Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Matter, Places, and Persons in Cahokian Depositional Acts

  • Published:
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

An Erratum to this article was published on 15 February 2017

This article has been updated

Abstract

Artifact caching, soil layering, and other intentional depositional practices—archaeologically defined “ritual deposits” of the past—are especially prevalent during the Mississippian period. Employing a perspective of relational ontology, however, we interrogate the validity of a past partitioned into religious, political, and daily spheres. Rather, this perspective emphasizes the multi-experiential and multi-dimensional aspects of social life. Meaning, intentional depositional acts can no longer be usefully described as simply “sacred” or “ritual” practices. Rather, these deposits should be explored as experiences tied to multiple layers of social life, investigating the relationships constructed through such deposits between humans, nonhuman agents, and the landscape.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

  • 15 February 2017

    An erratum to this article has been published.

Notes

  1. Indigenous scholars describe earthen mounds and mound cities as places life-affirming and connected to one another through depositional processes and a non-linear time scale (Howe and Wilson 2015).This connection between the past and the present along a timescale that is cyclical (but not ahistorical) emphasizes the recursive relationships among place, history, materials, and persons. Those aforementioned things (places, histories, etc.) are not abstract ideals but tangible realities created through depositional practice.

References

  • Ahler, Steven R., and Peter J. Depuydt 1987 A Report on the 1931 Powell Mound Excavations, Madison County, Illinois. Illinois State Museum Reports of Investigations, No. 43, Springfield, Illinois.

  • Alberti, B., & Bray, T. L. (2009). Introduction. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 19(03), 337.

  • Alberti, B., & Marshall, Y. (2009). Animating archaeology: Local theories and conceptually open-ended methodologies. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 19(03), 344–356.

  • Alberti, B., Jones, A. M., & Pollard, J. (Eds.). (2013). Archaeology after interpretation. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

  • Alt, Susan M. 2006 Cultural Pluralism and Complexity: Analyzing a Cahokian Ritual Outpost. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

  • Alt, S. M., & Pauketat, T. R. (2007). Sex and the southern cult. In A. King (Ed.), The southeastern ceremonial complex (pp. 232–250). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, J., & Fowler, M. (1966). Field excavation notes on file Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Illinois: Collinsville.

  • Angelo, D. (2014). Assembling ritual, the burden of the everyday: an exercise in relational ontology in Quebrada de Humahuaca, Argentina. World Archaeology, 46(2), 270–287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arnal, W. E., & McCutcheon, R. T. (2013). The sacred is the profane: the political nature of “religion”. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baires, Sarah E. 2014 Cahokia’s Origins: Religion, Complexity, and Ridge-top Mortuaries in the Mississippi River Valley. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

  • Baires, S. E. (2015). The role of water in the emergence of the pre-Columbian Native American City of Cahokia. WiresWater, 2, 489–503.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baires, Sarah E. 2016 Land of Water, City of the Dead: Religion and Cahokia’s Emergence. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

  • Baltus, Melissa R. 2014 Transforming material relationships: 13th century revitalization of Cahokian religious-politics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

  • Baltus, Melissa R. 2016 From caches to relationships: intentionally deposited objects in Mississippian buildings. In Science and Religion in the Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands, ed. B.H. Koldehoff and T.R. Pauketat. Prospectus submitted to University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Manuscript on file with the author, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Toledo.

  • Baltus, M. R., & Baires, S. E. (2012). Elements of ancient power in the Cahokian world. Journal of Social Archaeology, 12(2), 167–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bayman, J. M., Hevly, R. H., Johnson, B., Reinhard, K. J., & Ryan, R. Analytical perspectives on a protohistoric cache of ceramic jars from the Lower Colorado Desert. Journal of California and Great Basin anthropology, 18(1), 131–154.

  • Bell, Catherine 2007 Response: defining the need for a definition. In The Archaeology of Ritual, ed. E. Kyriakidis, pp. 277–288. Cotsen Advanced Seminar 3. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology University of California, Los Angeles.

  • Bradley, R. (1999). Ritual, time and history. World Archaeology, 23(2), 209–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. A. (1976). The southern cult reconsidered. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology., 1(2), 115–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. A. (1990). Archaeology confronts history at the Natchez temple. Southeastern Archaeology, 9(1), 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. A. (1997). The archaeology of religion in the eastern woodlands. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 465–485.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. A. (2010). Cosmological layouts of secondary burial as political instruments. In L. P. Sullivan & R. C. Mainfort (Eds.), Mississippian mortuary practices: beyond hierarchy and the representationist perspective (pp. 30–53). Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Brück, J. (1999). Ritual and rationality: some problems of interpretation in European archaeology. European Journal of Archaeology, 2, 313–344.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchanan, M. (2015). Warfare and the materialization of daily life at the Mississippian common field site. Ph.D: Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Indiana, Bloomington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchanan, B., David Kilby, J., Huckell, B. B., O’Brien, M. J., & Collard, M. (2012). A morphometric assessment of the intended function of cached Clovis points. PloS One, 7(2), 1–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, A. (2013). Mississippians in the ‘boonies’: new investigations and insights at the Collins site. Poster presented at the Midwest archaeological conference. Ohio: Columbus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chadwick, A. M. (2012). Routine magic, mundane ritual: towards a unified notion of depositional practice. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31(3), 283–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chang, K. C. (1989). Ancient China and its anthropological significance. In C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky (Ed.), Archaeological thought in America (pp. 155–166). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Dalan, R. A., Holley, G., Woods, W., Watters, H., & Koepke, J. (2003). Envisioning Cahokia: a landscape perspective. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1973 God is red. Grosset and Dunlap, New York.

  • Durkheim, E. (1965). The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Echohawk, R. C. (2000). Ancient history in the new world: integrating oral traditions and the archaeological record in deep time. American Antiquity, 65(2), 267–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eliade, M. (1959). The sacred and the profane: the nature of religion. San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, T. E. (1997). Cahokia and the archaeology of power. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, T. E., & Hargrave, E. (2000). Strangers in paradise? Recognizing ethnic mortuary diversity on the fringes of Cahokia. Southeastern Archaeology, 19(1), 1–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, T. E., & Woods, W. I. (1993). Saving the great Nobb: a case study in the preservation of Cahokia’s monks mound through passive management. Illinois Archaeology, 5, 100–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, Thomas E., Susan M. Alt, and Timothy R. Pauketat 2008 Locating American Indian Religion at Cahokia and Beyond. In Religion, Archaeology and the Material World, ed. Lars Fogelin, pp. 216–236. Center for Archaeological Investigations Southern Illinois University Carbondale Occasional Paper, 36. Board of Trustees Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

  • Emerson, T. E., Hedman, K. M., Hargrave, E. A., Cobb, D. E., & Thompson, A. R. (2016). Paradigms lost: reconfiguring Cahokia’s mound 72 beaded burial. American Antiquity, 83(3), 405–425.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, Thomas E., Brad Koldehoff, and Timothy R. Pauketat 2000 Serpents, Female Deities, and Fertility Symbolism in the Early Cahokian Countryside. In Mounds, Modoc, and Meosamerica: Papers in Honor of Melvin L. Fowler, ed. Steven R. Ahler, pp. 511–522. Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, Vol. XXVIII. Illinois State Museum, Springfield.

  • Fogelin, L. (2007). The archaeology of religious ritual. Annual Review of Anthropology, 36, 55–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fogelin, L., & Schiffer, M. B. (2015). Rites of passage and other rituals in the life histories of objects. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 25(4), 815–827.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fowler, Melvin L., Jerome Rose, Barbara VanderLeest, and Steven R. Ahler 1999 The Mound 72 Area: Dedicated and Sacred Space in Early Cahokia. Illinois State Museum, Reports of Investigations, No. 54. Illinois State Museum Society, Springfield.

  • Fowles, S. M. (2013). An archaeology of doings: secularism and the study of pueblo religion. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1966 [1993]). The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. Waukegan: Fontana Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gluckman, M., & Forde, C. D. (1962). Essays on the ritual of social relations. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldstein, Lynne 2000 Mississippian Ritual as Viewed through the Practice of Secondary Disposal of the Dead. In Mounds, Modoc, and Mesoamerica, Papers in Honor of Melvin L. Fowler, ed. Steven R. Ahler, pp. 193–206. Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, Vol. XXVIII, Springfield.

  • Hall, R. L. (1997). An archaeology of the soul: north American Indian belief and ritual. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hargrave, Eve, and Kristin Hedman 2000 The Halliday Site: Investigations into Early Mississippian Mortuary Behavior. Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program, Transportation Archaeological Research Reports, 50. Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program, Champaign.

  • Harris, O. J. T., & Robb, J. (2012). Multiple ontologies and the problem of the body in history. American Anthropologist, 114(4), 668–679.

  • Herva, V.-P., Nordqvist, K., Herva, A., & Ikaheimo, J. (2010). Daughters of magic: esoteric traditions, relational ontology and the archaeology of the post-medieval past. World Archaeology, 42(4), 609–621.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill, E. (2016). The contextual analysis of animal interments and ritual practice in Southwestern North America. KIVA, 65(4), 361–398.

  • Howe, L. A., & Wilson, J. (2015). Life in a 21st century Mound City. In R. Warrior (Ed.), The world of indigenous North America. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, S. (2014). Ontologies of indigeneity: the politics of embodying a concept. Cultural Geographics in Practice., 21(1), 27–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inomata, T. (2006). Plazas, performers, and spectators: political theaters of the classic Maya. Current Anthropology, 47(5), 805–842.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jeffries, R. W. (1994). The Swift Creek site and woodland platform mounds in the southeast. In D. J. Hally (Ed.), Ocmulgee archaeology 1936–1986 (pp. 71–83). Athens: University of Georgia Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kassabaum, M. C., & Nelson, E. S. (2016). Standing posts and special substances: gathering and ritual deposition at Feltus (22JE500), Jefferson County, Mississippi. Southeastern Archaeology, 35(2), 134–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keane, W. (2010). Marked, absent, habitual: approaches to Neolithic religion at Catalhoyuk. In I. Hodder (Ed.), In Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Catalhoyuk a Case Study (pp. 187–219). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, J. E. (1994). The archaeology of the East St. Louis mound center: past and present. Illinois Archaeology, 6(1–2), 1–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, John E. 2004 The Mitchell Mound Center: Then and Now. In Aboriginal Ritual and Economy in the Eastern Woodlands: Essays in Memory of Howard Dalton Winters, ed. Anne-Marie Cantwell, Lawrence A. Conrad, and Jonathan E. Reyman, pp. 269–284. Kampsville Studies in Archaeology and History, Volume 5. Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, Vol. XXX. Illinois State Museum, Springfield.

  • Kelly, J. E., & Brown, J. A. (2012). Cahokia: the processes and principles of the creation of an early Mississippian City. In A. T. Creekmore III & K. D. Fisher (Eds.), Making ancient cities: space and place in early urban societies (pp. 292–336). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidder, T. R., Arco, L. J., Ortmann, A. L., Schilling, T. M., Boeke, C., Bielitz, R., & Adelsberger, K. A. (2009). Poverty point mound a: final report of the 2005 and 2006 field seasons. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Division of Archaeology and the Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, E. (2015). Unbecoming human: an ethics of objects. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2–3), 295–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, A. (2003). Etowah: the political history of a chiefdom capital. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knight, V. J. (1989). The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion. American Antiquity, 51(4), 675–687.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knight, V. J. (2006). Farewell to the southeastern ceremonial complex. Southeastern Archaeology, 25, 1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kyriakidis, Evangelos 2007 Archaeologies of Ritual. In The Archaeology of Ritual, ed. E. Kyriakidis, pp. 289–309. Cotsen Advanced Seminar 3. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology University of California, Los Angeles.

  • Lankford, George E. 2007 The “path of souls”: some death imagery in the southeastern ceremonial complex. In Ancient objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, ed. F. Kent Reilly III and James F. Garber, pp. 174–212. University of Texas Press, Austin.

  • Lopinot, N. H., Schilling, T., Fritz, G. J., & Kelly, J. E. (2015). Implications of plant remains from the east face of monks mound. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 40(3), 209–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McConaughy, M. (2005). Middle woodland hopewell cache blades: blanks or finished tools? Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 30(2), 217–257.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mills, B. J., & Walker, W. H. (2008). Introduction: Memory, materiality and depositional practice. In B. J. Mills & W. H. Walker (Eds.), Memory work: Archaeologies of material practices (pp. 3–22). Santa Fe: School For Advanced Research Press.

  • Milner, G. (1984). Social and temporal implications of variation among American bottom Mississippian cemeteries. American Antiquity, 49(3), 468–488.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monaghan, G. W., & Peebles, C. (2010). The construction, use, and abandonment of angel site mound a: tracing the history of a middle Mississippian town through its earthworks. American Antiquity, 75(4), 935–953.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monaghan, G. W., Schilling, T., Krus, A. M., & Peebles, C. S. (2013). Mound construction chronology at angel mounds: episodic mound construction and ceremonial events. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 38(2), 155–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moorehead, Warren K. 1929 The Cahokia Mounds. University of Illinois Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 4. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

  • Erin, S. N., & Kassabaum, M. C. (2014). Expanding social networks through ritual deposition: a case study from the Lower Mississippi Valley. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 29(1), 103–128.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oetelaar, G. (2014). Better homes and pastures: human agency and the construction of place in communal bison hunting on the Northern Plains. Plains Anthropologist, 59(229), 9–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osborne, R., & Osborne, R. (2004). Hoards, votives, offerings: the archaeology of the dedicated object. World Archaeology, 36(1), 1–10.

  • Pauketat, T. R. (1997). Cahokian political economy. In T. R. Pauketat & T. E. Emerson (Eds.), Cahokia: domination and ideology in the Mississippian world (pp. 30–51). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R. (2004). Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R. (2010). The missing persons in Mississippian mortuaries. In L. P. Sullivan & R. C. Mainfort Jr. (Eds.), Mississippian mortuary practices: beyond hierarchy and the representationist perspective (pp. 15–28). Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R. (2013). An archaeology of the cosmos: rethinking agency and religion in ancient America. New York: Routledge Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R., & Alt, S. M. (2004). The making and meaning of a Mississippian axe-head cache. Antiquity, 78, 779–797.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R., & Emerson, T. E. (1991). The ideology of authority and the power of the pot. American Anthropologist, 93(4), 919–941.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, Timothy R., Susan M. Alt, and Jeffrey R. Kruchten 2016 The Emerald Acropolis: Elevating the Moon and Water in the Rise of Cahokia. Antiquity.

  • Pauketat, T. R., Emerson, T. E., Farkas, M., & Baires, S. E. (2015). An American Indian City. In S. M. Alt & T. R. Pauketat (Eds.), Medieval Mississippians: the Cahokian world (pp. 21–33). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R., Kelly, L. S., Fritz, G. J., Lopinot, N., Elias, S., & Hargrave, E. (2002). The residues of feasting and public ritual in early Cahokia. American Antiquity, 67(2), 257–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. R., Rees, M. A., VanDerwarker, A. M., & Parker, K. E. (2010). Excavations into Cahokia’s mound 49. Illinois Archaeology, 22, 397–436.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollard, J. (2001). The aesthetics of depositional practice. World Archaeology, 33(2), 315–333.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1952 [1965]). Structure and function in primitive societies: essays and addresses. New York: The Fres Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Radin, P. (1970 [1923]). The Winnebago tribe. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Radin, P. (1991 [1945]). The road of life and death: a ritual drama of the American Indians. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reed, N. A., Bennett, J. W., & Potter, J. W. (1968). Solid core drilling of monks mound: technique and findings. American Antiquity, 33(2), 137–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew, C. (1985). The archaeology of cult. London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew, Colin 1995 The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi. Supplementary Volume No. 18. The British School of Archaeology at Athens. Thames and Hudson: London.

  • Schiffer, M. B. (1983). Toward the identification of formation processes. American Antiquity, 48(4), 675–706.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schilling, Timothy 2010 An Archaeological Model of the Construction of Monks Mound and Implications for the Development of Cahokian Society (800–1400 A.D.). Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

  • Schilling, T. (2012). Building monks mound, Cahokia, Illinois, A.D. 800-1400. Journal of Field Archaeology, 37(4), 302–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schilling, T. (2013). The chronology of monks mound. Southeastern Archaeology, 32, 14–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherwood, S. D., & Kidder, T. R. (2011). The DaVincis of dirt: Geoarchaeological perspectives on native American mound building in the Mississippi River basin. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 30, 69–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simon, M. (2014). Reevaluating the introduction of maize into the American bottom and western Illinois. Reassessing the Timing, Rate, and Adoption Trajectories of Domesticate Use in the Midwest and Great Lakes, Midwest Archaeological Conference, INC. Occasional Papers, 1, 97–134.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skousen, B. J. (2012). Pots, places, ancestors, and worlds: dividual personhood in the American bottom region. Southeastern Archaeology, 31, 57–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swenson, E. (2015). The archaeology of ritual. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44, 329–245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tallbear, K. (2015). An indigenous reflection on working beyond the human/not human. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2–3), 230–235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarlow, S., & Tarlow, S. (2012). The Archaeology of Emotion and Affect. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41(1), 169–185.

  • Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488.

  • Walker, W. (1998). Where are the witches of prehistory? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 5(3), 245–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, W. (1999). Ritual, life histories, and the afterlives of people and things. Journal of the Southwest, 41(3), 383–405.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, W. (2002). Stratigraphy and practical reason. American Anthropologist, New Series, 104(1), 159–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallis, N., & Blessing, M. (2015). Ritualized deposition and feasting pits: bundling of animal remains in Mississippi period Florida. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1(25), 79–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Watts, C. (2013a). Relational archaeologies: roots and routes. In C. Watts (Ed.), Relational archaeologies: humans, animals, things (pp. 1–20). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watts, V. (2013b). Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-humans (first woman and sky woman go on a European world tour!). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1), 20–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weismantel, M., & Meskell, L. (2014). Substances: ‘following the material’ through two prehistoric cases. Journal of Material Culture, 19(3), 233–251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zych, T. (2015). The game of Chunkey. In T. R. Pauketat & S. M. Alt (Eds.), Medieval Mississippians: The Cahokian world (pp. 71–74). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.

Download references

Acknowledgments

This article developed out of a conference paper written for a symposium on ritual depositional practices in the Southeast and we would like to acknowledge the organizers of that session (Bretton Giles and Corin Pursell) for sparking our interest in the topic. We would like to thank Meghan Buchanan, Amanda Butler, and Jamie Arjona for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper in addition to the useful comments of three anonymous reviewers. This research is derived from both of our dissertations and any shortcomings are our own.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eastern Connecticut State University, 421 Webb Hall, 83 Windham Street, Willimantic, CT, 06226, USA

    Sarah E. Baires

  2. University of Toledo, University Hall 2520, 2801 W. Bancroft Street, Toledo, OH, 43606, USA

    Melissa R. Baltus

Authors
  1. Sarah E. Baires
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Melissa R. Baltus
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah E. Baires.

Ethics declarations

Funding

The excavations of Rattlesnake Mound were funded by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant # 1156829; the excavations of the CABB Tract, Cahokia, were funded by the Institute for Field Research.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

“Political activity and religious activity are barely distinguishable. History is not divided into categories. It is simultaneously religious, political, economic, social, and intellectual.” Vine Deloria Jr. 1973

An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-017-9327-1.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Baires, S.E., Baltus, M.R. Matter, Places, and Persons in Cahokian Depositional Acts. J Archaeol Method Theory 24, 974–997 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-016-9304-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-016-9304-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation