4000 B.C.E.

3000 B.C.E.

NEWSFOCUS
60003000 B.C.E.: MIDDLE ARCHAIC

30001000 B.C.E.: LATE ARCHAIC

35002500 B.C.E. Watson Brake/Frenchmans Bend/ Hedgepeth Mounds

Watson Brake festival, he adds. Because Cahokia appeared to lack vibrant trade, division of labor, and a clear hierarchy, and because there are no written records and few burials, many considered it an elaborate seasonal encampment rather than a true urban area. But more recent excavations, such as Emersons current project in East St. Louis and work in Cahokia by Kelly and archaeologist James Brown of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, show that the area was busy throughout the year, and that settlements were extensive and likely permanent. In the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Sciences, Kelly, Brown, and colleagues describe eight copper nuggets found on one small Cahokia mound. They conclude that Cahokians crafted copper sheets by repeatedly heating the metal over an open wood re and hammering it, then cutting it into shapes. Kelly says drinking cups found nearby, associated with hunter and warrior rituals, suggest this was a combination workshop and mens club.

About 1400 B.C.E. Poverty Points Birdman Mound built The big bang The gatherings at Cahokia began around 1000 C.E., when the American Bottom began to draw people from all over the region, according to radiocarbon and ceramic dating. Pauketat and Kelly both argue that mound alignments reinforce the idea of seasonal ceremonies as a key part of the draw. Some mounds line up with the position of the sun at the winter solstice dawn, while others are oriented to its position at the equinoxes. The researchers speculate that a rash

2000 B.C.E.

MONROE, LOUISIANAHigh pyramids and great plazas are the hallmarks

9 hectares, back to 3500 B.C.E. On the ridges at Watson Brake, Saunders of ancient Mesoamerica, from the 3000-year-old Olmec cities along the Gulf uncovered huge amounts of re-cracked rock used for cooking in this preof Mexico to the inland metropolis of Tenochtitlan encountered by the Spanish pottery culture. The abundance of food was unbelievable, he says of the conquistadors. Yet the oldest examples that call to mind this familiar style are massive quantities of game and sh bones left behind. found nearly 1000 kilometers to the north in the muddy bayous of Louisiana. Saunderss 1997 paper (Science, 19 September, p. 1796) provided stunFive millennia ago, Native Americans here began to build high mounds of earth ning evidence of a mound-building culture far earlier than previously susanked by at plazas that resemble Mesoamericas classic architecture. A small pected. There were 2000 years of mound building in the southeastern U.S. band of archaeologists suspect that these ancient settlements laid the founda- before the rst monumental architecture appears in Mesoamerica, says archaetion not only for the North American mound-building tradition that eventually ologist David Anderson of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Saunders culminated in the great city of Cahokia (see main text, p. 1618), but perhaps argues that from about 3700 B.C.E. to 2700 B.C.E., Native Americans went on also for Mesoamerican civilization. a building spree across the lower Mississippi Valley, leaving behind mysterious The conical mounds dotting the lower Mississippi Valley were long consid- rectangular blocks of heated clay, thousands of spear points, and giant mounds. ered to be no older than 1000 years or so. But archaeologists in the 1970s and At Watson Brake, Saunders thinks periodic oods may have prompted inhabit80s were puzzled by radiocarbon dates from some sites matching the Mid- ants to create the mounds as platforms for living and ceremonial use. He and dle Archaic periodwhich ended at about 3000 B.C.E. others have found little sign of extensive trade and sugThats nearly 2 millennia before the rst cities appeared gest that the mounds were not part of a closely connected in Mexico, before the Giza pyramids, and about the same culture, but rather a feature that each group may have time that the worlds rst major urban centers evolved used and interpreted differently. in ancient Mesopotamia. Most researchers dismissed the In the decade and a half since that key paper, a dozen dates as erroneous. other Middle Archaic mounds have been identied. But But in the 1990s, Louisiana state archaeologist Joseph Saunders and other archaeologists say that more excavaSaunders began a careful study of the mounds, some of tion and precise redating are critical. which still rise as high as 10 meters. On a wooded site beside Instead, however, the state of Louisiana is focusing a bayou west of Monroe, he examined a six-mound site its limited resources on winning World Heritage status called Hedgepeth that includes a conical earthen structure for Poverty Point, the premier settlement during the sec8 meters high and some 33 meters in diameterand ond great burst of mound building, which began about was radiocarbon dated to approximately 3000 B.C.E. 1600 B.C.E. and lasted for nearly 600 years. Located on Another site called Frenchmans Bend, north of Mona bayou east of Monroe, the site includes a giant mound roe, proved to be of a similar age and boasted three laysecond only to that at Cahokia in size. Shaped like a ying ers of house oors and hearths as well as a half-dozen Solo seeker. With little support, Joseph birdan image repeated in the region for 3 millennia mounds. Radiocarbon dates put Watson Brake south of Saunders has pioneered work on Middle the structure rises 22 meters high, is 200 meters long, Monroe, with its vast complex of 11 mounds encircling Archaic mounds. and contains the equivalent of 27 million baskets of

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CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): JOSEPH SAUNDERS; PAINTING BY MARTIN PATE/WWW.PATEART.COM/COURTESY OF SOUTHEASTERN ARCHEOLOGICAL CENTER, NPS, AND POVERTY POINT MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE, LA; ROBERT RICKETT

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1000 B.C.E.

1000 C.E.

1000 B.C.E.1 C.E.: EARLY WOODLAND

1 C.E.500 C.E.: MIDDLE WOODLAND

500 C.E.1000 C.E.: LATE WOODLAND

10001500 C.E.: MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE

1600600 B.C.E. Poverty Point

200 B.C.E. 400 C.E. Hopewell culture in Ohio

1000 1200 C.E. Cahokia rise

1492 C.E. Europeans arrive in North America 1300 C.E. Cahokia falls

1200 C.E. East St. Louis burns; palisade at Cahokia 1100 C.E. Monks Mound built of surprising astronomical events, such as Halleys Comet of 989 C.E. followed by the supernova of 1006 C.E., may have sparked a religious and political movement in a culture that kept close watch on the sky. Seeking clues to that spark, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, anthropologist Casey Barrier is excavating an 8.2-squarehectare cornfield close to the Mississippi River 64 kilometers south of Cahokia. Radiocarbon and ceramic dating put the complex between 1000 and 1050 C.E., after which it was completely abandoned. The short time span provides a rare window into the moment Mississippian culture began to organize in a more complex way. So far, Barriers as-yetunpublished work shows that rather than construct a traditional village of simple rectangular huts, the 100 to 200 inhabitants created a massive plaza and three mounds on virgin land. They also built 40 or so houses, some with courtyards. But they abandoned them all within a generation or twopossibly, he says, to join the growing crowds at Cahokia. Back at Monks Mound, scientists are reconsidering their old assumption that the massive project, which required moving 6 million baskets of dirt (assuming 1 cubic foot of earth per basket), took generations to complete. After 2007 excavations, Timothy Schilling, now an archaeologist at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, found little evidence of erosion or organic matter collection at the mound, as would be expected in longterm construction. Based on radiocarbon dating, he concludes that the mound took fewer

2000 C.E.

1 C.E.

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): JENNY ELLERBE/COURTESY OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA; WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; COURTESY SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY; PETE BOSTROM/LITHICCASTINGLAB.COM

earth. The mound is at the apex of a remarkable C-shaped complex spanning three hectares and including six half-rings and a host of smaller conical and at-topped earthworks (see image, p. 1620). Most radiocarbon dates put construction between 1400 and 1200 B.C.E. Unlike the Middle Archaic sites, which show little sign of long-distance trade, Poverty Point was practically a trade fair. Along with more than 8000 spear points, archaeologists have found red jasper, quartz, and copper from as far as the Great Lakes, chert from near St. Louis, plus more than 130 clay gurines and innumerable bone awls likely used to puncture animal hides. Poverty Point is vacuuming in materials in quantities that continue to stagger me, says archaeologist Tristram R. Kidder of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked at the site since the 1990s and in 2009 published a report summarizing recent eld seasons. What was exported from Poverty Point is a mystery, however. Only a few stone beads that may have been manufactured there have been found in elsewhere. Baskets, salt, and other possible exports may have left no trace. As at Cahokia, Kidder and Timothy Schilling of the University of Indiana, Bloomington, discovered that the Bird Mound may have been built quickly, perhaps in less than a year. The 2009 report on the mound notes that sediment on the bottom was squeezed up into upper layers, and there are no microscopic signs of worm burrows or raindrops, which would have left traces if the mound had been built in stages. The Bird Mound complex is not matched at other sites from the era; Mesoamerica at that period lacked monumental structures altogether. Its unique, says Kidder, noting that the mound predates Olmec pyramids and plazas by a couple of centuries. Did the Middle Archaic mounds and Poverty Point inuence the rise of Mesoamerican civilization? The question tantalizes archaeologists. The proportions used at the Louisiana sites closely match those found in Mesoamerica, notes John Clark, a Mesoamerican specialist at Brigham Young University in

Land of plenty. Poverty Point residents valued

exotic materials, like the imported stone in these gurines.

Provo, Utah. By examining the alignments of Archaic mounds, retired civil engineer Robert Patten argued at a recent conference on archaeo-astronomy that the numbers associated with the sites are mirrored in later Mesoamerican calendars as well as in the design of structures. The origin of the Mesoamerican system should be searched for in a vast area between the Mississippi River Basin and Mesoamerica, he says. Clark agrees: We need to look to Louisiana as a source. Mesoamericans may have used the plaza-and-pyramid innovation to help create a more complex social organization and to jump-start urban life. But in the Mississippi River valley, this didnt happen. The second period of mound building came to a halt by 1000 B.C.E., when Kidder says abrupt changes in economy and society took place across eastern North America. Recent geoarchaeological research in northeast Louisiana suggests large-scale oods and river instability, along with cooler temperatures. Flooding may have rendered sites like Poverty Point uninhabitable. Coring in the Gulf of Mexico has lately conrmed that large oods, some episodes extending over decades, dumped enormous quantities of sediment into the gulf for half a millennium, Kidder adds. For several hundred years, there were no mounds built. Finally in the early centuries C.E., the third and nal period of mound building began, this time centered in the Ohio River valley and culminating in Cahokia. Explaining the construction gaps is a daunting challenge. But archaeologists say the older mounds could provide a key to understanding New World developmentif a new generation of researchers focuses on these largely obscure sites. Its very exciting, Anderson says. This is changing our whole picture of the region across a vast time span. A.L. 23 DECEMBER 2011

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