Visible and Invisible workings of Cahokia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cahokia has long been subjected to terminological contention, failing to fit categorical configurations such as state or chiefdom but has now become commonly referred to as an urbanism — effectively dodging the chiefdom/state terminological quandary. What if much of the categorical problem lies in looking at the world through a Euro/American lens? Traditional Western definitions of socio-political types focus too narrowly on “power over” rather than concepts expressed as important community values by indigenous scholars, such as “in relation with”, “responsibility to”, and “responsibility with.” Shifting focus to prioritize indigenous values emphasizes relationality, landscapes, other than human persons, communal values, and the numinous. This focus reconfigures aspects of Cahokia that have long been dismissed, misunderstood, or ignored. Here, I explore how Cahokia became an urbanism as a result of a religious movement and frame this development by calling upon indigenous understandings of community, power, authority, the numinous and relationality. Drawing on archaeological data from Cahokia, outlying shrines, and other nodal centers as well as indigenous values, I argue that Cahokians’ ideologies were in fact built into the architectural features that they constructed and were emphasized by the Cahokians' chosen landscapes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives.   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38277.0