Cahokia is the name of the largest Mississippian site in North America, and thought to be the origin point of the Mississippian culture. One example of the size and power of the effect of Cahokia's influence has been the distribution of large red stone lifelike figurines, found throughout western Illinois and eastern Missouri, with smaller clusters known from Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma, Shiloh in Tennessee, Moundville in Alabama, Champlin Mounds in Mississippi and Gahagan in Louisiana. Isolated figures and fragments are also known from the Upper Mississippi River Valley north of Cahokia as well.
These figures are lifelike carvings of mythological beings, people or animals, performing different activities, such as this example from the Hughes site in Oklahoma. The largest figurines are 27 centimeters in height and 5.2 kilograms in weight, and they all date to the Stirling phase at Cahokia, AD 1100-1200. They were long thought to have been made from Arkansas bauxite, but, using a variety of spectroscopic methods, Emerson et al (2003) analyzed and reported a matching source for 13 artifacts from each of the locales listed above.
All of the artifacts were made of a pipestone with a similar mineral make up dominated by chlorite, boehmite, and heavy-metal phosphate mineral ("CBP"). These CPB signatures match the Missouri flint clay pipestone quarry near Cahokia; and are believed to have been likely made at Cahokia and distributed outward.
Sources
Emerson TE, and Hughes RE. 2000. Figurines, flint clay sourcing, the Ozark highlands, and Cahokian acquisition. American Antiquity 65(1):79-101.
Emerson TE, Hughes RE, Hynes MR, and Wisseman SU. 2003. The sourcing and interpretation of Cahokia-style figurines in the Trans-Mississippi south and southeast. American Antiquity 68(2):287-313.
Wisseman SU, Hughes RE, Emerson TE, and Farnsworth KB. 2012. Refining the identification of native American pipestone quarries in the midcontinental United States. Journal of Archaeological Science 39(7):2496-2505.
