Archaeologists unearth more clues from ancient Cahokia civilization

On a blustery day in April, Italian archaeology student Marco Valeri stepped into an archaeological dig at the Cahokia Mounds. 

Archaeology students from Italy sift soil for artifacts at the Cahokia Mounds [Credit KBIA]

He bent down to adjust a trowel, pointing it north to help orient a photograph of the broken pottery. A blackboard was placed in the frame to indicate the location: Collinsville, Illinois.

At its peak, Cahokia was the epicenter of ancient Mississippian culture. With a population of 20,000 in 1250 A.D., Cahokia was larger than London was at the same time. It had every marking of a large city such as population density and surplus capital: everything but writing, according to an exhibit in the visitor’s center. Now, a group of archaeologists from the University of Bologna in Italy are unearthing the mounds, trying to learn how civilizations develop political complexity.

“I’ve always wondered about this strange place that is Cahokia,” said Davide Domenici, professor at the University of Bologna. Domenici has been visiting and studying these mounds for the past three years. “Usually we archaeologists think that in ancient North America there were fairly simple societies, but Cahokia is actually an example of some kind of political complexity.”

Monk's Mound in July [Credit WikiCommons]

Archaeologists are careful about how they talk about Cahokia’s social context. Few indications at the site today allow researchers to classify the city’s political and social structure with any degree of certainty.

“Can we call it a state, can we call it a chiefdom? We don’t know what to call it, we don’t know what it was,” he said. “But the idea is to study this complexity, and maybe paths to political complexity that were quite different from those we are used to in other parts of the world.”

Cahokia has the largest examples of earthwork north of Mexico, where Domenici has previously done much of his research. At its base, the 100-foot-high Monks Mound takes up over 14 acres--more than the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt, according to the exhibit.