Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy

12. Cahokian Mortuary Practices: The Media of World Renewal Ritual

12 Cahokian Mortuary Practices The Media of World Renewal Ritual The mortuary data of the Mississippian period of the American Bottom have been used by almost all the proponents of the hierarchical monistic modular polity account as primary evidence for validating the central notions of rank and dominance as characterizing the Middle Mississippian social system. Here I want to use the same data as evidence in support of the heterarchical polyistic locale-centric account, in general, and of the World Renewal Cult Heterarchy model, in particular. George Milner has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the mortuary data to reconstruct the general level of health of the prehistoric populations of the American Bottom. He takes as a given that the “Mississippian cultural systems” were stratified, and from this he deduces that the “skeletal collections representing . . . [elite and non-elite] should display evidence of somewhat differing levels of health” (Milner 1982, 231). His findings in this regard are quite germane, since his conclusions in this and subsequent cases do not support these expectations. Indeed, he observes, “The data presented in this study of the American Bottom collections indicate a relatively high level of community health during the Mississippian period. These results seem to reflect access to a nutritionally complete diet, which included storable foodstuffs, and a low or moderate disease load” (Milner 1982, 242). He qualifies his general conclusions by pointing out that there was an apparently high infant mortality rate (Milner 1982, 227). However, he attributes this not to the differential social standing of “elite” and “commoner” parents, although he maintains that such a social stratification existed, but to the widespread use of maize gruel as a food for infant weaning. Lacking two essential amino acids, unless supplemented with other foods, such a diet would expose infants to nutritional stress. He estimates a regional systemwide infant mortality rate of about 50 percent (Milner 1982, 233–35, 254). DeanSaittahasalsopickeduponthissamemismatchbetweentheequitable distribution of the level of health of these populations and the claim that the Cahokian Mortuary Practices: The Media of World Renewal Ritual / 27 mortuary data represent a dominance-based hierarchical social system. As he critically comments, “perhaps most significantly, health data on Mississippian skeletal populations from major mound centers do not suggest a significant nutritional separation between ‘elites’ and ‘commoners’” (Saitta 1994, 211–12). Thomas Emerson, however, downplays Saitta’s observations: “Saitta’s assumption that elite exploitation (more accurately read power over here) must have been reflected in the material deprivation of the commoners seems overdrawn. Cahokian elite were able to commit the labor of their fellow citizens to massive public works . . . [and] to differentiate themselves in elaborate mortuary displays that subsumed extensive wealth and took the lives of many of their citizens for sacrifice” (Emerson 1997c, 187, emphasis in original). Precisely what are these “elaborate mortuary displays” to which Emerson is referring? According to Milner, who up to that time had reviewed the whole known range of Mississippian period mortuary data associated with the American Bottom, including the Kane (mortuary) Mounds site on the bluffs overlooking Cahokia, there is a “strong communal emphasis in the burial of people in virtually all of these mortuary features. Single features containing numerous skeletons or piles of disarticulated bones were found in the St. Louis Big Mound, the East St. Louis Cemetery Mound, the Mitchell burial mound, the Cahokia Powell and Rattlesnake mounds, and the Wilson Mound” (Milner 1998, 132). Clearly, the elaborate burials that Emerson cites cannot be a reference to the above, since all of the burials are described as having “a strong communal emphasis” and all are treated similarly—as bundle burials. Therefore, the displays of elaborate mortuary residue to which Emerson is alluding seem to basically consist of Mound 72 and its contents. Mound 72 is a rather small ridge-top mound about 930 meters due south of Monks Mound (Figure 1.4). Its contents are certainly impressive, consisting of between 260 and 267 burials, the majority being mass burial deposits, as well as several large deposits of artifacts, large collective mortuary deposit pits, and so on, all of which are examined in detail in the next chapter. However, these particular mortuary data are certainly not the ones to which Saitta is making reference in his criticism. Rather, he is making reference to Milner’s broad databased analysis of the mortuary record, which, as pointed out above, both he and Milner assess as quite strongly communal in nature. Therefore, Emerson’s invoking “elaborate mortuary displays that subsumed extensive wealth and...