Archaeology expert to speak at Cahokia Mounds (Event happened back in Feb but the write-up has some info on new work at Emerald Mound)
Archaeologists can look at the immense Cahokia Mounds. They can dig up bits of pottery and tools. They can even find human remains. But what do these physical traces reveal about the religion followed by the people who lived here 1,000 years ago?
Susan Alt will try to answer that question Feb. 22 when she speaks at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. The free event begins at 2 p.m.
Alt, a Ph.D. from Indiana University, has spent years researching the mounds. Most recently, she has excavated Emerald Mound, a site about 25 miles from the historic site, near the town of Lebanon, Ill. She has found evidence of structures there that may have served as shrines and living quarters for people making pilgrimages to and from Cahokia.
She and her husband, Timothy Pauketat of the University of Illinois, believe Emerald Mounds was aligned with the moon’s phases and attracted religious pilgrims from all across the Midwest. Their findings suggest it predates Cahokia Mounds and helped spur development of Cahokia into a city of 10,000 people or more.
“We’re finding that religion wasn’t an outcome of greater complexity. Rather, greater complexity was a product of a religious movement,” Alt has said.
http://www.theintelligencer.com/local_news/article_412e9ea8-aedc-11e4-aaa8-0b87ca4c40f6.html
See also http://www.bu.edu/historic/riha/recipients/recipients/Field_Research_Cahokia_final.pdf
for more details of the project
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road