why Cahokia was developed or why its thousands of residents vanished. The book leaves the reader with a sense of awe and not many solid facts.

Pauketat does a good job of providing an overview of the work of Cahokian archaeologists and presents their educated guesses about this eleventh century AD metroplex. After reading this book, you will want to know more, and you will probably begin Googling to find pictures of Cahokian artifacts.

Because the first seven chapters are mostly theory, there may be a temptation to stop reading before you "get to the good part." Students may want to begin reading this book at Chapter 8 and continue to the end; then go back to read chapters 1-7.

It is worth reading the related National Geographic article dated January 2011 and the UNESCO report on Cahokia before plunging into this book.

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware

A taut little documentary about a mystery. I can't be alone among the millions of well-informed contemporary Americans who never knew about this sprawling, rich, strange city that flourished in mid-continent around the 10th century. Pauketat tells the reader what's known about Cahokia, what's unknown, and what probably never will be known. He assembles clues: bones, petroglyphs, geography. He lays them out without sentiment (and pointing out, at times, that lack of sentiment, particularly as it touches on American's romanticization of the gentle, Gaia-friendly, peaceable folk of the current stereotype). Cahokia was a vital, brutal place, full of imperialist tendencies and what may have been history's most enthusiastic sports fans (in games that cost people's lives and fortunes). The grassy hills near St. Louis hide rows and stacks of gorgeously butchered corpses, fastidiously arrayed after their slaughter, and their dead magnificence will keep archaeologists guessing for centuries to come.