By the s, Cahokia had been abandoned due to floods, droughts, resource scarcity and other drivers of depopulation. UC Berkeley archaeologist A. White digs up sediment in search of ancient fecal stanols. Photo by Danielle McDonald. White, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in anthropology.
But little was done to test it. Her research showed that the soil on which the mound had been constructed was stable during the time of Cahokian occupation. The mound had been in a low-lying area near a creek that would likely have flooded according the wood-overuse hypothesis, but the soil showed no evidence of flood sediments.
The idea that societies fail because of resource depletion and environmental degradation—sometimes referred to as ecocide—has become a dominant explanatory tool in the last half century. And the reason for that is clear: We do see that happening in past societies, and we fear that it is happening in our own. Cahokians were part of what anthropologists call Mississippian culture—a broad diaspora of agricultural communities that stretched throughout the American Southeast between and A.
They cultivated corn and other crops, constructed earthen mounds, and at one point gathered into a highly concentrated urban population at Cahokia. Whether that was for political, religious, or economic reasons is unclear. Plains Indians hunted them sustainably. Tristram Kidder, an anthropologist at Washington University in St.
If Cahokians had just stopped cutting down trees, everything would have been fine. If we only started driving electric cars, everything will be fine. But the reality is much more complex than that, he says, and we have to grapple with that complexity. He knew at the time he presented his hypothesis that it was just a reasonable attempt to make sense of a mystery. There are clues. May 14, Monks Mound is the largest remaining mound at Cahokia, near Collinsville.
Photo by Tim Vickers. Samuel Munoz, right, examines a sediment core from Horseshoe Lake. Photo by Jessica Blois. Got something to say? Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print! Speaking of Black behind bars By Patrick Yeagle Feb 4, Mining decision challenged as illegal By Patrick Yeagle Oct 15, More ». Latest in News. Far from being a collection of villages or campsites, the homes were linked by courtyards and pathways, forming shared physical connections not unlike contemporary streets.
The habitants even plotted an east-west road that is essentially the route from the area to St Louis today. During its prime, Cahokia would have bustled with activity. Men hunted, grew and stored corn, and cleared trees for construction. Women tended to the fields and homes, made pottery, wove mats and fabrics, often performing work and social activity in the small courtyards and gardens outside each grouping of homes.
The posts were re-erected and dubbed Woodhenge by archaeologists who began researching the area in Excavations since the 60s have yielded fascinating information about this ancient city. Scholars have found artistic stone and ceramic figurines; Brown was part of team that discovered a small copper workshop adjacent to the base of one of the mounds.
Archaeological work has also discovered a mound containing mass burials. While the extent of it is debated, it appears the Mississippians may have conducted ritual human sacrifices, judging by what appears to be hundreds of people, mostly young women, buried in these mass graves. Some were likely strangled; others possibly died of bloodletting.
Four men were found with their heads and hands cut off; another burial pit had mostly males who had been clubbed to death.
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