21 - City of earth and wood: New Cahokia and its material-historical implications

Summary

At Cahokia, in the beginning, the particular materiality of the place lent theatricality to everyday experience while, in the end, it ensured that the whole could be partitioned and forgotten. This chapter examines the disposition of such features and the materiality of the process and foundational circumstances of Cahokia. Besides the facts of immigration and tranquility at Old Cahokia, there are two more circumstances surrounding Cahokia's 'big bang' at C. 1050. First, the decades on either side of 1050 were warmer and wetter than usual, ideal for growing bumper crops. Second, the early-mid-eleventh century was a period of great celestial activity. The construction of a palisade wall shortly after 1150 CE was probably the harbinger of significant cultural change. Cahokia's earthen and wooden construction materials defined the field of memory work and constrained the futures of its descendants, which might have been quite different had only the Cahokians worked in stone rather than earth and wood.