Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments A lengthy research project such as this creates debts to many that can never be fully repaid or recognized since over the years the project was carried out with the unending assistance and support offamily and friends; constructed upon the data, interpretations, and inspirations of multitudinous colleagues; partially subsidized by public agencies and assisted by cooperation from their staffs; and allowed to continue by the patience of all. Primarily, however, this work is the result of the affection, patience, and support in thousands of ways from my wife,Jo, and our children, Samuel, Frederick, Andrew, Nils, Kjersti, and Hans. My route to the discipline of archaeology has been circuitous. Human interaction in the past has always fascinated me because of its apparent selfrevealed clarity and its obliviousness to the nuances and restrictions of the present.This fascination led me to the literary realm of history, politics, and sociology. It was only after completing undergraduate degrees in sociology and political science, interspersed with occasional interludes in plastic factories and paper mills as a machine operator, in house construction with my uncles, and after returning from two tours inVietnam, that I discovered the fascination of anthropology and eventually pursued graduate degrees in archaeology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW). My early training at UW was under the late Dr. David A. Baerreis, truly a gentleman and a scholar. It was he who focused my initial interests in environmentally oriented research ofhuman behavior. He also impressed in me a healthy regard for the essential relationship ofa strong data base to the creation ofstrong interpretations. The impetus for the completion of this particular study was provided by two individuals. The first was Dr. James B. Griffin, who explained to me, in an amazingly short, succinct lecture, using no uncertain terms, why its completion was necessary. The remaining shove was provided by Dr. Timo- thy Pauketat who sent me small innocent-sounding tidbits of "postprocessualist " thought. Before I knew it I was hooked, and consequently, this work didn't turn out to be about Mississippian rural settlement as a reflection offloodplain environments but, instead, about elite-nonelite relations , power, and ideology. My introduction in the early 1970s to field archaeology came in the birthplace of Midwestern archaeology, Fulton County, Illinois, with Larry Conrad who was then a graduate student at UW Only Larry would have had the audacity to believe the massive, multicomponent Orendorfsite could be salvaged from strip-mining by a handful ofvolunteers and students. Four seasons of6-day weeks, 10-hour days in the central Illinois heat, often to the accompanying roar ofbulldozers and road graders, the excavations of nearly 200 structures and 1,300 pits with little equipment beyond shovels and trowels, often funded from Larry's personal bank account-all carried out with virtually no support from the established archaeological community-have left an indelible impression on me. Those four years, especially the 1973 and 1974 seasons when I was field director, allowed me to do more archaeology than many professionals do in a lifetime. lowe Larry a lasting debt for allowing me to be part of this unique project. The primary data used in this research have been generated, to a large degree, during my participation in the FAI-270 Archaeological Mitigation Project coordinated by Professor Charles J. Bareis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and overseen by Dr. John A. Walthall, Illinois Department of Transportation. Chuck and John provided me with the opportunity to work in the field and lab, access to the collections and to unpublished records and data, various logistical and material support, and just plain, oldfashioned moral support. A large part of my gratitude to John and Chuck comes from their unstinting belief in publication.The University of Illinois Press FAI-270 publication series they fostered and supported provided me with wide-ranging experience in the analysis of primary site data and in report preparation. My fellow site directors on the FAI-270 Project, Andrew Fortier, John Kelly, Dale McElrath, and George Milner, made the experience especially rewarding through both their professional and their personal interactions. They were extremely forthcoming in their opinions on such topics as archaeological field methods, theory, culture history, and ceramic and lithic typology. Also willing to share their ideas were the numerous people involved in the fieldwork, analysis, and publication on the project. Friends and colleagues such as Carolyn McElrath, Ned Hanenberger, Joyce Williams , Douglas Jackson, Mark Mehrer, Sissel Johannessen, Alison Towers, and Lise Marx provided much-needed support...