Cahokia

[oldarchystudent]

Hi all.

Sorry it’s taken me a while to post since I got back from Cahokia. It’s been a bit busy…

The week of digging at Cahokia was great. We were looking for the palisade trench in the NE corner of the Grand Plaza, and we seem to have found that. Some very confusing archaeology there though – core samples down to 2 meters showed successive levels of alternating light and dark heavy clay. It looks like a platform was being laid for something, but nobody is quite sure what.

Finds were somewhat sparse in some units, richer in others, and varied. We found a fair bit of pottery, some of it burnt, mostly Burlington chert debitage, modern ceramics and a piece of salt-glazed brick. I found my first point! Small (about the size of a dime) triangular with side and basal notches. Pretty standard for Mississipian culture, I believe. It wasn’t particularly well made, perhaps a flake point or a reused broken point. I was just happy to find any point at all!

Soil varies from sand, through loam to the most miserable heavy clay you ever tried to trowel. When it’s wet it sticks to your trowel like baby poop on a blanket. If you let it dry out it’s like trying to trowel cement. Kinda hard on the arthritis in my wrist – but I was having the time of my life digging in a world heritage site, so what’s a little ache or two?

It’s a great place to volunteer. Join the museum society for around $30 and you can sign up to dig as much as you want during the volunteer season for free. Weather is hot and we got chased off the units a couple of times by heavy rain and lightning. The site itself is magnificent. There’s no way to adequately describe Monks Mound or the sense of antiquity you get walking through the remains of the Grand Plaza. You have to be there to take it in. They have an excellent interpretive centre and guided tours.

If you can spare a week next summer I highly recommend it as a volunteer opportunity – it was certainly worth every mile of my 13 hour drive down there. If you just have a day it’s an amazing place to visit.

Cheers

Jim

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi Jim -

As the area is a floodplain, I suppose the clay depends on which river was flooding.

Isn't Burlington chert a bit different than the chert usually used at "Cahokia"?
With the glazed brick, my guess is that you were digging late strata, and that your point was Oneota. Oh well, it isn't all King Tut's tomb.

Have you read the Five Nations memories of their embassy to "Cahokia"?

Have you tried a wrist brace? There are others in that general area who are looking for volunteers and who have easier soils to work. You might want to volunteer with the Osage on Sugarloaf.

[oldarchystudent]

I've worn wrist braces before but they don't seem to be much help. I broke the wrist in 7 places in an industrial accident when I was 20 and the arthritis set in a while back.

I haven't read that book - thanks for the suggestion! Yep - the floodplain accounts for the clay, but this was clearly delineated layers of light grey and nearly black. The black clay was probably from the swamp area which we were above, even for the timeperiod that Cahokia was occupied (according to the archaeologists there). So it looks like it was borrowed from different sources at different times to build up or repair the platform of the grand plaza.

To go by the amount of Burlington vs anything else we found there, I'd say it was the standard for the area. I'm not sure if that is backed up by long standing experience.

[E.P. Grondine]

Cusick's Sketches of the Ancient History of the Five Nations is included in my book, along with a lot of other interesting material. There's a special price for archaeologica bbs participants (pm me), or you can read it for free via interlibrary loan, then buy a copy and dog ear it and mark it up.

[kbs2244]

I have forgotten.
Have they found any red clay layers at Cahokia?

Has anybody done a formal tracing of the origins of these different dirts?

The Ohio mounds, as I recall, had alternating layers of different colors giving a stripped overall look.

That stripped look seems to have been popular.

[oldarchystudent]

I don't know of anything official but we were discussing the artist rendition of the mounds and how they look in the painting as if they are all covered in a very well manicured layer of grass that would certainly put my front lawn to shame.

Somebody mentioned exactly what you say here - the outer layer of the mounds was clay, probably in alternating bands of colour. I'm not sure about red but we saw a lot of light grey and black, as I mentioned.

[oldarchystudent]

I've posted some pictures in the picture section of the forum if you're interested. Not great quality, sorry about that.

[E.P. Grondine]

Jim, I need to vent.

While looking for and dating the pallisades is very useful,

I am of the general opinion that most excavators of "Mississippian" sites are working backasswards .

Clearly, from previous excavations, if there was a structure on top of a "mound" (Earth platform) then the remains from it are either
1) at the bottom of the platform, or
2) along its sides.

For example, at Cahokia, vessels were found at the base at the North East corner.

That king's thunderbird "tablet" (my guess is that it was a token used to relay orders) was found on the lower level, or along the sides.

Whoever was involved in using the bulldozers at Cahokia should never be let near a site again.
Ever.

[oldarchystudent]

First off - are you seeing something I'm not in my pictures? Because I can't see a bulldozer, nor do I remember seeing one while I was there. When we opened a new unit we spade stripped the turf. Are you perhaps referring to some earlier excavation at Cahokia?

Second - I'm not sure I understand your venting about how mounds are excavated, because we weren't excavating one. However, if you're just going on about earlier excavations and thinking that there is no value in excavating on the mounds themselves, then I'm sorry to say you're a bit off. Students were excavating a mound that had been the platform for a copper working shop and they were finding plenty of copper on/in the mound itself. Don't forget that these fields have been given over to farming for around a century or more and have some of the smaller mounds have been pretty much ploughed flat. Further, there were burials found on the top of Monk's Mound, both Mississippian and historic period. Mound excavation is also pretty much the only way you will learn about how the mounds were constructed. So - I'm not sure how any of that is bass-ackward....

[E.P. Grondine]

First off - are you seeing something I'm not in my pictures? Because I can't see a bulldozer, nor do I remember seeing one while I was there. When we opened a new unit we spade stripped the turf. Are you perhaps referring to some earlier excavation at Cahokia?

The bulldozer use was a few years back.

Second - I'm not sure I understand your venting about how mounds are excavated, because we weren't excavating one. However, if you're just going on about earlier excavations and thinking that there is no value in excavating on the mounds themselves, then I'm sorry to say you're a bit off. Students were excavating a mound that had been the platform for a copper working shop and they were finding plenty of copper on/in the mound itself. Don't forget that these fields have been given over to farming for around a century or more and have some of the smaller mounds have been pretty much ploughed flat. Further, there were burials found on the top of Monk's Mound, both Mississippian and historic period. Mound excavation is also pretty much the only way you will learn about how the mounds were constructed. So - I'm not sure how any of that is bass-ackward....

I pretty much meant what I said, and you just provided another example of bass ackward...

When you have a site with metal, you use high power metal detectors first, flag the hits,
and then place your grid accordingly...

And this includes not only European contact sites,...
BUT ESPECIALLY COPPER WORKSHOPS

For that matter, with a site like Cahokia, you clear it of loose metal hits to prevent midnight looting

[oldarchystudent]

Well - the site grid is already established from a datum point which I believe is at the SW corner of Monks Mound, so you wouldn't adjust it for an individual mound based on finds.

Rather than post your thoughts here, maybe you should send your thoughts directly to the professional archaeologists at Cahokia. Bill Isemenger has been working there since the late 1970's, I believe, and has published several books on Cahokia, so I'm sure he will be glad to hear your critique on how he runs the site. I was just a volunteer digger there so it's certainly not my place to tell him he's doing it all wrong...

[E.P. Grondine]

Well - the site grid is already established from a datum point which I believe is at the SW corner of Monks Mound, so you wouldn't adjust it for an individual mound based on finds.

Clearly I need to be clearer. In this case, which units you open depend on the metal detector survey.

Rather than post your thoughts here, maybe you should send your thoughts directly to the professional archaeologists at Cahokia. Bill Isemenger has been working there since the late 1970's, I believe, and has published several books on Cahokia, so I'm sure he will be glad to hear your critique on how he runs the site. I was just a volunteer digger there so it's certainly not my place to tell him he's doing it all wrong...

If he allowed the bulldozer to be used, then he should be fired.
If he fought it, then that's a different situation.
(I believe he might have expressed his outrage at the SEAC held in Knoxville.)

My comments on proper excavation techniques for "Mississipian" sites apply to all of them, not just Cahokia.

Aside from that, they need to carry my book in their bookstore.

The "political" comments in the travel section of my book are an accurate description of the formation of many urban areas, not just East St. Louis.

I'll be damned if I'll let European visitors get mugged while visiting sites.

[oldarchystudent]

I don't know how many sites you personally have supervised but I will admit up front that I have not supervised any, so take my comments for what they are worth.

I will say that I'm not a big fan of heavy machinery either, but it can be legitimately used in a couple of circumstances, among them:

1 - when you're filling in completed units - we did this in Bermuda at a carefully controlled, stratigraphic, University-conducted dig.

2 - when you have a plough zone in which the context is lost. You can go roughly 30 cm in most cases. This is definitely the case at Cahokia, however the units I personally helped to open up were de-turfed using spades.

Do you know the curcumstance under which the heavy equipment was there in the picture you saw?

Bill Isemenger does not need to be fired.

If you're frustrated that the bookstore is not carrying your book I suggest you contact them directly with your concerns.

[Minimalist]

It's a trade off, unfortunately. The Israel Antiquities Authority is always running out to construction sites after some piece of heavy equipment hits ( and doubtlessly damages!) an archaeological find. At least they get in there eventually.

[oldarchystudent]

I love the show Time Team but always cringe a bit when I see the backhoe come in. I've found ceramics in the roots of the grass when we spade stripped turf.

But - if you're under a time crunch, espeially in a CRM situation, it may be the only way to get the job done under the deadline.