Featured: Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2019!

Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2019!

Megaliths by David Corio

Megaliths by David Corio

Who's Online

There are currently, 479 guests and 4 members online.

You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here

Sponsors

<< Our Photo Pages >> Cahokia - Mound 72 - Artificial Mound in United States in Great Lakes Midwest

Submitted by bat400 on Monday, 01 February 2016  Page Views: 12388

Pre-ColumbianSite Name: Cahokia - Mound 72
Country: United States Region: Great Lakes Midwest Type: Artificial Mound
Nearest Town: East St. Louis, IL  Nearest Village: Collinsville, IL
Latitude: 38.651190N  Longitude: 90.063694W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
4 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
4 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

Internal Links:
External Links:

I have visited· I would like to visit

bat400 visited on 4th Aug 2007 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 4 Access: 4

Ahdzib have visited here

Cahokia - Mound 72
Cahokia - Mound 72 submitted by bat400 : Cahokia - Mound 72. This burial mound was originally described as a rectangular mound with a sharp ridge running down its center. The shape now is the result of several excavations that took place before the 1960's. The contour of that last dig has been recreated. Photo by bat400, June 2007. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Artificial Mound in St. Clare County, Illinois. A burial mound sited south of the central plaza of the city of Cahokia. Extensive excavations in the 1970's discovered multiple smaller mounds had been incorporated into this single structure 130' by 70' and 6' high.

The burials include an older man resting on a bed of 20,000 marine shell beads. He is accompanied by a variety of other grave goods, including caches of finely work arrowheads that were arranged in groups, each cache made from different materials (and apparently) and by different craftsmen. Grimly, the mound also included over 4 dozen apparent sacrifices - large groups of young women, and young men with heads and hands removed.

Unlike almost all Cahokia mounds (aligned on the cardinal directions) Mound 72 is 30 degrees north of east on its long axis.
The mound was not completely excavated so other burials are likely. The contour has been recreated. The museum features a depiction of the older man's burial.

Note: Strontium analysis of Human Sacrifice victims' teeth from Cahokia shows they were locals, not ‘foreign’ Captives, see the most recent comment on our page
You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page. To see the most up to date information please register for a free account.


Cahokia - Mound 72
Cahokia - Mound 72 submitted by davidmorgan : Beautiful arrowheads found in Mound 72, on display in Cahokia Museum. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.

Nearby Images from Flickr
Through HN Cabin
Mississippian Culture people are not the nomadic Indian hunters that you probably think of
Blue Moon over St Louis
CX3A2087
CX3A2194
CX3A2162

The above images may not be of the site on this page, but were taken nearby. They are loaded from Flickr so please click on them for image credits.


Click here to see more info for this site

Nearby sites

Click here to view sites on an interactive map of the area

Key: Red: member's photo, Blue: 3rd party photo, Yellow: other image, Green: no photo - please go there and take one, Grey: site destroyed

Download sites to:
KML (Google Earth)
GPX (GPS waypoints)
CSV (Garmin/Navman)
CSV (Excel)

To unlock full downloads you need to sign up as a Contributory Member. Otherwise downloads are limited to 50 sites.


Turn off the page maps and other distractions

Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 360m N 9° Cahokia - Mound 60* Artificial Mound
 367m N 350° Cahokia - Mound 59* Artificial Mound
 568m NE 43° Cahokia - Museum* Museum
 651m NNE 30° Cahokia - Mound 55* Artificial Mound
 760m NNW 347° Cahokia - Mound 48 Artificial Mound
 775m S 178° Cahokia - Mound 66 Artificial Mound
 920m NNE 28° Cahokia* Ancient Village or Settlement
 1.0km N 7° Cahokia - Monk's Mound* Pyramid / Mastaba
 1.1km NNW 336° Cahokia - Mound 42* Artificial Mound
 1.1km NNE 19° Cahokia - Mound 36 Artificial Mound
 1.1km NE 35° Cahokia - Mounds 30 and 31 Artificial Mound
 1.2km NNE 20° Cahokia - Stockade* Misc. Earthwork
 1.3km NNE 27° Cahokia - Ramey Group* Ancient Village or Settlement
 1.3km NW 319° Cahokia - Mound 44* Artificial Mound
 1.4km NW 314° Cahokia - Woodhenge* Timber Circle
 1.5km NNE 14° Cahokia - Mound 5.* Artificial Mound
 2.1km N 0° Cahokia - Kunnemann Group* Ancient Temple
 2.4km WNW 283° Fingerhut tract* Ancient Village or Settlement
 2.5km WNW 296° Cahokia - Powell Mound Artificial Mound
 4.6km W 259° Sam Chucalo Mound* Artificial Mound
 5.9km N 356° Horseshoe Lake Mound* Artificial Mound
 7.7km W 262° East Saint Louis Mound Center* Ancient Village or Settlement
 10.7km W 265° Big Mound (St Louis)* Artificial Mound
 16.8km WSW 240° Sugarloaf Mound, Missouri* Artificial Mound
 24.4km E 95° Emerald Mound, Illinois* Artificial Mound
View more nearby sites and additional images

<< Rondel Na Výsluní

Dolmen de Candadès 1 >>

Please add your thoughts on this site

Stonehenge Tea Towels - Worldwide delivery

 Stonehenge Tea Towels - Worldwide delivery

Sponsors

Auto-Translation (Google)

Translate from English into:

"Cahokia - Mound 72" | Login/Create an Account | 8 News and Comments
  
Go back to top of page    Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Bead Production and Cultural Complexity at Cahokia by Andy B on Friday, 22 April 2016
(User Info | Send a Message)
Bead Production and Cultural Complexity at Cahokia by Jonathan T. Thomas and Sarah Baires

Over 20,000 shell beads were found with the well-known 'birdman' burial (Burial 13, Mound 72) at Mound 72, Cahokia. Mound 72, which also contains the mass graves of over 270 individuals, constitutes one of clearest displays of power and ideology in the Native American archaeological record. We present the preliminary results of analysis of these beads, and a new methodology for quickly examining shell bead standardization in large bead data sets. Low standard deviations in diameters suggest batch production techniques resulting in large numbers of disc beads nearly identical in size. We suggest that the production of beads at Cahokia and surrounding sites was a highly-organized, labor-intensive industry with important implications for understanding gender and age related aspects of labor in the Mississippian World.

https://www.academia.edu/24646883/Bead_Production_and_Cultural_Complexity_at_Cahokia
[ Reply to This ]

Victims of Human Sacrifice at Cahokia Were Locals, Not ‘Foreign’ Captives, Study Find by Andy B on Monday, 01 February 2016
(User Info | Send a Message)
The practice of human sacrifice in America’s largest prehistoric city was more subtle and complex than experts once thought, new research suggests.

Recent studies into the remains of sacrificial victims at the ancient city of Cahokia reveal that those who were killed were not captives taken from outlying regions, as many archaeologists had believed.

Instead, they may have been residents of the same community that killed them.

When Cahokia was at its peak 900 years ago, it was the largest city in what’s now the United States, a metropolis of about 15,000 people in southwestern Illinois, whose economic and cultural influence reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

But one of the many mysteries lingering among the city’s ruins, just outside modern-day St. Louis, is a burial mound excavated in the 1960s and found to contain more than 270 bodies — almost all of them young women killed as victims of human sacrifice.

More at Western Digs
http://westerndigs.org/victims-of-human-sacrifice-at-cahokia-were-locals-not-captives-study-finds/
[ Reply to This ]
    Who were Cahokia’s Immigrants? - Talk at Cahokia, March 13th 2016 by Andy B on Monday, 01 February 2016
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    Cahokia Winter Lecture Series
    March 13th, 2pm

    Dr. Kristin Hedman, Illinois State Archaeological Survey: “Who were Cahokia’s Immigrants? Establishing a Strontium ‘Isoscape’ for the American Midcontinent – or ‘what we can and can’t say about place of origin for Cahokia’s immigrants.'” 2 pm. Free.

    http://cahokiamounds.org/event/winter-lecture-series-3/
    [ Reply to This ]
    Immigrants at the Mississippian polity of Cahokia: strontium isotope evidence by bat400 on Thursday, 05 December 2019
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    P. A. Slater, K. M. Hedman, T. E. Emerson, 'Immigrants at the Mississippian polity of Cahokia: strontium isotope evidence for population movement', Journal of Archaeological Science, Jan 2014.

    Abstract:
    Archaeologists have long debated the role of regional interaction in the 11th to 14th centuries at the Mississippian polity of Cahokia. Architectural styles, exotic materials, and cultural objects provide indirect evidence for cultural interaction and ethnic and social diversity; however, identifying the movement of individuals (rather than materials) is key to our growing understanding of the population history that enabled the formation of this unique polity. This study is the first to use strontium isotope analysis (87Sr/86Sr) of human tooth enamel to identify immigrants at Cahokia. Modern and archaeological fauna were used to establish a baseline “local” range of strontium isotope ratios for the American Bottom region surrounding Cahokia. Teeth from individuals interred in diverse mortuary locations, including mounds, within this region were analyzed and compared to the local strontium isotope range to identify individuals of non-local origin. One-third of all individuals analyzed were identified as non-local, and the range and variability of their strontium ratios suggests multiple places of origin. The correlation of isotopic data with available biological and mortuary evidence allows us to examine the role of migration in the history of this Mississippian polity.
    [ Reply to This ]

Odontometric determination of sex at Mound 72, Cahokia by bat400 on Monday, 21 October 2013
(User Info | Send a Message)
Andrew R. Thompson, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 151, Issue 3, pages 408–419, July 2013

ABSTRACT

The mortuary context of Mound 72 at the Cahokia site is one of the most unusual ever described in prehistoric North America. Previous skeletal analyses suggested that four large mass graves within the mound contained only female skeletons. However, these findings were complicated by extremely poor bone preservation that limited the number of skeletal observations that could be made. Furthermore, most skeletons were aged in the 15–25 year range, a time when sexually dimorphic bony traits may still be developing. In this study, dental remains were used to examine sex in the four presumably all-female mass graves in Mound 72. Additional sources of information, including the original field/laboratory notes and new sexing data based on modern standards, were gathered to fully evaluate the dental estimates. Initially, discriminant function analysis was performed on odontometrics using the original Mound 72 sex assignment. Inconsistent results indicated that some of the skeletons may have been misclassified in the original analyses. To overcome this issue, discriminant function equations were generated using a large pooled skeletal sample from two sites in close temporal and geographic proximity to Cahokia. Application of the equations to Mound 72 revealed that each of the four mass burial groups contained individuals classified as male. These assignments were checked against the skeletal remains and the original field/laboratory notes. Discussion centers on how the results affect previous archaeological interpretations as well as the methodological considerations associated with this study.
Am J Phys Anthropol 151:408–419, 2013.© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
[ Reply to This ]
    Infamous Mass Grave of Young Women in Ancient City of Cahokia Also Holds Men by bat400 on Monday, 21 October 2013
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    The scene, discovered by archaeologists in Illinois more than 40 years ago, depicts one of the most extravagant acts of violence ever documented in ancient America: A thousand-year-old pit found under a tall earthen mound, lined from corner to corner with skeletons — 53 in all — neatly arranged two bodies deep, each layer separated by woven fiber mats.

    The victims all appeared to be women, meters away from an ornate burial of two men thought to be clan elders, political leaders, spiritual guides, or all three.
    But the women were not alone. By the time the entire mound had been excavated, two dozen burial pits had emerged, cradling some 270 human remains.

    As the largest display of ritual killing found anywhere north of Mexico, the cluster of Cahokia mass graves has been one of the most studied features in the country.

    But new research casts doubt on this most-touted trait of Mound 72. A study published in the July issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology finds that men were also likely among the unfortunate dead, in all four of the mass graves.

    “The idea of all-female sacrifice pits in Mound 72 has been reverberated in discussions of Cahokia and Mississippian culture in general for many years,” said the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Thompson, by email.
    But even when the mound was first excavated in the 1960s and ’70s, there was little evidence that the victims were all women, he says.

    Thompson, who conducted his research while a doctoral student in physical anthropology at Indiana University, points out that original analyses of Mound 72 found most of the skeletons were too badly decomposed to identify their sex.

    Of the approximately 270 total remains found in the mound, he reports, only 117 could be sexed at the time. And in those four graves in particular, there were 118 remains, of which only 56, or 47 percent, were confidently thought to be female.

    So in an effort to get a more accurate view of whom the graves held, Thompson turned to the hardest and most durable structures in the human body: teeth.

    “Basically I took measurements of all the teeth that were recovered from Mound 72 and used those measurements to reassess sex in the four burial pits that were reported as being all female,” he said.

    “In case you’re wondering,” he added, “teeth are indeed reliable indicators of sex—there is a measurable difference in the size of male vs. female teeth. There is, of course, quite a bit of overlap in tooth size between sexes, and this varies between populations.”

    To account for these variations, Thompson created a baseline for average tooth size in Cahokia, by measuring teeth from other nearby graves. Specifically, he used samples from two local sites that held remains of people who lived at about the same time and place as the Mound 72 victims but were much better preserved and therefore easier to sex.

    Using these averages for male and female tooth size as a yardstick for the general population, Thompson then compared them against teeth recovered from the four putative female-only graves in Mound 72 — representing a total of 88 victims.

    Based on his measurements, Thompson estimates that 15 out of the 88 skeletons — or 17% — are male. And in the grave with the 53 neatly-stacked bodies — the feature most often described as the “female burial pit” — he found at least 8 male victims.

    Since sex has been so central to the graves’ interpretations, Thompson took an extra step: He went back to the skeletal remains of those 8 possible men, to look for clues in the bones themselves as to whether they were male or female.

    “I didn’t find much supporting evidence in this regard,” Thompson says. “Most of the skeletal material is highly fragmented, which limits the observable features, and what material was observable was mostly inconclusive, at best.”

    Still, he acknowledges that, even by his estimates

    Read the rest of this post...
    [ Reply to This ]

Human sacrifice! Archaeologist creates stir with new book on Cahokia Mounds by bat400 on Tuesday, 11 August 2009
(User Info | Send a Message)
According to this new book by University of Illinois archaeologist and professor of anthropology Tim Pauketat, the mound builders were not always the idyllic, corn-growing, pottery-making, gentle villagers depicted in various dioramas at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville.

Pauketat said these long-vanished people practiced human sacrifice of women and men on a mass scale.

Based on years of study of artifacts including many from the extensive excavation of the site's Mound 72 during 1967-71, Pauketat's book is getting national attention. The Washington Post described it as "undeniably hot." A national online review service used the headline, "Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi."

But the "virgins" angle may be a bit of an overstatement, said Pauketat.
"In the book I do not use the word virgin. I used female sacrifices," he said, noting that close study of some of 53 female skeletons found in a huge pit below the mound showed clear signs of childbirth. "They were selecting women of a certain age, but it's not like they're selecting virgins," he said. Most of the sacrificial victims were in their early 20s, he said.

The existence of 260 skeletal remains including of women all retrieved from within and under Mound 72 was not previously unknown in the metro-east. But because of the book, it's sensational news in other parts of the country, especially in big Eastern cities where residents are unfamiliar with the Midwest's often savage early history.

Pauketat said that the vast collection of data from the mound excavation included reports from the original archaeologist who found finger bones extended deep into the sand below some of the skeletons, evidence that victims were alive when buried.
"That's the interpretation of the original excavator. He's quite sure of that. I talked to him in person," Pauketat said.

In this society, often referred to as the Mississippian Culture, women played much more of a role than convenient sacrificial victims, Pauketat said. And even in this death ritual, women were respected, unlike some of the men whose remains were found with heads lopped off.

"The women never show injury. There is no trauma. So that means either they drank poison or they were strangled. But, that's speculation. They were very carefully placed into these pits," he said.

Ancient Cahokia's big draw, according to the book, was religion. And in the practice of various religious rites, evidence has been found that women were the rivals of this society's male religious leaders. Pauketat said the evidence is in the form of curious female figurines carved from a type of clay found just south of St. Louis known as flint clay. The reddish substance dries rock hard.

The elevated status of women in religion in Cahokian society is illustrated, Pauketat said, by the decorations on the figurines that include a highly prized serpent figure, and of depictions of staple foods like corn and squash.

Pauketat said that at Cahokia, religion drew people from small farming villages all over the metro-east and from where present day St. Louis stands.
"People recognized in that place (Cahokia) a supernatural power on a scale and of a kind that was probably unknown in North America north of Mexico," he said
As for the female sacrifices, Pauketat said important women may have been chosen because of their status. "These female sacrifices might not have been of unimportant people. This may have been a very honored role to fill. It may have been people who were impersonating some kind of corn goddess," he said, "And their duty was to die."

Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see bnd.com.
[ Reply to This ]
    Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi by Andy B on Monday, 01 February 2016
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi - Archaeologists are slowly unearthing the ghastly secrets of Cahokia, an ancient city under the American heartland

    Posted Aug 6, 2009

    Ever since the first Europeans came to North America, only to discover the puzzling fact that other people were already living here, the question of how to understand the Native American past has been both difficult and politically charged. For many years, American Indian life was viewed through a scrim of interconnected bigotry and romance, which simultaneously served to idealize the pre-contact societies of the Americas and to justify their destruction. Pre-Columbian life might be understood as savage and brutal darkness or an eco-conscious Eden where man lived in perfect harmony with nature. But it seemed to exist outside history, as if the native people of this continent were for some reason exempt from greed, cruelty, warfare and other near-universal characteristics of human society.

    As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat’s cautious but mesmerizing new book, “Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi,” makes clear, Cahokia — the greatest Native American city north of Mexico — definitely belongs to human history. (It is not “historical,” in the strict sense, because the Cahokians left no written records.) At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall “Monks Mound”), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn’t sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later.

    More at
    http://www.salon.com/2009/08/06/cahokia/
    [ Reply to This ]

Your Name: Anonymous [ Register Now ]
Subject:


Add your comment or contribution to this page. Spam or offensive posts are deleted immediately, don't even bother

<<< What is five plus one as a number? (Please type the answer to this question in the little box on the left)
You can also embed videos and other things. For Youtube please copy and paste the 'embed code'.
For Google Street View please include Street View in the text.
Create a web link like this: <a href="https://www.megalithic.co.uk">This is a link</a>  

Allowed HTML is:
<p> <b> <i> <a> <img> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <tt> <li> <ol> <ul> <object> <param> <embed> <iframe>

We would like to know more about this location. Please feel free to add a brief description and any relevant information in your own language.
Wir möchten mehr über diese Stätte erfahren. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, eine kurze Beschreibung und relevante Informationen in Deutsch hinzuzufügen.
Nous aimerions en savoir encore un peu sur les lieux. S'il vous plaît n'hesitez pas à ajouter une courte description et tous les renseignements pertinents dans votre propre langue.
Quisieramos informarnos un poco más de las lugares. No dude en añadir una breve descripción y otros datos relevantes en su propio idioma.