Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy

15. The Terminal Late Woodland–Mississippian Transition: Alternative Accounts

15 The Terminal Late Woodland– Mississippian Transition Alternative Accounts Using the theoretical framework and its empirical grounding that I have developed to this point, I can now complete what I initially outlined at the end of chapter 8, namely, the heterarchical polyistic locale-centric account of the Terminal Late Woodland–Mississippian transition. I present this as an alternative to the different versions of the current hierarchical monistic modular polity account of this same transition. Following the hermeneutic spiral method, I first summarize and then critique the latter accounts. For this purpose, I integrate Thomas Emerson’s and Timothy Pauketat’s versions as the most influential of these. For the sake of convenience, I term this the Nucleated-Sequential Settlement Articulation model of the Terminal Late Woodland–Mississippian transition. I then present the alternative heterarchical polyistic locale-centric view, which I term the Integrated-to-Bifurcated Settlement Articulation model of the transition. The Nucleated-Sequential Settlement Articulation Model Emerson treats the Mississippian period “rural” social system as the outcome of a Cahokian-based elite-directed ideological strategy of resettlement. He claims that this strategy was motivated by the large numbers of the rural population that abandoned the multiple hamlets and larger villages of the countryside and moved into the nucleated multiple-mound locales—in particular, Cahokia. Accordingtohismodel ,thisratherabruptimplosionofpopulationimposedgreat strains on the carrying capacity of the Cahokian catchment area. Therefore, to enhance the production of staple products, a resettlement strategy was developed by the American Bottom elite residing in Cahokia and other multiplemound locales that would generate rural nodal locales. As discussed in depth in chapter 11, these locales, which he refers to as civic and ceremonial nodal sites, effectively presenced the Cahokian political and religious authority in 0 / Cahokia the countryside. The second part of this strategy was the encouraging of the dispersal of the commoners in small farmsteads across the landscape and integrated through central nodal household sites, thereby ensuring the continuing dominance of the rural sector by the urban-based elite. Emerson explains, As we now understand the archaeological record, a population consolidation at centers occurred during the Lohmann phase in conjunction with a subsequent elite-organized dispersion of rural population. Both the nucleation of population and concurrent reorganization and dispersal of immediate rural populations were in the hands of Cahokian elite. This patterned rural dispersal can be related to an increasing elite need for efficient and intensified use of floodplain topography . . . for agricultural production in response to demands by a centralized political elite. . . . [The] dispersal did not bring into play a direct articulation system of settlement . . . but rather a sequential articulation mode . . . as one might reasonably expect in a complex hierarchical society. The Cahokia elite did not leave the organization of their rural food producers to chance but created a specific, centrally controlled political and religious organization to ensure that foodstuffs were produced and transmitted to Cahokia in an orderly manner. (Emerson 1997c, 255–56) It seems clear that Emerson is postulating opposing but related population processes as characterizing the Lohmann phase: on the one hand, population was nucleated (that is, “a population consolidation at centers”), and on the other , it was dispersed by the elite (that is, “in conjunction with a subsequent eliteorganized dispersion of rural population”). I find characterizing the population process in this way slightly confusing in that the nucleation of population would seem to have to occur first, followed by the development and implementation of elite-organized population dispersal into the sequential distribution discussed in chapter 11. In fact, this is implied in his use of the term subsequent. However, he also stresses that the nucleation and the dispersal were performed “in conjunction,” which I take to mean that they were concurrent. This inconsistency may be only apparent, in that he specifies that the “concurrent reorganization” refers to the “dispersal of immediate rural populations ” by the Cahokian elite, and this would presumably be the rural population immediately prior to the resettlement process. That is, Emerson may be postulating a two-way shift in the “rural” population of the Terminal Late Woodland American Bottom hamlets and nucleated villages of the sort that John Kelly (1990a, 105) argues may have been responsible for the depopu- The Terminal Late Woodland–Mississippian Transition / 05 lation of the later Lindeman phase at the Range site. Kelly suggests that the decrease in overall size of the village prior to the Lohmann phase was probably the result of many...