Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power

6. Interpreting Cahokian Rural Settlements

6 Interpreting Cahokian Rural Settlements A series offactors must be examined to arrive at a full understanding ofrural settlement patterns and systems in the American Bottom around Cahokia during the Middle Mississippian period.These factors include the local physiography , the subsistence economy, and the social and political milieu. No single set of these variables can provide complete insights into the complex pattern observed in the archaeological record. Only by taking them all into account can we achieve a balanced perspective on the past. PHYSIOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY A dispersed rural settlement pattern articulates well with the known physiography of the American Bottom. As Smith (1978a) has discussed, the bottomland environment of major rivers is rich in self-perpetuating zones that have great potential for horticultural exploitation through a dispersed settlement pattern. However, such zones are extremely unstable and shifting in composition.The effect of flooding and high water levels on the American Bottom has been documented by Chmurny (1973). The point was made more directly by Charles Dickens in a trip across the American Bottom; he described it as an "unbroken slough of black mud and water ... thick bush; and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water" (Dickens 1893: 154). Even today, with extensive levees and drainage ditches, in many places the land is wet and swampy.This has created a pattern in which land suitable enough for occupation and horticulture is keyed to subtle variation in elevation , and such lands occur mainly in widely scattered, small areas across the Cahokia locality. While no data exist for the American Bottom, Muller (1978: 277) has calculated that each householdlfarmstead in the Black Bottom must have had at least 2 to 3 ha of associated agricultural land. This requirement limited the areas that could have been occupied by Mississippian farmers and dictated the relative density of rural populations. In Milner's study (1986: 229) of population for a section of the American Bottom he found that within his study area of 128.5 km2 only 37.3% of the land was actually habitable. The greatest danger in the American Bottom was the overabundance ofwater in the form offloods, rain, or high water tables.The distribution of ground suitable for horticulture and settlement and also free from frequent seasonal inundations limited the distribution and density ofhousehold clusters and the size of population nucleations. Woods (1987) reviewed the evidence for patterns of maize horticulture and agriculture in the Eastern Woodlands and concluded that, during the Middle Mississippian occupation of the American Bottom, agricultural-related factors also encouraged settlement dispersion. He argued for a pattern in which "maize was cultivated in large agricultural fields and small mixedhorticultural gardens ... with primary production focused on lower-order farmsteads and hamlets dispersed to maximize the exploitation of fertile, readily tilled bottomland soils.... Agricultural fields were situated in alluvium on non-acid, silt loam soils of high natural fertility that was periodically renewed by flooding, but that did not have high water regimes after mid-May. Gardens were proximal to habitations, often on soils that had received cultural enrichment as a result of prior occupation" (Woods 1987: 285). The effect of these practices was to create an agricultural landscape in which small, horticultural plots located near the houses on the ridges were fairly secure from flooding. As Smith (1978a) has observed, such a pattern was also the most effective approach to an energy-efficient utilization of the floodplain environment. Any larger community fields in the lower-lying silt loams, however, would have been susceptible to fluctuations in water levels and could easily have been devastated by unseasonable flooding. To a considerable degree, the physical dispersion of both residential and agricultural activities was a direct result of the physiography of the landscape. Another factor that has not been given sufficient consideration in understanding the utilization and duration ofdispersed households is the potential inadequacy offloodplain fields for permanent horticulture (cfWolforth 1989) due to invader weed species or soil deterioration. Wolforth made the point that mobility was a "fact of life" for farmstead occupants who may have been forced to move several times within a generation. Civic nodes and other community-centered facilities, on the other hand, may have increased 152 Cahokia and the Archaeolo~y (if Power permanence oflocation because of a shift in the inhabitants' economic and political relationships. This pattern was reflected in the implied reuse and longer occupations at some identified nodal sites such as Range orJulien...