Vibrancy of Place and Cahokia's Emergence

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The city of Cahokia sits in a landscape occupied by bodies of water, distinctive biota, and unique stone and mineral deposits. This flood plain landscape of the Mississippi River served for millennia as home to Indigenous peoples who lived in semi sedentary communities while participating in small-scale agriculture, hunting, and gathering. Cahokia and its sister boroughs of East St. Louis and St. Louis, along with farmsteads and villages located in the Richland Uplands to the east, emerged ca. AD 1050 taking shape rapidly marked by organized mounds, plazas, neighborhoods, and farming communities. In this paper I examine both the constructed and non-anthropogenic landscapes of Cahokia focusing on the intersection between the human and other-than-human realms that created this city. Particularly I emphasize the ways monumental places structured and integrated the neighborhoods and the surrounding environs into the city.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38099.0