Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City On The Mississippi

by Timothy R. Pauketat, George K. Wilson

Professor Timothy R. Pauketat illuminates the riveting discovery of the largest pre-Columbian city on U.S. soil. Once a flourishing metropolis of 20,000 people in 1050, Cahokia had rotted away by 1400. Its earthen mounds near modern-day St. Louis reveal "woodhenges" and evidence of large-scale human sacrifice.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Anthropology, American History, Native American, Native American History

MP3 Book

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tim Pauketat is an archaeologist and professor of Anthropology and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He previously taught at the State University of New York in Buffalo and the University of Oklahoma. Professor Pauketat is interested in the study of ancient religion and urbanism, and has been excavating the pre-Columbian colonies and pilgrimage sites of the Cahokian civilization around St. Louis north into Wisconsin. The author or editor of a dozen scholarly books, Tim also writes for nonprofessional audiences, recently including a book entitled Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi (Penguin, 2010).

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Almost a thousand years ago, a Native American city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Cahokia was a thriving metropolis at its height with a population of twenty thousand, a sprawling central plaza, and scores of spectacular earthen mounds. The city gave rise to a new culture that spread across the plains; yet by 1400 it had been abandoned, leaving only the giant mounds as monuments and traces of its influence in tribes we know today.

In Cahokia, anthropologist Timothy R. Pauketat reveals the story of the city and its people as uncovered by the dramatic digs of American corn-belt archaeologists. These excavations have revealed evidence of a powerful society, including complex celestial timepieces, the remains of feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of large-scale human sacrifice.

Drawing on these pioneering digs and a wealth of analysis by historians and archaeologists, Pauketat provides a comprehensive picture of what's been discovered about Cahokia and how these findings have challenged our perceptions of Native Americans. Cahokia is a lively read and a compelling narrative of prehistoric America.

My Review: 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.

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.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping to read more about Cahokia itself as it was, but it felt like more than half of the book was actually dedicated to the story of the archaeologists who uncovered various parts of it. It's nice to know about, I guess, but as a non-archaeologist I had a hard time visualizing the descriptions of the digs.

The remainder, the interesting tidbits, were (fittingly, I guess) buried between long stretches of the archaeologist narrative. The reader can catch glimpses of Cahokian ritual, myth, and city/rural life, but the whole is not synthesized into an impressive story.

Ultimately, after reading the book I know more about Cahokia than I did before (which was basically nothing), but I can't help feeling that there is a really *exciting* story to be told here. Forget story, even - there are some really interesting facts to be presented in an interesting way. Despite the intriguing or tongue-and-cheek chapter titles ("Wrestling with the Gods", "High Plains Drifting"), this book didn't deliver in that area.

[Mesoscope · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book tells the wrong story, devoting most of its short length to the excavation of Cahokia by generations of researchers, and offering the reader little information about the site itself.

It's a very odd decision. I don't know if Pauketat, himself an academic and excavator, believed that these details are more interesting than they actually are, or if he was searching for a way to "tell a story" with it, to make it more appealing for a general audience.

There are many cases in which excavation work is fascinating, but this is not one of them. Cahokia has been picked over for more than a century, primarily by obscure academics, graduate students and public works employees, often racing ahead of the highway construction that criss-crossed the enormous site.

There's a certain drama in frantically digging late into the night to beat the road crews, but it's not exactly the stuff of Heinrich Schliemann.

The truth is, we know very little about Cahokia, and who lived there, and what they did, and why they abandoned the site, and where they went. The paucity of information we possess is rendered still more obscure by Pauketat's vague references to "complex debates" about such matters in the literature. I would have loved for him to dwell a bit more on some of them.

The fact is, I could care less about the head of the archaeology department at UI, Champaign-Urbana in 1955 or whatever. What I'm interested in is Cahokia.

Yeah, not too illuminating.

[Bryn Greenwood]

This is a very academic book with a great deal of scholarly detail, and so it may not be to everyone’s taste. However, I highly recommend for the simple fact that most people have no idea that between the 11th & 14th centuries, a city as big as London once stood close to where St. Louis, Missouri, sprawls along the banks of the Mississippi. Colonization & white supremacy have for so long been invested in keeping this sort of information out of the public school system, it really matters for adults to educate themselves about the cultures that began (and in many cases still continue) on this continent, long before Europeans showed up.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The findings at Cahokia call into question some long-held beliefs -- for instance, that ecologically sensitive, peaceful, mystical and egalitarian peoples freely roamed the North American continent, never overpopulating or overexploiting their environments . . . and that they could not have built cities or allowed power to be concentrated in the hands of the elites" (3).

"something significant happened in the Midwest a thousand years ago" (24).

importance of chunkey as political-religious game

mounds appear to have been laid out according to an overall plan/complex

Harriet Smith was an archaeologist in 1941. New version of Amelia Peabody?

Both mounds at Cahokia and rock art at Gottschall and Painted Cave point to "the emergence by the mid-eleventh century of a powerful cultural narrative surrounding heroic characters who are identified in one way or another with supernatural thunderbird deities, arrows, special nipple or ear ornaments, disembodied human heads, and the afterlife or underworld." (91).

While there are similarities of theme between MesoAmerican and Cahokian art and architecture, "the giants, the thunderbird associations, the red hair, and, especially, the human head earrings . . . are distinctive features of the north American narratives that suggest something more than random retellings of a mesoamerican myth. Paul Radin thought there was something more to the history of ht enarratives that suggested memories of specific North Amerian events or North American people" (97).

ridgetop mounds found nowhere else but Cahokia (99)

[Sud666 · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the joys of being on a University campus is the sheer amount of different disciplines I encounter. A colleague of mine from the Archeology Dept was talking about Serpent mounds in Ohio and then recommended this book. It is a look at the lost great metropolis called Cahokia. This was a very good book, though it runs rather dry and emphasizes the archeology aspects more than history (my field). So a lay reader may find this a rather dull tale. But it is still worth reading.

Cahokia was a Pre-Colombian Native American city that was located by modern day St. Louis. It was a startling find in that it showed that the indigenous population of America had, in the past, raised an impressive city. This city had influence far beyond its borders and formed almost a proto-empire. From the sports it played to religious ceremonies, to art styles, many Cahokian cultural aspects spread across the Meso-American sphere.

Covering the different digs throughout the ages and the materials found, this book paints a picture of a fascinating society. It is also important, like any real history, that it dispels pop culture nonsense about how peaceful Native Americans were. The evidence of ritualistic murders and violent warfare was common. There is an interesting idea that Chaokia's expansionist policies and culture may have sown violent tendencies among other tribes and that led to their demise when weak Chaokian leaders came into power .

An interesting book about a culture I was unaware of. While dry this is still a rather interesting topic.

[Elizabeth K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will always remember my Time-Life Mysteries of the Ancient World book, which featured a misty picture of the Cahokia mounds and informed us that no one knows who built these mysterious mounds, or why, (oooOOOoooOOOOooo) before moving on to Easter Island. Either the Time-Life people were slacking off, or more discoveries have been made, because there's enough interesting information about the Cahokians to fill a (small) book.

There's still a lot of "maybe ... or then again, maybe not" going on, there is a lot of speculation, but the book contains plenty of satisfying urban planning, human sacrifice (I made notes in case the 2nd Avenue subway construction drags on too long) and iconography. As a bonus, the author deadpans his way through the recounting of the most entertaining Native American myth I have ever come across.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

About a week ago, I visited Cahokia Mounds museum and archaeological site in southeastern Illinois. It was the site of the Cahokian Native American urban area, a planned city founded around 1050 A.D., that fell and disappeared prior to the arrival of European settlers, and thus has been much more of a mystery to us than, say, the Iroquois or Cherokee, or the Incas or Aztecs. While at the museum, I bought this book, in part because I had read with interest the previous book on the subject by the same author.

Despite the fact that we have known that somebody built these "mounds" (which, if they had been made of stone and been built in a desert, we would call "pyramids") for hundreds of years, much of what has been learned about them has come in the last half century. In part, this is because archaeology in general has become a more powerful set of skills and tools for inferring from what is there, what was once there. It also has to be said, however, that for some time the modern inhabitants of the area had no great interest in anyone outside acquiring much curiousity about their predecessors. The author tells us that when Preston Holder was hired in the early 1950's as a professor in archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, he was surrounded by peers who specialized in the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean world. That a university not thirty miles from Cahokia hired several specialists in the ancient civilizations of a region on the other side of the world, before hiring their first specialist in Cahokia, speaks to how clearly uninterested they were in learning about what they were building on top of. But then, several other universities in the area didn't even have one specialist in Cahokia. Sites which were likely nearly as large as Cahokia were present in St. Louis and East St. Louis, but they were bulldozed to make way for suburbs and interstate highways without much archaeological work being done, and what was done was under a tight time schedule with little budget.

In the half century since then, the situation has improved somewhat. Pauketat takes us through what is known, what is not known, and what was once believed but now ruled out. The book tells us two stories in parallel: the story of what happened at Cahokia, and the story of how modern archaeologists came to know it. I wish there were more maps, diagrams, pictures, and so forth, but the publisher, Penguin, may not have been willing to do much of that for cost reasons. It's a particular sticking point for me, and others may not care as much, since Pauketat's writing is good.

What he leaves us with, of course, is still more questions than answers. Unlike many other civilizations, including New World ones, where a city rose to imperial heights and then fell, there was no large body of legends about Cahokia, even among the peoples who were clearly descended from it. One of the things which has been amply demonstrated, is that the Cahokians were no idyllic noble savages, living in harmony with nature and each other. They built a city, largely if not entirely by those who were powerful taking the surplus food from those who were not. More than one site of mass human sacrifice has been discovered. One had 53 women skeletons laid in a single mass grave, most or all of them killed just prior to being laid there all at once, suggests a scene which is neither idyllic nor noble. Do we have no legends of fallen Cahokia, like we do of Troy or Rome, because it was not something that the people who had escaped it wished to remember?

Of course, there are many other possible ways to explain the findings at Cahokia, and the many other sites around North America which show evidence of being part of the Cahokian culture. Without a written record to go by, we have the danger of allowing our imagination too free reign to interpret what is there. Pauketat does a good job of trying to point out how much is unknown, especially in regards to questions such as the degree of influence (if any) which the Mesoamerican cultures had on Cahokia. He also does a pretty good job of pointing out how previous generations of archaeologists (and the rest of us) projected our own expectations onto the limited evidence available, which is a cautionary tale for modern attempts to figure out just what happened.

This much, however, is clear:
1) around the year 1050, there was a dramatic change in the settlement at Cahokia, as it increased dramatically in size and went from an organically evolved, disorganized state to a planned, showpiece city, set up for public ceremonies of some sort before a large audience
2) for the next couple centuries, the culture (art, tools, crops, etc.) of Cahokia spread to many other settlements for hundreds of miles in every direction, perhaps sometimes through colonization but at least sometimes because other Native American peoples began to emulate (whether of their own choice or because forced to) the Cahokian culture
3) then, this widespread sphere of influence of Cahokia collapsed, such that by the time European explorers arrived a few centuries later, little was remembered or known about it

Such an abrupt rise and fall is a mystery, and this is interesting if you're the sort who likes mysteries. If you can't stand cliffhangers, though, this may not be your kind of book, because the mystery of the rise and fall of Cahokia is very much still an open question. If you can deal with that, though, Pauketat's book is a great way to get absorbed in it.

[Unwisely · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, right, a book about Native American History in the US. I'm somewhat better on pre-Columbian Latin American history, but after reading this I have determined it's possible that I don't know anything because no one knows that much, not just because I'm an ignoramus.

Anyway, this is not quite as engrossing as some science-for-the-masses books, probably due to the paucity of source material. The author is careful to footnote things and admit what is unknown, so it's interesting and educational, but not quite "stay up all night reading it".

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for solid info. about Hopewell mounds, artifacts, and culture and was disappointed with the scant info. about ancient America. It had a few morsels but was lacking.

[Joe Binzley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book. It was fun to learn about the influence one society can have on an entire region even after its demise. The book also gave me a better understanding of the process archeologists follow and how historical narratives change over time with shifting perspectives and new physical evidence.

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of mounds and men

Over the course of my life I'd heard about "Mound Builders", about a city somewhere in the Mid-West built by Indians, and seen a few odd photos of objects found in the mounds that were located out there somewhere. I never really put it all together. Now, thanks, to this excellent review of the knowledge that we have of that surprising development in America's ancient history, I feel that I have a basic grasp of what happened---or at least what archaeologists THINK happened. With no written records and precious little data to go on, archaeologists have gathered an amazingly complex picture of the sudden appearance of Cahokia, a large town (or for that time, city, surrounded by farms and villages, not far from modern St. Louis across the Mississippi River in Illinois. It had a huge plaza, pyramids topped with houses, a large collection of other buildings, and horrifying mass burials of sacrificed humans. Why did this city suddenly rise around the year 1054 ? Was there any connection to the supernova that was visible then ? Why also did it disappear about 150 years later ? Where did the people go ? Was there any connection to a particular religion ? How did the people live ? What role did women have ? What kind of rulers did they have? How far did Cahokia's influence spread ? Was there any connection to Mexico or to the ancient mound builders of Louisiana ? Archeologists have tried to answer these and many other questions. Pauketat has summed up our knowledge so far as well as described the actual research methods and efforts. Nineteenth century America never was much in the mood for Indian civilizations. Interstate highways and interchanges, not to mention cheap tract housing in the 20th century, nearly obliterated all evidence. People destroyed a huge amount of potential information before governments finally took a concerned interest and stopped the bulldozers. Nobody knows what was lost. Anthropologists have added to our knowledge by combing through the legends of such Mid-Western and Plains tribes as the Sioux, Pawnee, Ho-Chunk, Sauk, Osage, and Iowa, trying to connect stories with objects or ancient memories. The results are tantalizing but scarce. While descriptions of the various researchers may be superfluous, they are interesting too. Anyway, if archaeology, American history, and Native American culture interest you, you can't miss this book.

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I wanted was more than just a bunch of boring stories about excavations at the Cahokia mounds near St. Louis. I wanted something like a vivid recreation of the long-forgotten past. Thousands of warriors dancing in colorful costumes up and down the pyramid stairs! Beautiful maidens being sacrificed to frowning stone gods! Decadent chieftains feasting out of human skulls!

Instead the whole book was like, "the presence of a chunkey stick within the burial cavern of Mound 138 suggests very strongly that the game of chunkey may have had serious mystical overtones. We can visualize games taking place at certain times of the year, in alignment with certain astronomical events. In the Mayan culture, the transit of Venus was often commemorated by socio-cultural-ritual observations of certain highly stylized rites . . ."

Professor Pauketat, you need to be beaten to death by the sacred skeletons of sixteen year old girls waving sacred chunkey sticks!

[valpal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating book about the discovery and archeology of the Cahokia sites. I didn't know much about this preColumbian site and found it quite interesting.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book for non-archaeologists about this extraordinary place in the middle of America that was once the site of America's first city.

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. This might be the longest single book on the topic of Cahokia, that's for general readers and not academic? And it's an engaging read, though really more about the various archaeological discoveries of Cahokia and what folks thought they meant at the time, rather than a presentation of a unified theory about Cahokia with archaeological digs as evidence. (Which is what I keep looking for but maybe doesn't exist *sob*.)

Even having been published in 2009, this slim book (170p.) is a good entry point for those who are just realizing that the North American land mass had another "great society" of indigenous people to count among the more well-known ones like the Maya and Aztecs. The author is one of the archaeologists that have worked the site, and his theory, insofar as he has one, is that Cahokia represents a "big bang" of development, perhaps kicked off by a well-documented supernova on July 4, 1054, and that flourished for about 100 years before coming to an end for unexplained reasons - but nonetheless having a huge impact on the indigenous societies that followed.

Throughout the book, we learn about a game "chunkey" that seems was central to this society, as well as a bit about different ethnic groups mixing at Cahokia - since we know there was human sacrifice performed - and explore the question of whether or not the civilization at Cahokia was connected to the better-known ones in Central America.

But what I mostly remember learning is how trashed the site of Cahokia is. In the 1800s the first Europeans were plowing over the mounds and that basically continued up until they started building interstate highways through it. Much of what Pauketat relates sounds like it's within the realms of "rescue archaeology." It's heartbreaking to contemplate what might have been lost over the years to help answer questions about this society.

Another thing that's notable about this book is that it does try to make connections to the people at Cahokia and how they may have been connected to Plains Indian nations that we are familiar with. I didn't think it would be possible to make connections like that, and it has made me curious to find indigenous scholarship and/or writing on the issue.

Overall, an interesting book, especially on the history of the archaeology of the Cahokia site - but I still have questions left unanswered about the society itself and the people! At least I now understand better why there isn't as much information out there about Cahokia.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timothy Pauketat offers an archaeologist's perspective on Cahokia in this thought-provoking book. Located east of St. Louis, Cahokia was an indigenous metropolis that flourished around 1100 before being abandoned in the 1300s. Larger than London in its time, it was defined by massive human-made mounds...as well as a culture of human sacrifice that left dozens of female bodies beneath the dirt.

Pauketat does a good outlining the history of Cahokia's archaeology, from European settlers plowing down massive mounds in St. Louis to the whole site being threatened by highway development. Along the way, amateur and professional archaeologists led excavations increasing in their complexity. As they did, they discovered relics, the aforementioned bodies, and evidence that the people of Cahokia transformed their environment at a massive scale.

"Cahokia" is more of a scholarly take than a speculative one; the author offers some conjecture on daily life in Cahokia, but he stays focused on strata levels and carbon dating. Still, he does draw larger connections between Cahokia and populations around the larger Midwest. He also suggests connects to Mesoamerican civilizations, suggesting that founding members of Cahokia's dynasties may have witnessed the power of ritual and established it at home to cement their power.

Much of Cahokia's story is impossible to know. No written records exist; oral histories have fragmented and frayed over time. But it's fascinating to imagine what life was like at this indigenous metropolis, and Pauketat's "Cahokia" offers firm grounding for conjecture.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have fond memories of visiting Cahokia with my first archaeology professor. This book reminded me of the bits I knew and fascinated me with the parts I hadn’t known. One thing that surprises me is how reluctant many are to consider that the indigenous American population might have mythic stories that are rooted in historical events or might have representations of maps. We generally accept that Schliemann was right in that Greek myths had a basis in historical fact (I dislike Schliemann for other reasons, but in this idea he was a pioneer), yet when archaeologists suggest similar things with the Mississippian peoples, many scoff. Why?
I did roll my eyes at some of the people disputing that the Mississippians would’ve been able to make maps. If they didn’t, I would wonder how they were able to make repeated contact with far-flung parts of America.
In all, I found this book to be a good discussion of what we know about Cahokia, what we don’t know, and what we can possibly extrapolate from the data.

[Sandra The Old Woman in a Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for the intriguing content. This is my “Illinois” book for my 50-state challenge this year. Last year I read The Nix which was a contemporary novel. This year I went back to ~1200 CE to read more about one of the most complex native cities in all of the Americas. This filled in some historic holes for me, and I will certainly spend some time at these historic mounds during a future road trip.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Good review of Cahokia’s archeological history. Paired with some of the theories surrounding Mississippian culture, the book made for a good overview but left me wanting more

[Mallory · Rating 3 out of 5]

After visiting the Etowah Indian Mounds site in Georgia earlier this summer, I was inspired to pick up this book that had been sitting on my shelf for awhile. I readily admit I do not know much American history that is pre-European. This was an interesting look into what an active, vibrant, growing civilization might have looked like and how they were distinctive cultural influencers for their time.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great city, huge temples, a large central playing field, planned communities built on the rubble of previous towns, outlying communities where immigrant labor, poorly fed, work fields of corn to feed the urbanites: urbanization, urban renewal, immigrant labor - it's all here, starting perhaps with the observation of a supernova in 1054...and has been gone since the inhabitants disappeared in the 1300-1400's. A testament to the lack of historical credibility of the savage-in-the-woods slander that constitutes the too-often-common opinion of the first peoples of the Americas.

One large remaining mystery, according to the author, is the lack of knowledge about Cahokia among the Eastern Woodland people. It got me to thinking that perhaps the fabled city of Norumbega truly existed, on the banks of the Mississippi. Well-told. Left me wanting to learn more.

[Karen Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent discussion of the most important pre-Columbian site north of the Rio Grande. The writer describes the process of digging the site and explains how the dig results show what life was like when the city flourished. I particularly like the fact that he's not inclined to the "noble savage" school of thought and fairly describes the Cahokians as, to the best he can, as they really were, subject to the same flaws as the rest of us. Not worse, not better, just accurate. An appropriate book for Columbus Day. (Incidentally, Cahokian civilization collapsed about a century before 1492.)

[Gregory Mele · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slim, very accessible look not only at the mysterious metropolis that lived right in southern Illinois in the 11th - 13th centuries, but how the history of its study and excavation mirrors the study of American anthropology in studying native populations.

In the end, the work is limited by a) the fact that we just don't know -- the story of the site keeps changing with new finds and without written records, centuries before European contact and the bungling of Whites in studying native cultures when those cultures were still intact, we likely never will, b) images -- there is a single map that does little to explain what the city might have looked like; be ready to Google.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems like not a huge amount is known of Cahokia, and I appreciated that Pauketat doesn't indulge the temptation to just make up a story around what we do know to make the book more palatable. This reads more like a summary of the academic literature, with citations and detailed explanations about how we know what we know than it does a popular history / archeology treatment of the subject. I feel like this approach is under-appreciated, so while I'd probably give this a 3.5/5 rating, I'm rounding up to 4 in the UI.

3.5 of 5 stars

[Timothy Corrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hell if I knew that the ruins of an eleventh-century metropolis sits across the river from St. Louis. Unfortunately, what remains was built with earth, and the convening years have not been kind (though the lumpen, eroded sadness which is the central pyramid mound can still boast being the fourth largest pyramid in the Americas).

Great if you've ever wondered what the social and political landscape of North America looked like prior to the European invasion.

[Keith Akers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing style isn't like the DaVinci Code, but maybe that's a good thing. It does a good, clear job of explaining the whole history of Cahokia that we know of, cutting back and forth from the present to the past. The history of the archeological excavations, with some sites lost to "progress" but the key site (apparently) preserved, is itself fairly dramatic.

[Emma OBrien · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating account of a civilization I knew nothing about, despite having a BA in History and Urban Studies. I can't believe this history is not more widely known and taught in the US.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got through this book but it was a struggle. Maybe this was intended for readers who already knew something about these people. Very dry reading.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture by Aaron Deter-Wolf, a Prehistoric Archaeologist at the TN Division of Archaeology on recent discoveries using modern technology at the Mound Bottom State Archaeological Area in Harpeth River State Park near Nashville, TN. He mentioned the site was built by the Cahokians, and that in 1050 AD they built the largest city in North America near what is now St. Louis. The population there rivaled that of London. I did stop at the site for a very brief visit about six years ago while on a road trip, but didn’t appreciate its significance then. I was intrigued to learn more, So tracked down this book.

This is really more of a book about archeology than it is about Cahokia, and it has more of an academic than commercial tone. That is, it’s a bit of a slog for the average reader with little to no knowledge of the subject (me). There’s also not a lot about how the people of Cahokia lived. It’s more about the journey of discovering information about the site.

I found it a struggle to read throughout (fortunately, at under 200 pages, it wasn’t a long book.) it wasn’t until the second to last chapter that I realized why. The author is trying to include many diverse points of views, citing many different archeologists, from over a century of work, who often have conflicting theories. So in chapter 11, we get the story of archeologist Terry Norris’s discovery that the petroglyphs on a rock at Thebes Gap, a notable spot in the Mississippi River, was actually a map. A page later, several archeologists are cited stating that the people of the time did not have the ability to make maps, therefore it was not a map. On the next page, numerous examples are given that prove that map-making did exist at the time. The author seems to agree with the map theory, but in an attempt to be unbiased, he includes conflicting points of view without clearly expressing an opinion. This sort of thing happens throughout the book, as theories of past archeologist are presented which seem to be proven wrong by later discoveries, but the style of writing doesn’t make it clear what is the prevalent theory today.

To a degree, this seems a natural style for a book like this because no one knows for certain what happened almost 1,000 years ago, and every decade or two, a theory is contradicted. Pauketat even points out that modern social attitudes impact theories. For example, archeology for much of the 20th century was male-dominated, with male archeologists interpreting their findings and interviewing male Native Americans, which led to a focus on the male part of the society. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that archeologists began to recognize the female part of the society which included a female corn goddess, evidence of a matrilineal society in ritual burials of mothers with infants, as well as who the over 70 young women who were ritually sacrificed likely were (immigrants living in a nearby village, likely struggling to survive given evidence of a poor diet but attractive, who were either taken or given in tribute.)

But even understanding the necessity of representing various and conflicting theories, there were a lot of holes in the information provided. For example, an entire chapter is devoted to a game called chunkey that was very important socially, and likely used politically and religiously. But how it may have been used politically or religiously is never made clear, beyond a reference that it may have been a nonviolent way to resolve conflict or establish dominance. It’s also not made very clear how the game was played. Seems you’d roll a disk and then throw a stick to try to hit it. Again, I think the uncertainty of a definitive answer leads to no clear answer at all. This caution might make the book less controversial in archeological circles, but it also makes it frustrating and less engaging for the average reader.

It was interesting to learn that in the early to mid 20th century, most people didn’t believe North American natives were capable of building a great city. Yet not only does the evidence establish they did, the Cahokians even had a wooden calendar similar to Stonehenge, showing knowledge of astronomy. But for reasons not yet known, there aren’t references to this great city by other contemporary people. Their origin is also unknown. The city appeared suddenly in 1050, and by 1400 it was abandoned. Where the people went is also unknown.

The book would have been enhanced by illustrations or photos of the artifacts mentioned, though the author does a good job of describing them. Reading this book did inspire me to make a second trip to see the site, and I hope that some of the artifacts mentioned are on display at a museum there.