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Cahokia: An<br />
experiment<br />
in living<br />
tOgether <br />
Nathaniel A. Rivers<br />
@sOphist_mOnster<br />
A Zine Guide
This <strong>zine</strong> works to create a unique way of <strong>exploring</strong><br />
Cahokia Mounds, IL. The <strong>zine</strong> treats Cahokia as the<br />
remnants of an experiment in and experience of living<br />
together. And it engages Cahokia as such in order to use<br />
Cahokia to think about the city of Saint Louis, MO. There is<br />
a temptation to understand cities—or any public—as inert<br />
containers in which things happen, in which we live our<br />
lives. But cities, as publics, are other than this. Writing<br />
about Cahokia, author Annalee Newitz writes <br />
Cities are ongoing social experiments, and the remains<br />
of ancient homes and monuments are half-erased lab<br />
notes left by our ancestors. They describe how people<br />
tried to bring diverse groups together with a shared<br />
purpose, to nourish and entertain each other, to overcome<br />
political conflict and climate catastrophe. They also<br />
describe our failures: the authoritarian slave-driving<br />
leadership, the bad civil engineering, and the laws that<br />
limited many people’s access to resources. Our forebears’<br />
eroded palaces and villas warn us about how communities<br />
can go wrong, but their streets and plazas testify to all<br />
the times we built something meaningful together.<br />
The people living in Cahokia decided that it (as a city and<br />
a culture) was a way they no longer wanted to live. They<br />
moved away. Saint Louis—still not as old as Cahokia was—<br />
is a city whose population has declined precipitously over<br />
the last 60 years. All cities come in and out of existence<br />
through the (free and forced) movement of people. The<br />
anthropologist and archeologist duo of David Graeber and<br />
David Wengrow write, “What we would now call social<br />
movements often took the form of quite literal physical<br />
movements.”<br />
1
This <strong>zine</strong> comprises a loose assemblage of descriptions<br />
and discussions of Cahokia from a number of<br />
perspectives. These selections help to establish a<br />
context within which to imagine Cahokia. Alongside<br />
these selections, the <strong>zine</strong> also contains compositional<br />
practices that ask readers to think about and through<br />
Cahokia Mounds. How can we compose various<br />
Cahokias through writing, sonography, photography,<br />
drawing and videography? How does being at Cahokia<br />
inform what we write, draw and record? In short, how<br />
can we compose Cahokia and how might Cahokia<br />
compose us? The archeologist Tim Pauketat writes, <br />
the materials and media of ritual commemorations or<br />
social action—whether painted imagery, crystal<br />
locatives, or human remains—are also the mechanisms<br />
whereby people routinely or theatrically experience<br />
and remake their identities, beliefs, and histories.<br />
Cities are far from static locations; cities are compositions.<br />
And so our many compositions matter because they are<br />
never simply about a place, a public, or a city. Our<br />
compositions—what we write, say, draw and otherwise<br />
create—take part in composing where we are at and how<br />
we are together.<br />
A mural at the Cahokia Mounds Museum and Interpretive Center<br />
shows the city during its heyday, circa 1100.<br />
2
Archaeological evidence for solstice celebrations abounds in the<br />
ancient North American city of Cahokia, located in what is now<br />
Illinois. (Illustration: Steven Patricia/Art Institute of Chicago)<br />
“The more they dug, the more obvious it became<br />
that this was no ordinary place. The structures they<br />
excavated were full of ritual objects charred by<br />
sacred fires. We found the remains of feasts and a<br />
rare earthen structure lined with yellow soils. Baires,<br />
Baltus, and their team had accidentally stumbled on<br />
an archaeological treasure trove linked to the city's<br />
demise. The story of this place would take us back<br />
to the final decades of a great city whose social<br />
structure was undergoing a radical transformation.”<br />
Newitz | Americas Lost Medieval city | 2<br />
3
Composition Practice One<br />
Take a few minutes to sketch one of the mounds that<br />
you see. Take your time and attend to the movement of<br />
your pen or pencil and hand as you trace the contours of<br />
the mound before you. What do you notice? What<br />
thoughts or feelings come to mind about the place and<br />
your place in it? Take photos and videos as well.<br />
4
Newitz writes that “the framers of Cahokia would have<br />
known about some of these ancient places [such as<br />
Poverty Point] and probably wanted to build a city in<br />
their image.” She continues, pointing out how famed<br />
Cahokia archeologist<br />
“[Tim] Pauketat believes that something like a<br />
religious revival spurred the city's sudden<br />
appearance. Revival movements were common<br />
among Native Americans of the southeast […]<br />
Groups would come from miles around to hear the<br />
leader's teachings and set up temporary camps for<br />
feasting and celebration. The new leaders' ideas<br />
would spread like wildfire, carried by people who<br />
had gone to the revival camps or storytellers<br />
repeating what they had heard.”<br />
Pauketat has speculated that a supernova, which<br />
became visible on July 4, 1054, could have spurred<br />
the religious revival that lead to Cahokia’s rapid<br />
development. “Carbon dating […] dates the<br />
revolutionary transformation of Cahokia into New<br />
Cahokia to about 1050,” and “that 1054 falls into the<br />
‘about’ nimbus around that date. Did the supernova<br />
inspire the Cahokians to rebuild their city, to embrace<br />
ideas that sparked a cultural renaissance, to listen to<br />
messages from gods old or new about themselves<br />
and their destiny” (University of Illinois Press Blog)?<br />
5
Composition Practice TWO<br />
List any formative or transformative moments, stories,<br />
legends, and myths for Saint Louis that you can think<br />
of. How have those moments, stories, legends, and myths<br />
played a role (for better or worse) in maintaining or even<br />
reshaping the city?<br />
6
Painted Underwater panther effigy bottle from Cross County, Arkansas.<br />
“Shortly after Cahokia’s founding, the Cahokian<br />
way of life spread to the entire Mississippian<br />
region […] Cahokians made a distinctive form<br />
of ceremonial pottery, called Ramey, that can<br />
be found throughout the Mississippian<br />
settlements. People shared Ramey far and<br />
wide to honor the city that founded their<br />
civilization.”<br />
Newitz | Americas Lost Medieval city | 5<br />
7
“Some archeologists believe that the<br />
games observed, described, and sketched<br />
by Adair, Catlin, and the rest originated at<br />
Cahokia. Minimally, this would establish<br />
chunky as an example of Cahokia’s<br />
widespread, pervasive influence on the<br />
indigenous people of eastern North<br />
America. More than this, chunky might<br />
also have been a mechanism whereby<br />
the Cahokian culture was spread.”<br />
Pauketat | Cahokia | 49-50<br />
Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with a Ring and Pole. George<br />
Catlin.<br />
8
“Everything about the architecture here<br />
suggests a highly stratified society led by<br />
charismatic figures who lived above Cahokia's<br />
sprawl on the smoothed top of Monk's Mound.<br />
Ordinary residents of the city spent many long<br />
hours ritualistically hauling clay in baskets from<br />
borrow pits to build the mounds. The leaders<br />
repaid them with words of wisdom and massive<br />
feasts. But at some point that wasn't enough<br />
anymore.”<br />
9<br />
Newitz | Americas Lost Medieval city | 8-9<br />
“As the city reshaped itself during the<br />
Moorehead phase, Cahokians violently<br />
rejected the people and symbols of their<br />
once-monumental downtown. Roughly half<br />
the city’s population moved away, and those<br />
remaining began to retreat into their own<br />
neighborhoods, conducting smaller public<br />
rituals and events. The courtyard and public<br />
buildings in the CABB Tract reflect this new<br />
kind of social organization. The city’s central<br />
authority had been supplanted by local<br />
communities.”<br />
Newitz | Americas Lost Medieval city | 9
Composition Practice three<br />
Take a couple of minutes to describe the experience of<br />
moving around and up what’s known as Monk’s Mound.<br />
What impressions are created by the size and scope of the<br />
mound? What is like to be atop it? What might it have<br />
been like to look up at those who resided or address you<br />
from here? (Consider recording this as a video or a voice<br />
memo.)<br />
10
Composition Practice Four<br />
From Monk’s Mound write about your experience and<br />
understanding of Saint Louis. What is to see Saint Louis<br />
from atop the “eroded palaces and villas” of the Cahokia?<br />
What affects emerge? What dreams or nightmares? Does<br />
the city look big? Does it appear small? Does it move?<br />
(Consider recording this as a video or voice memo.)<br />
11
12
An artist's<br />
interpretation of<br />
what downtown<br />
Cahokia would<br />
have looked like<br />
in the late<br />
Sterling period,<br />
after the<br />
palisade wall<br />
had been built<br />
around Monk's<br />
Mound and the<br />
Grand<br />
Plaza. National<br />
Geographic.<br />
“Cahokia grew to such an enormous size<br />
because the structure of the city itself was<br />
part of its residents’ spiritual and political<br />
worldview. But over time that centralized<br />
belief system began to crumble. When the<br />
last revitalization swept the city, people<br />
returned to the old ways. They looked to<br />
home for their sense of identity and<br />
community. Their once-unified city<br />
fragmented into many peoples who left<br />
the mounds behind.”<br />
Newitz | Americas Lost Medieval city | 14<br />
13
Graeber and Wengrow write, <br />
Cahokia’s population peaked at something in the order<br />
of 15,000 people; then it abruptly dissolved. Whatever<br />
Cahokia represented in the eyes of those under its<br />
s w a y, i t s e e m s t o h a v e e n d e d u p b e i n g<br />
overwhelmingly and resoundingly rejected by the<br />
vast majority of its people. For centuries after its<br />
demise the site where the city once stood, and<br />
hundreds of miles of river valleys around it, lay entirely<br />
devoid of human habitation.<br />
People left. The city left with it. The container is the thing<br />
contain. And it wanted out. “Whatever happened in<br />
Cahokia, it appears to have left extremely unpleasant<br />
memories,” remark Graeber and Wengrow. “The Vacant<br />
Quarter [pictured below] implies a self-conscious<br />
rejection of everything the city of Cahokia stood for.” A<br />
place can be otherwise than it is or was. It can be<br />
something wonderful or something horrific. It can even be<br />
nothing at all.<br />
14
Resources and references