Culture:
Mississippian period city
Location:
In west central Illinois, east across the Mississippi River from St. Louis Missouri
Dates Occupied:
AD 1000-1600
Architecture to Visit:
Monk's Mound, about 100 smaller mounds. Also, a recreated Wood Henge is on site.
Museum/Gift Shop:
A fairly new interpretive center is located on site, showing artifacts and a recreated village. The interpretive center also includes a small gift shop with reproductions and books on Cahokia.
Recommended Reading:
A couple of excellent web sites are available on the Cahokia site; listed in the side bar above.
Excavators and Excavations:
Excavators include Melvin Fowler, and a whole lot of people associated with archaeological studies in advance of the nearby highway. Field schools are regularly conducted at Cahokia by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
Why You Should Go:
Too few people who live in the American midwest have been to see the mounds at Cahokia; in fact many have never heard of the site, which held several thousand people at its heyday and influenced styles of building and pottery (if not politics and religion) as far away as Wisconsin and Oklahoma. The pyramidal mound is awe-inspiring and the new interpretive center is very informative. Well worth a visit if you are in the Saint Louis area.
