The Lost City of Cahokia, Part 1: The Magnificent City

 View a personal introduction by Courtney Miller

 

Around 1050 A. D., there existed a grand city nestled in the Mississippi valley where St. Louis is today.  We call this site “Cahokia” because the Cahokia tribe once lived nearby.  But the Cahokia referred to the ancient city as belonging to a forgotten tribe that lived before them.



Monk's Mound

By any measure, this city was magnificent.  It covered over 4,000 acres, and had a population estimated between 10-20,000 within the city proper and 70,000 if you count the suburbs.  Grand temples and houses were built atop enormous platform mounds.   There were approximately 120 of these platform mounds of

various sizes.  In 1250 A. D., Cahokia was comparable in size to London or Paris during the same period.  It was the largest city in the United States until 1780 when Philadelphia grew larger.

It appears that Cahokia was the hub for trade and probably political power east of the Mississippi for 300 years (1000 A.D. – 1300 A.D.).   It hosted great ceremonies and games with a huge central plaza that had been meticulously leveled and surrounded by important mounds including the important Mound 38.

Mound 38, nick-named Monk’s Mound, has four terraces, and rises ten stories high (100 ft); is 951 ft. long and 836 ft. wide; covers 13.8 acres; and contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth.   Its footprint is larger than the Egyptian Pyramid and is the largest man-made earthen mound north of Mexico.  It was named “Monk’s Mound” because a community of Trappist monks resided there for a while.   Although their residence was built atop a nearby mound, they gardened atop Mound 38.

Excavations have revealed that a large building, maybe a temple or rulers home, had been built on the top platform of Monk’s Mound.    It was 105 ft. long and 48 ft. wide and was probably around 50 ft. high.  That would have made it 5,040 sq. ft. -- a mansion even by today’s standards.

The largest mound, which Glen Hodges (National Geographic, January 2011) observed was “named, with an appropriate lack of imagination, Big Mound”, was part of the “North” plaza of Cahokia.  This area has mostly been destroyed or built over.  The dirt from Big Mound, itself, was used up by 1869 for construction projects and a railroad in St. Louis.  A small, circular, cobblestone monument was built to mark the spot where it had been and today sits unimpressively in a north St. Louis intersection.

Mound 72, south of Monk’s Mound was the site of a very controversial burial.  Archaeologists found the remains of a 40-year-old man.  He was probably a very important citizen or ruler of Cahokia.   The body had been placed atop more than 20,000 shell-beads arranged in the shape of a falcon.  A cache of very fine arrowheads from different geographical regions  (Oklahoma, Tennessee, Illinois, and Wisconsin) were also in the tomb which underscored the extensive trade carried on at Cahokia.  
In a Washington Post article by Nathan Seppa, March, 1997, “Also in the grave were a staff and 15 shaped stones of the kind used for games.

"Clearly, some really important leader is buried in there," Pauketat [Tim Pauketat, University of Illinois] says. Interred with him were four men with their heads and hands cut off and 53 young women apparently strangled. Their youth, 15 to 25 years, and the fact that they were all women, suggests human sacrifice. People that young did not die of natural causes in such numbers.

“Nearby, researchers found more burials and evidence of a charnel house. In all, 280 skeletons were found. About 50 lay haphazardly in a single deep pit, as if tossed in without honor. Some have arrowheads in the back or were beheaded, evidence of warfare or perhaps a crushed rebellion.

"I would guess there were people around who weren't too loyal," Pauketat says.”

As I mentioned in last week’s article, 5 massive circles resided not far from the palisaded plaza that enclosed Monk’s Mound.  They were used as huge solar calendar calendars to predict and mark significant events throughout the year.  They are called “Woodhenge” today.

 

To be continued … In the next article on Cahokia, We will look at a Copper Workshop unearthed at Mound 34, unique for the time.


Watch videos on this week's topics.

Link to "Archaeoastronomy -- Hopewell Mounds -- Woodhenge"

-- Courtney Miller

 

Archaeoastronomy- Hopewell Mounds – Woodhenge

Medicine Wheel

Stonehenge, in England, has long been a source of fascination for most of us.  It is credited as being an archaeoastronomical site – an ancient site for astronomical observations.  I recently posted articles on “Medicine Wheels” that have a similar purpose.  This week, I want to write about circles built by the Hopewell culture that also suggest astronomical purposes.  Nicknamed “Woodhenge” because of their similarity to Stonehenge and Woodhenge in England, these sites are east of the Mississippi River and were built by the Hopewell Indians living from around 200 A.D. to around 1,500 A. D.

There are several sites hosting these peculiar circles, but I will focus on two – Moorehead Circle, near Cincinnati, Ohio and Cahokia, near St. Louis, Missouri.

At Moorehead Circle, for example, researchers have found that an opening in the rings; a nearby, human-made enclosure; stone mounds; and a gateway in a nearby earthen wall are all aligned and on the summer solstice (longest day of the year) the sun appears to rise in the gateway as seen from the center of the circle.

The Woodhenge(s) at Cahokia were recognized as solar calendars when Dr. Warren Wittry was studying excavation maps and theorized that posts set in these pits lined up with the rising sun at certain times of the year – prompting him to call them “Woodhenge”.  Further excavations unveiled five circles that were built over the period 900 A.D.  – 1100 A.D.  Fragments of wood remaining in some of the post pits revealed that red cedar had been used for the posts – known to be a sacred wood.

Quoting from the Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site,  “Viewing was from the center of the circle, and several circles had large "observation posts" at that location, where it is likely the sunpriest stood on a raised platform. Other posts between the solstice posts probably marked special festival dates related to the agricultural cycle. The remaining posts around the circle have no known function, other than symbolically forming a circle and forming an enclosure to hold the sacred Woodhenge ceremonies. There have been suggestions some posts had alignments with certain bright stars or the moon, or were used in predicting eclipses, and others have suggested Woodhenge was used as an engineering "aligner" to determine mound placements, but none of this has been proven convincingly.”

“The most spectacular sunrise occurs at the equinoxes, when the sun rises due east. The post marking these sunrises aligns with the front of Monks Mound, where the leader resided, and it looks as though Monks Mound gives birth to the sun. A possible offertory pit near the winter solstice post suggests a fire was burned to warm the sun and encourage it to return northward for another annual cycle and rebirth of the earth. This probably marked the start of the new year.

“The third circle (A.D. 1000) was reconstructed in 1985 at the original location. The circle is 410 feet in diameter, had 48 posts spaced 26.8 feet apart (9 are missing on the west side, removed by a highway borrow pit). The posts were 15-20 inches in diameter and stood about 20 feet high. Red ocher pigment found in some of the post pits suggests the posts may have been painted. The post pits averaged 7 feet long and just over two feet wide, sloping from the surface at one end to a depth of four feet at the other, forming a ramp to slide the posts down to facilitate their raising.”

Fascinating as the Woodhenge site is, it pales in comparison to the “city” it was built for.  Next time, I will turn to the city of Cahokia to reveal the incredible “lost city” sitting right in the center of the U.S. but unnoticed or ignored for centuries.

Link to The Lost City of Cahokia, Part 1: The Magnificent City

Preview Cahokia in this 14 minute video

Short video by McCarthy's

-- Courtney Miller