Episode 11: The MIssissippian City of Cahokia

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

Cahokia (in present-day Illinois) flourished from 1050 – 1150 AD. It had an urban population of around 15,000, with another 30,000 living in satellite communities. It was the largest city north of Mexico until New York reached 50, during the 1700s.

Covering six square feet, in 1100 AD Cahokia had a grand plaza, surrounded by hundreds of family homes with thatched roofs, central hearths and sapling walls covered with mud daub. The city also had over 200 mounds, as well as a wood henge to the west of Monk’s Mound, the largest pre-Columbia earthwork in North America (and home to Cahokia’s paramount chief).

Cahokia’s other mounds contained hundreds of bodies showing clear evidence of ritual sacrifice, with death induced via strangulation, decapitation or bashed in skulls. All sacrifice victims show evidence of malnutrition, suggesting they represented Cahokia’s nderprivileged community.

Most early Cahokians were commoners and worked the corn fields surrounding the city. Early residents also grew sunflower seeds and pigweed, fished, hunted and gathered wild plants. Some engaged in craft production, though it’s unclear whether they were full or part time artisans. They left behind stone tools (including a stone hoe used to plant long straight rows of corn) and religious tokens, as well as copper tools and jewelry, pottery and textiles (for the elite).

Cahokia also featured a prominent chunkey field. The latter was a ritualized game dating from  600 AD, in which players rolled a stone disk while their opponents three spears at it.

Archeological evidence indicates the original village of Cahokia was razed in 1050 AD and totally rebuilt as a planned city, a project requiring at least 100,000 man hours and strong central leadership. Following the remodel, Cahokia’s population increased 10-fold in a decade. A rapid decline followed in 1150 AD. By 1250, there were only 5,000 residents total and by 1300, the city was abandoned.

Anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow shed some light on the demise of Cahokia in their 2021 masterpiece The Dawn of Everything. (Based on a multiplicity of religious badges and insignia found there) they attribute the Cahokia’s phenomenal growth to its centuries’ long role as a site of religious pilgrimage. They attribute the massive 1050 AD rebuild to the ruling priests’ deliberate destruction of the self-governing council that at one time ruled the city.

In addition, they assert that the major expansion at Cahokia followed an extensive period of warfare in which Cahokia seized control of neighboring villages. In their view the game of chunkey often served as a continuation, or even a substitute, for war.

They also find it significant that the human sacrifices in ancient Cahokia were so horrific Cahokia’s descendants totally erased them from oral tradition. At the same time, the city’s brutal culture also played an essential role in spurring a resurgence of collective self-government (as an alternative to brutal hereditary rule).

*A wood henge was an astronomically aligned circle of wood posts used for religious functions.

Film can be viewed free with a library card.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5713021/5712758