Cahokia Mounds

by Timothy R. Pauketat, Nancy Stone Bernard

Describes what is known of the ancient city of Cahokia, a site in present-day Illinois which was inhabited by Native Americans from about 700 A.D. to 1400 A.D., the Missippippian culture of which it was a part, and the archaeological investigations undertaken there.

Genres: History, Archaeology, Science, Anthropology

48 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

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

[Joe Krakovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

CAHOKIA MOUNDS is one of those kids' books that gave me a lot of pertinent information rather quickly. Did you know that there was an ancient native North American civilization in the Midwest that rivaled those of Central and South America? Even as a kid I knew about American Indians, living in teepees and huts, growing corn and hunting buffalo. But this civilization built huge mounds, or pyramids in southern Illinois. They had laid out towns and manufactured vast quantities of fine pottery. Artifacts recovered from archaeological sites gave evidence of traded goods, such as arrowheads, made far from home. 

In some ways they resemble their ancient cousins far to the south. Their cities and earthen pyramids were among the largest in the world. Like the Aztecs they appeared to offer human sacrifices, from other tribes of course! One thing they didn't leave us was a written record of their life, nor did they seem to have the abundance of silver and gold artifacts, which is probably why the lack of interest in them.

Around 1275 to 1350 AD their civilization collapsed, though we know not why. In their place were the various tribes as we now know them.

Early explorers didn't recognize the mounds for what they were. At the turn of the 20th century people started to take an interest in preserving the mounds, but as a Chicago politician shamefully declared, "My district needs parks for live people, and the guys in that mound are all dead ones." So the race was on, and is still ongoing, to either preserve the mounds as a national heritage, or let the archaeologists dig with their spades and brushes before the bulldozers go in. The sad thing about all this is that much of the lands where the traces of this civilization lay buried was being dug up and bulldozered over to make room for expansion in what is East St. Louis.

One particular thing I found interesting was the discovery of the remains of a palisade fort that enclosed some 300 acres. It was estimated that some 20,000 trees were used to put up the wall and the fighting platforms from which the defenders could shoot their arrows.

In 1989 the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center opened. It is a tribute to the archaeologists who worked so hard to preserve what they could.

Down the road from me on private land are a couple of small Indian burial mounds, or so I am told. I wonder if whoever was buried there was related to the Cahokia?

[Marc K]

Even though it was more of a children's book it complemented well with his other work.
Pictures and timetables added a lot. Perhaps the books should be combined to give context for the mounds of text.

[Soc Page]

Small ones at Ashland, KY. also visited one in West Virginia

[Natalie Zebula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really great. Talks some about what Cahokia might have been, but also the history of archaeology of the site, as well. It is a youth book, but I enjoyed it as an adult. I hope to read the others in this series, too.