Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power

Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power PDF Author: Thomas E. Emerson
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817308881
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The consolidation of this symbolism into a rural cult marks the expropriation of the cosmos as part of the increasing power of the Cahokian rulers.

Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power

Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power PDF Author: Thomas E. Emerson
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817308881
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The consolidation of this symbolism into a rural cult marks the expropriation of the cosmos as part of the increasing power of the Cahokian rulers.

Cahokia

Cahokia PDF Author: Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143117475
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. Louis While Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Built around a sprawling central plaza and known as Cahokia, the site has drawn the attention of generations of archaeologists, whose work produced evidence of complex celestial timepieces, feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of human sacrifice. Drawing on these fascinating finds, Cahokia presents a lively and astonishing narrative of prehistoric America.

Cahokia's Countryside

Cahokia's Countryside PDF Author: Mark Mehrer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875805658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
In this first comprehensive analysis of several recently uncovered sites in the American Bottom region, Mehrer focuses on household archaeology to shed light on the daily lives of the Mississippian people. He examines the objects of daily use--domestic and ceremonial buildings, storage and processing pits, mundane and exotic artifacts--to reconstruct the framework of everyday life and to show how the routines of early native people changed with time. New findings reveal the changing roles of households in their communities, exposing a social order more complex than previously thought. Mehrer examines seven sites in the American Bottom region--the Robert Schneider, BBB Motor, Turner-DeManger, Florence Street, Julien, Range, and Carbon Dioxide sites--and integrates his findings with new information from the large Cahokia mound center. Analyzing patterns of debris distribution, pit morphology and arrangement, and household organization, he reveals much about the social and cultural developments in the region. While illuminating the daily lives of Cahokians, Mehrer develops an analytical approach to archaeological site data that can be applied in other parts of the world. The Cahokia region is of special interest because the Cahokia site is the largest mound center in North America and because the Mississippian society there rose and fell long before Europeans arrived. Although archaeologists have previously focused on Cahokia's elite population, until now little has been known about its rural residents.

Cahokia

Cahokia PDF Author: Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803287655
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
About one thousand years ago, Native Americans built hundreds of earthen platform mounds, plazas, residential areas, and other types of monuments in the vicinity of present-day St. Louis. This sprawling complex, known to archaeologists as Cahokia, was the dominant cultural, ceremonial, and trade center north of Mexico for centuries. This stimulating collection of essays casts new light on the remarkable accomplishments of Cahokia.

Cahokia and the Hinterlands

Cahokia and the Hinterlands PDF Author: Thomas E. Emerson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Covering topics as diverse as economic modeling, craft specialization, settlement patterns, agricultural and subsistence systems, and the development of social ranking, Cahokia and the Hinterlands explores cultural interactions among Cahokians and the inhabitants of other population centers, including Orensdorf and the Dickson Mounds in Illinois and Aztalan in Wisconsin, as well as sites in Minnesota, Iowa, and at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Proposing sophisticated and innovative models for the growth, development, and decline of Mississippian culture at Cahokia and elsewhere, this volume also provides insight into the rise of chiefdoms and stratified societies and the development of trade throughout the world.

Feeding Cahokia

Feeding Cahokia PDF Author: Gayle J. Fritz
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817320059
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
An authoritative and thoroughly accessible overview offarming and food practices at Cahokia Agriculture is rightly emphasized as the center of the economy in most studies of Cahokian society, but the focus is often predominantly on corn. This farming economy is typically framed in terms of ruling elites living in mound centers who demanded tribute and a mass surplus to be hoarded or distributed as they saw fit. Farmers are cast as commoners who grew enough surplus corn to provide for the elites. Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland presents evidence to demonstrate that the emphasis on corn has created a distorted picture of Cahokia’s agricultural practices. Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture. Gayle J. Fritz shows that the division between the so-called elites and commoners simplifies and misrepresents the statuses of farmers—a workforce consisting of adult women and their daughters who belonged to kin groups crosscutting all levels of the Cahokian social order. Many farmers had considerable influence and decision-making authority, and they were valued for their economic contributions, their skills, and their expertise in all matters relating to soils and crops. Fritz examines the possible roles played by farmers in the processes of producing and preparing food and in maintaining cosmological balance. This highly accessible narrative by an internationally known paleoethnobotanist highlights the biologically diverse agricultural system by focusing on plants, such as erect knotweed, chenopod, and maygrass, which were domesticated in the midcontinent and grown by generations of farmers before Cahokia Mounds grew to be the largest Native American population center north of Mexico. Fritz also looks at traditional farming systems to apply strategies that would be helpful to modern agriculture, including reviving wild and weedy descendants of these lost crops for redomestication. With a wealth of detail on specific sites, traditional foods, artifacts such as famous figurines, and color photos of significant plants, Feeding Cahokia will satisfy both scholars and interested readers.

The Archaeology of Downtown Cahokia

The Archaeology of Downtown Cahokia PDF Author: Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780964488144
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
"The information, interpretations, and conclusions presented in this volume represent only one small portion of the outpouring of new ideas that have been produced by Dr. Timothy Pauketat's analysis of the Tract 15A and Dunham Tract archaeological remains. His research, which began in 1988, quickly produced a dissertation entitled The Dynamics of Pre-state Political Centralization in the North American Midcontinent followed by a theoretically oriented monograph, The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America, and numerous articles on the Cahokian sphere. Up until now, however, the structural and artifactual basis for Pauketat's innovative interpretations and new understanding of Cahokia have not been available to a wide audience. As Pauketat himself notes in his introduction, "significant advances in understanding past large-scale human organizations... require large archaeological samples" and additional advances demand that this information be made available to as wide an audience of fellow scholars as possible. This volume represents such a contribution to the present and future study of the great Cahokian center" -- From the publisher.

Cahokia's Complexities

Cahokia's Complexities PDF Author: Susan M. Alt
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081731976X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns increase understanding of early Mississippian culture and society The reasons for the rise and fall of early cities and ceremonial centers around the world have been sought for centuries. In the United States, Cahokia has been the focus of intense archaeological work to explain its mysteries. Cahokia was the first and exponentially the largest of the Mississippian centers that appeared across the Midwest and Southeast after AD 1000. Located near present-day East St. Louis, Illinois, the central complex of Cahokia spanned more than 12 square kilometers and encompassed more than 120 earthen mounds. As one of the foremost experts on Cahokia, Susan M. Alt addresses long-standing considerations of eastern Woodlands archaeology—the beginnings, character, and ending of Mississippian culture (AD 1050–1600)—from a novel theoretical and empirical vantage point. Through this case study on farmers’ immigration and resettling, Alt’s narrative reanalyzes the relationship between administration and diversity, incorporating critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns from outside of Cahokia. Alt examines the cultural landscape of the Cahokia flood plain and the layout of one extraordinary upland site, Grossman, as an administrative settlement where local farmers might have seen or participated in Cahokian rituals and ceremonies involving a web of ancestors, powers, and places. Alt argues that a farming district outside the center provides definitive evidences of the attempted centralized administration of a rural hinterland.

The Ascent of Chiefs

The Ascent of Chiefs PDF Author: Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817307281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Provides a theoretical explanation of how prehistoric Cahokia became a stratified society 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.

Cahokia Mounds

Cahokia Mounds PDF Author: William Iseminger
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614230056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
About one thousand years ago, a phenomenon occurred in a fertile tract of Mississippi River flood plain known today as the "American Bottom." This phenomenon came to be called Cahokia Mounds, America's first city. Interpreting the rich heritage of a site like Cahokia Mounds is a balancing act; the interpreter must speak as a scholar to the general public on behalf of an entirely different civilization. Since even those three groups are splintered into myriad dialects of perspective, sometimes it is hard to know what language to use. But William Iseminger's work at the site has given him nearly four decades of practice in Cahokia Conversation 101, and he tells the story of the place and its ancient culture (as well as its place in contemporary culture) with the clarity and confidence of a native speaker.