Cahokia: Mound-Plaza Complex

Cahokia

• Cahokia is a "mound-plaza" complex, one of many built after corn, beans, and squash spread into North America.
• The mound-plaza complex design can be traced back to Mexico.
• Monk's Mound is the largest earthen mound in North America, located in Cahokia.
• Monk's Mound is over 100 feet tall and features four terraces.
• The king or chief of Cahokia resided on the tallest terrace of Monk's Mound.
• Agriculture's importance is evident in the abundance of agricultural tools, such as hoes, found from around A.D. 800.
• Mill Creek chert was used to make these hoes.
• The Mill Creek chert quarry is located near Cahokia.
• Mill Creek chert hoes were commonly found up and down the Mississippi River valley.
• Like other Mississippian sites, Cahokia had platform mounds for high-status families to live on.
• Houses for elite families were built on the flat platforms atop these mounds.
• Around A.D. 700, the introduction of the bow and arrow coincided with increased violence, likely associated with agricultural societies.
• The palisade at Cahokia enclosed only a small section of the site, including Monk's Mound, the plaza, and surrounding mounds.
• The palisade served to protect the ruling families from internal competition.
• Woodhenge was a circle of wooden posts with a center post in the ground.
• Woodhenge was used as a calendar.
• Woodhenge may have also been used as a compass or surveying tool, helping triangulate points and place mounds.
• Woodhenge may have symbolized Cahokia (the central post) and the rest of the world (the circle of posts).
• There do not appear to have been full-time craft specialists at Cahokia.
• Peasant farmers likely produced shell beads.
• Cahokia's decline likely stemmed from various environmental and political factors.
• Environmental issues included deforestation and over-farming.
• Political issues leading to its decline may have included infighting, civil war, or competition for the position of chief or king.

Moundville

• Moundville showcases the most significant social stratification among Mississippian sites.
• Moundville is one of many Mississippian mound sites, but was among a few paramount centers that controlled territory and villages through warfare.
• Craft specialists existed at Moundville, focusing on shell beads, leather production, and ceramic production.
• Mounds around the plaza are often organized into platform and conical mound pairs.
• Pottery found at Moundville and other Mississippian sites had similar imagery as other Mississippian sites, reflecting shared religious and militaristic symbols.
• Images included prisoners of war, circle-crosses, bird motifs, and the "eye in hand."

Natchez

• The Natchez exemplify an 18th-century mound-building Mississippian culture.
• The Natchez people had a chief or king figure known as the Great Sun, who was believed to be directly related to the physical sun and the Sun god.
• French explorers observed the Natchez and their rituals, including elaborate funerals and mound building.
• The rituals followed the death of the Great Sun's brother, Tattooed Serpent
• The funeral included human sacrifice and mound construction.

Iroquois

• Iroquois culture is matrilocal.
• In Iroquois culture related females and unrelated males lived in the longhouse.
• After marriage, males move in the bride's family with little material wealth or status.
• Iroquois males were prone to argue for warfare.
• Warfare was a primary means of achieving material wealth and status.
• Warfare decisions were made by the village, community, or regional organizations.
• The Iroquois lived communally within longhouses.
• Longhouses were large, semi-permanent structures.
• Extended families lived within each longhouse.
• Women "ruled" the longhouse and generally made family decisions.
• Men were involved in politics and acted as Chiefs, but prominent women appointed and could remove them based on their performance.
• The Iroquois had councils at family, village, regional, and ethnic group levels.
• Decisions were made on a consensus basis.
• Iroquoian villages were palisaded for political security.
• Villages frequently moved due to soil exhaustion, insect infestations, tree removal, and fear of raids.
• Wampum are handmade shell beads, valuable for their aesthetic and labor, used in bartering as gifts in treaties for peace.
• The Feast of the Dead was a festival before a village moved to remember ancestors.
• Bones were exhumed, hung, feasted over, and transported to the next village.

Algonquian

• Algonquian marriage pattern was bi-lateral, meaning matrilocal or patrilocal.
• Most Algonquians lived in wigwams, structures made of saplings and birch bark.
• Wigwams could be built quickly.
• At the time of contact, Algonquians were part-time farmers who cleared fields and planted seeds, but then followed seasonal rounds.
• Algonquians were still primarily hunter-gatherers into the 18th century.

Material From The First Exam

• Ethnohistoric records are informal accounts from explorers, traders, missionaries, or others who interacted with Native Americans between the 1500s and 1900s.
• These records were not intended to be objective.
• These records should be analyzed critically, with a "grain of salt."
• The main premise of evolution is that nature creates many variations, and those that are most fit survive to reproduce and pass on their genes.
• Race is not a biological reality.
• People on either side of a geographical line are closely related.
• Humans share over 99% of their DNA.
• Humans are a young species.
• There is more variation within racial groups than between them.
• Racism is a recent phenomenon tied to sea travel within the last 500 years.
• Crossing continents by land led to clinal variation observation.
• Slow changes in appearance across land caused no clear boundaries.
• Land travel was common until the 1400s.
• Ocean and air travel lead to thinking of people as more different than they are and racism.
• Gender inequality is related to resource contribution.
• If males bring more resources, the culture will be more male-dominated.
• If females do, then females will.
• Balanced contribution results in balance.
• Gift-giving is a universal human practice that maintains relationships.
• There is no such thing as a free gift.
• Excessive gift-giving can elevate one's status.

First Americans

• Archaeological evidence places people in the New World at about 14,000 years ago.
• Language and DNA studies suggest people were in the Americas as early as 20,000 years ago.
• Multiple migrations of people occurred over thousands of years.
• The Bering Landbridge was likely a primary route, but coastal routes and routes through the south Pacific and across the north Atlantic are also possibilities.
• Clovis points were large spear points used to kill large animals from the ice age.
• Early human remains (pre-8,000 years ago) do not resemble modern Native Americans.
• They have a "Caucasoid" appearance also found in ancestral Asian populations.
• The earliest remains most closely resemble the modern-day Ainu of Japan, descendants of ancestral Asian populations.

Bison Hunters

• Tipis are most often used by bison hunting cultures due to their mobility.
• Tipis are rare in the archaeological record because their contents are removed when the group moves.

Arctic Cultures

• The Thule (ancestors of the Inuit) were innovative inventors of technologies like the toggling harpoon, skin kayak, and dogsled.
• Mobility and resourcefulness made them successful.

Dates To Know

• Paleo period: 10,000 B.C. – 8,000 B.C.
• Archaic: 8,000 B.C. – 500 B.C.
• Woodland: <500 B.C.
• Poverty Point: 1500 B.C.
• Hopewell: 200 B.C. - A.D. 500
• Cahokia: A.D. 900-1150
• Moundville: A.D. 1150-1350

American Southwest

• Chaco Canyon contains "Great Houses" including Pueblo Bonito.
• Pueblo Bonito is known for its large size and tall, four-story buildings.
• The Hohokam are known for their irrigation canals.
• They display Mexican influence, seen in cities organized around mound-plaza complexes and ball courts.

Pacific Northwest Cultures

• Pacific Northwest cultures live in rectangular, wood-planked houses.
• They eat mainly fish.
• They have a non-agricultural class-based society.
• The Tlingit seasonal schedule included:
• Winter: staying indoors and living off storage.
• Spring: making fishing supplies and hunting for furs.
• Summer: gathering plant materials and storing fish.
• Fall: storing resources.
• Potlatches are two-phase events with feasting followed by gift-giving.
• Whale hunting is prestigious due to the courage required.
• Catching a whale made one wealthy.

Early Mound Building Cultures

• Poverty Point was likely a trade fair for hunter-gatherers for trade, marriage, religious activities, socializing, and gambling.
• Poverty Point has some of the earliest mounds in North America.
• The mounds are somewhat extensive semi-circles up to 1300 meters in diameter.
• Hopewell represents a set of religious ideas and customs that spread around the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Valley
• Hopewell burials are elaborate and contain grave goods from across the country.
• The Hopewell Interaction Sphere was a vast trade network.
• Hopewell mounds varied with conical, geometric, and effigy shapes.
• Hopewell mound sites were ritual sites and not habitation areas.