Indian Mounds Mystify Archeologists

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Indian Mounds

Mystify Archeologists

By Michelle Delio

Wired News

10-22-4

 

COLLINSVILLE, Illinois -- A thousand years ago along the banks of

the Mississippi River, in what is currently southeast Illinois,

there was a city that now mystifies both archeologists and

anthropologists.

 

At its zenith, around A.D. 1050, the city that is now called Cahokia

was among the largest metropolitan centers in the world. About

15,000 people lived in the city, with another 15,000 to 20,000

residing in its surrounding "suburbs" and outlying farmlands. It was

the region's capital city, a place of art, grand religious rituals

and science.

 

But by 1300, the city had become a ghost town, its carefully built

structures abandoned and its population dispersed.

 

Archeologists continue to comb what is now the Cahokia Mounds State

Historic Site, looking for clues that will tell them what happened

here -- why the city and its culture vanished and why the people who

lived here built more than a hundred earthen mounds, many of which

are still scattered across the countryside.

 

Cahokia is not the historical name of this city; the current name

comes from the native people who were living in the area when French

explorers arrived in the early 1600s. The city's authentic name --

the name given to it by its creators -- is lost to time, as its

residents did not appear to have a written language.

 

But what really puzzles archeologists and anthropologists is that

there are no legends, no records, no mention whatsoever of the once-

grand city in the lore of any of the tribes -- Osage, Omaha, Ponca

and Quapaw -- that are believed to be the direct descendents of the

city's builders.

 

This odd silence on the matter of Cahokia has led some experts to

theorize that something particularly nasty happened there.

Possibilities include an ugly struggle for power following a

leader's death, a government gone berserk, droughts, a period of

very cold weather that killed the crops, disease.... All have been

put forth as reasons for Cahokia's demise.

 

Whatever happened, it was bad enough that people just wanted to

forget Cahokia, according to Tim Pauketat, an associate professor of

archeology at the University of Illinois, who is excavating at

Cahokia.

 

Despite its hard-luck reputation, the Cahokia site feels immensely

peaceful today. There's no whiff of angst from an unsettled spirit

world, no sense that anything awful happened here.

 

The 2,200-acre site contains the central portion of what had been

roughly a 4,000-acre city. Scattered across the site are about 68

human-made mounds of various sizes, some no more than a gentle rise

on the land, others reaching 100 feet toward the sky.

 

Originally, there might have been more than 120 mounds, but the

locations of only 109 have been recorded. Many were altered or

destroyed over the last three centuries by farming and construction

projects.

 

The Cahokians made three different types of mounds -- pyramid-shaped

(with flat tops upon which important officials' houses and

ceremonial lodges were built), ridge-topped and conical. The latter

two were used for burials of wealthy citizens and sacrificial

victims.

 

Monks Mound, Cahokia's biggest mound, is a pyramid mound that rises

100 feet from its 14-acre base. Visitors can reach the top by

climbing the 141 stairs that pass through the mound's three tiers.

Archeologists have found that a large building -- 105 feet long, 48

feet wide and about 50 feet high -- was once positioned on top of

the mound. It's believed to have been the home of Cahokia's rulers.

 

Radiocarbon sampling of the earth that makes up the mound, as well

as tools and other artifacts discovered within it, indicates it took

250 years to build Monks Mound, from around A.D. 900 to 1150. The

mound was constructed by hauling 22 million cubic feet of dirt from

pits located a mile or so away. The dirt was piled into baskets and

dragged to the site by workers.

 

Cahokia also contains five "woodhenges," circles of erect posts that

served as celestial calendars, marking the seasonal solstices and

equinoxes.

 

Cahokia is exceptional for its size and complex city structure, but

it is not unique. Seventeen centuries ago, the Midwest was covered

with hundreds of such precisely aligned astronomical markers and

mounds.

 

These structures survived for close to two millennia before most

were plowed over in the 19th century, paved over in the 20th century

or destroyed by archaeologists digging to recover artifacts such as

pipes, pottery and other religious relics.

 

A team from the University of Cincinnati's Center for the Electronic

Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites, has been

virtually piecing together the fragments of the immense existing

earthworks built by three other prehistoric Native American

cultures -- the Adena, Hopewell and Fort Ancient peoples -- in the

area that now comprises Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. The

people who built Cahokia were of the Mississippian culture.

 

Using archaeological data gleaned from remote-sensing devices that

can detect remains below the ground, and infrared aerial photographs

and satellite images to figure out where the earthworks had been

located and what they looked like, the University of Cincinnati team

is virtually rebuilding the mounds, using standard architectural

rendering software. The result will be interactive programs that

show how the river valleys of the Midwest would have looked when the

mounds were new.

 

At Cahokia, most of the mounds still exist, though some were

destroyed before the site was protected. Two mounds that provided a

clear view of a drive-in movie theater's screen several miles away

were removed in the 1960s to stop people from watching films for

free.

 

Anthropologists said it's critical to preserve the mounds, which

contain many clues about Cahokian culture. While no longer in danger

of being leveled for commercial purposes, the mounds are fragile and

subject to environmental degradation. State budget cuts have made it

difficult to ensure that rain doesn't wash away the remnants of what

is the only known prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico.

 

A recent excavation of a small ridge-top mound -- Mound 72 --

exposed the bodies of nearly 300 people, mostly young women believed

to be sacrificial victims, who'd been buried in mass graves. Nearby

is the burial site of a man believed to have been a ruler, about 45

years of age, whose body lies on a blanket of more than 20,000 shell

beads, surrounded by piles of arrow tips from tribes that inhabited

the present-day states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and

Wisconsin. They were presumably given as a tribute to the deceased.

 

Archeologists believe other bodies buried near the ruler are the

remains of those who were sacrificed to serve him in the next life.

But the skeletons of four men with their heads and hands missing

were also found near the largest sacrificial pit, and no one is

quite sure why these bodies were mutilated before being buried.

 

Certainly, a headless, handless body wouldn't make for a good

servant.

 

Every new discovery here raises more questions than it answers about

Cahokia, said Bill Iseminger, assistant site manager at Cahokia

Mounds.

 

"I believe that new archeological technology will absolutely allow

us to solve many of the mysteries of Cahokia," Iseminger said. "But

right now, what with the budget cuts, we're focused mostly on

keeping the site intact, just trying to survive so that we can make

more people aware of the complexity and brilliance of Native

American culture."

 

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