Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy

14. Integrating the Floodplain and Upland Mortuary Records

14 Integrating the Floodplain and Upland Mortuary Records Recently, several reports and analyses have been published that summarize and interpret new mortuary data found in upland sites representing, possibly, the later Terminal Late Woodland period and most of the Mississippian period. For example, Donald Booth has reported on and interpreted the Center Grove site, which he characterizes as a cemetery that has some parallels to the Lohmann and Stirling phase BBB Motor site (Booth 2001, 53). In addition to summarizing Booth’s report on the Center Grove site, Thomas Emerson and colleagues (2003) have summarized the mortuary data of three other upland sites: the Halliday site, the Knoebel South site, and the Stemler Bluff site (Figure 14.1). Included in this report is the Knoebel site, a small village site associated with the mortuary site of Knoebel South (Alt 2001). Kristin Hedman and Eva Hargrave (2003)havesummarizedandreassessedthemortuarycontentoftheHillPrairie Mounds site. As I note in chapter 12, a recent reassessment that is possibly most central in the interpretation of these data is Emerson and Hargrave’s (2000) analysis of the Kane Mounds site. In this case, they specifically compared its contents to the mortuary components of sites to the north in the Illinois River and upper Mississippi River valleys and also to mortuary components of sites in the lower sector of the northern expanse (namely, the East St. Louis Stone Quarry site and the Florence Street and Range sites) with the point being to demonstrate the claim that immigration and/or the (re)emergent development of ethnic groups occurred in the later Mississippian period in reaction to the reduction in the hegemonic influence of Cahokia in its declining years. Emerson and Hargrave note that “as the Cahokian chiefdom became less unified politically after the mid-thirteenth century, we may see the ‘reemergence’ of earlier diversity. The decline of centralized power in the American Bottom would have encouraged increased activity by ever-present political factions, but probably would have also allowed many incipient or previously suppressed ethnic factions to reemerge” (Emerson and Hargrave 2000, 18). Without a doubt both the new data and the interpretations made of them are of great interest and importance to American Bottom archaeology. In this 37 / Cahokia chapter I plan to use these data to reassess my earlier mortuary discussions (chapters 12 and 13), which were primarily based on the mortuary data available prior to these new materials. While Booth, Emerson, Hargrave, and Hedman interpret these materials to bolster the hierarchical monistic modular polity account, in radical contrast, I use these same data to confirm the view that Cahokia was a world renewal cult heterarchy model—as postulated under the heterarchical polyistic locale-centric account. Starting with the early Mississippian period record and then the later Mississippian period record, I apply the hermeneutic spiral method Figure 14.1. Early Mississippian upland mortuary sites. (Booth 2001, fig. 1, p. 39. Courtesy of the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program, University of Illinois .) Integrating the Floodplain and Upland Mortuary Records / 375 by first summarizing these new data and their hierarchical monistic modular polity account interpretations. I follow this with a critique of the latter. Then, while making the necessary modification in my earlier interpretation that these new data allow and require—particularly the changes in dating—I show that these same data can be more coherently understood when viewed in terms of the set of models I have already presented in previous chapters. Early Mississippian Period Upland Mortuary Sites The Center Grove Site This upland site is situated about 15 kilometers northeast of Cahokia and about 4.5 kilometers east of the bluffs overlooking the American Bottom (Figure 14.1). It is interpreted by its excavator, Donald Booth (2001, 36), to be an early Mississippian period mortuary locale (a cemetery CBL, in my terms) that was probably occupied during the late Lohmann and early Stirling phases. Although there are currently no settlement data that would demonstrate nearby residential habitation structures making up a dispersed village, Booth does not dismiss the possibility (2001, 52–53). Still, the nearest known residential habitation is the Park site, and this is located 2 kilometers west of Center Grove. In effect, this site seems to be quite isolated from any other early Mississippian period settlement. Furthermore, it was largely empty of any habitation debris of its own. In common with some other known early Mississippian CBL sites in the upland region that I summarize...