Few archaeologists know the ancient North American city of Cahokia like Tim Pauketat. Building on decades of fieldwork and research, Pauketat's Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi provides us with an in-depth and deeply human history of this World Heritage Site. For those unfamiliar with Cahokia, this large prehistoric urban city encompassed approximately six square miles (15 km2) in present-day south-western Illinois, along the Mississippi River. Settled around 600 CE, Cahokia went through urban revival approximately 1050 CE, growing into a large, elaborately planned city that included a population of tens of thousands of residents and 120 earthen pyramids (including the third largest pyramid in the New World). Despite its past grandeur, Cahokia is largely unknown today, even among archaeologists. In Cahokia, Pauketat seeks to illuminate us and, as he states, ‘follow the hard evidence to arrive back and the beginning’ (p. 9), to understand the daily lives of ancient Cahokians, and, in the process, learn more about the fascinating history of excavations and research at the site.
Through Pauketat, we understand the place of Cahokia in North American history, and, perhaps more importantly, world history. As he argues, all people everywhere make history, but a tension exists between official and unofficial knowledge of the past. Official histories reside in artwork and iconography, while unofficial histories – those of the powerless or defeated – reside in the residues of their material practices, the things they used and discarded in daily life. By looking at both unofficial and official histories, alternative narratives begin to emerge. And these alternative narratives allow for a richly textured and previously unknown history of the complexity of the lives of ancient Cahokians.
The book chapters provide details to the story, ranging from such topics as the impact of a 1054 supernova on the community to a walkthrough of ‘downtown’ Cahokia (which is likely my favourite part of the book). Pauketat weaves historical, archaeological and tribal information as well as personal experience and anecdotes providing a detailed discussion of the creation, and, later, excavation and theorization of the physical space of Cahokia. Throughout, he elucidates the human story of ancient Cahokians, calling us to speculate on the lives of ancient Cahokians, particularly why and how such a complex, community was built and ruled; how they looked to the sky to understand and structure their worlds, based on nuanced understandings of geometry and astrology. It is often difficult to imagine the past on current landscapes that are traversed by highways. Pauketat provides us with information on the social and physical landscape to imagine Cahokia (as mentioned previously in his fabulous virtual walkthrough the city), its population and suburbs as well as the immigrants who came to the area to start a new life and its connections to other areas of the ancient world, especially its connections to Central America. The landscape that Pauketat describes helps us understand how Cahokia was lived and experienced, a human story of how a city was built through worship, violence, theatre, public performance, feasting, labour, celebrations, beliefs and games.
In his narrative, Pauketat details the history of archaeological research at the site beginning with nineteenth-century theories of ‘moundbuilders’ to the work of Moorhead, Holder and Wike. In describing historical and current archaeological research in the area, we learn of the growth of knowledge of Cahokia and its residents, and how these stories have grown through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to encompass the entanglement of villages and city, men and women, farmers and rulers. Pauketat provides an important discussion of Cahokia's descendants amongst present-day Native American communities, leading us to consider the connections between narrative and history. Origin stories, mythologies and oral histories of contemporary Native American communities may have had their origins at Cahokia, and his contemplation on the relationship between ancient Cahokians and present-day Native American communities provides an important platform for further discussions as to the importance of this site and its legacy for stakeholders.
