Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power

8. Cahokian Rural Cults

8 Cahokian Rural Cults de materialibus ad immaterialia (Twelfth-century comment by Abbot Suger on his reconstruction of the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, in Panofsky 1979: 62.) I presume that the ritual behavior and symbolic system of the Cahokian people are implicit in the assemblages of rural Middle Mississippian sites around Cahokia.Those assemblages reflected strong evidence for the dominance offertility symbolism in the rural temples and mortuary sites. In addition , it was possible to identify a number ofspecialized sites that I interpret as representing the presence ofrural religious practitioners, perhaps as members of a centralized ruling elite. This congruence of symbolic and settlement data suggests that a Cahokian "fertility cult" is recognizable from the archaeological record.The rise and fall of this rural cult were ultimately tied to Cahokia's period ofdominance and suggest that it represented a deliberate manipulation of deeply embedded fertility ideology by the elite to consolidate their power. The archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence discussed in the last chapter is brought to bear here on the symbolic implications ofthe BBB Motor and Sponemann sites: their assemblages of stone figurines, Ramey pottery, burials and grave goods, exotic lithics, botanical remains, and spatial organization represent classic examples ofAmerican Bottom, Stirling-phase symbolism and structure. An exploration ofthe unique context of this ritualistic material and its symbolic implications also expands our interpretations of the Middle Mississippian beliefsystem as manifested within the rural settlements and shows that these religious beliefs were integrated into a pattern of elite power and domination over the rural populace. Such an approach pro- vides new insights not only into Cahokia's countryside, but also into the nature of Cahokia itself. SYMBOLS OF POWER A series ofitems recovered in moderate numbers from Mississippian sites in the Midwest are associated with religious beliefs, based on archaeological context and ethnohistorical analogy. I have presented the evidence for the spectacular stone figurines and sacred vessels earlier. There are a number of more common materials discussed here that, in the proper context, can be seen as markers of power. These include engraved sherds, pigments, exotic minerals, and crystals. Such items were part of the assemblage from the BBB Motor and Sponemann temple sites, as well as a number of other more commonplace Mississippian sites. An engraved Bird-Man sherd recovered from a refuse pit in the BBB Motor Lohmann priest-mortuary component had human heads with falconoid attributes engraved on both its polished, dark-slipped, exterior surface and its interior surface. Similar motifs were found in the Cahokia area in the past on the Cahokia (Ramey) tablet reported by Peet in 1891 and on sherds recovered from the area of Mound 34 by Perino (1959). In the case of the latter two sherds, Phillips and Brown (1978: 172; Brown 1989: 196-197) were confident enough of their similarity to the Spiro material to assign the heads to Spiro artistic schools. The function ofsuch engraved sherds is unclear, and they are rare in the Cahokia area. The often sloppy execution seems to indicate that they may have been folk magic amulets, and the engraving may originally have been done on broken sherds. However, Wilson (1996), in a review of such engravings , has been able to show they were primarily associated with Lohmannphase sites that often had special political/religious functions. He argues that they, as much as the later more formal Ramey symbolism, were important mediums for getting the elite's message to the masses. Several exotic minerals recovered from the sites were used ethnohistorically, and very likely also in Mississippian ceremonialism, in a magicosymbolic context. These items included mica, red ocher/hematite, galena, limonite, and quartz crystals. Mica presumably was valued for its light-reflecting qualities and generally workable sheet form. It was traded throughout the Southeast and was apparently highly valued, considering that it was offered to de Soto along with copper when he was sojourning in sixteenth-century South Carolina (Hudson 1976: 110). The examples of mica recovered from the BBB Motor site were all confined to the interior pits of the temple. Of the 16 pieces, 9 were pierced, as if by a needle, indicating that they had at one 226 Cahokia and the Archaeology qfPower time been sewn to some type of fabric or hide. In this context it may be noted that in the Southeast mica often was associated with the scales of the serpent. This association was strengthened at the BBB...