Migration, Population Change, and Climate at Cahokia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper we explore sociopolitical, economic, and climatological aspects of the population history of Cahokia and compare these with the timing of the appearance of Cahokia materials at hinterland sites to better understand some of the factors that may have contributed to the migration of people out of the American Bottom. Paleoenvironmental proxies from two sediment cores from Horseshoe Lake, Illinois, are integrated with fecal stanol data from the same cores to investigate the relationships among environmental events, climate change, and population size for Cahokia and the Horseshoe Lake watershed between ca. AD 800 and 1600. A radiocarbon age model developed for one core shows close correspondence between archaeologically derived models of the population trajectory for Cahokia and the fecal stanol data, while the paleoenvironmental proxies and stanol data show a significant decrease in population within the Horseshoe Lake watershed after a major flood event and after the onset of decreased summer rainfall ca. AD 1150. Based on the timing of the appearance of Cahokian ceramics at sites across the Midwest, migration out of Cahokia predates these climatic changes, and population decline at the site accelerates after the flood and onset of decreased summer rainfall.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22841