Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Pespectives on Food, Politics, and Power

12. A Case of Ritual Feasting at the Cahokia Site

12 A CASE OF RITUAL FEA ING AT THE CAHOKIA SITE Lucretia S. Kelly The site of Cahokia is an early Mississippian (A.D. 1050-[350) center located in the American Bottom region of the central Mississippi River floodplain. just east of St. Louis on the northern edge of Mississippian development. The Mississippian cultural tradition (A.D. 1000-[500) extends spatially over portions of the Midwest and Southeast United States (Fig. [2.1) including societies that display distinctive ceramic technology. platform mounds. intensification of agricultural crops. and ranked sociopolitical systems. Cahokia is the largest Mississippian site. with over 100 mounds. and represents the most complex of aU Mississippian communities (Emerson 1995; Fowler 1974. [975, 1978. [989: Mehrer [988. 1995; Milner [990. [998; Pauketat 1991. 1994)· During the past two decades. much has been written about the nature and 334 THE AMERICAN BOTTOM ca. 1800 • Mound Group Figure [2.1. The American Bottom region, with inset showing the extent of the Middle Mississippian cultural tradition. Luaetta S. Kelly formes) of political economy associated with Mississippian societies (see Muller 1997 for a discussion). Two dichotomous schools of thought about its structure and function have recently been articulated and termed the "top-down" and "bottom-up" perspectives (Pauketat 1997b: Saitta 1994). In this chapter, I approach Cahokia's early economy from an empirical perspective. emphasizing the analysis of fauna and other classes of material recovered from a large pit at Cahokia designated sub-Mound 51. The faunal assemblage. in particular. provides very specific information on ritual feasting activity. I suggest that investigation of ritual feasting and its integration into the larger body of existing literature about sociopolitical mechanisms can provide finer resolution to questions concerning Cahokia's political economy early in its florescence as a mound center. CAHOKIA'S SETTLEMENT SYSTEM AND POLITICAL ECONOMY During the 1970S and 1980s, a large number of sites in the American Bottom were excavated as part of the FAI-270 highway project (Bareis and Porter 1984). Results of these excavations include a highly refined regional chronology (Bareis and Porter 1984: Fig. 12.2), and a better understanding of changes in the regional setA .D'r-__~Pe~r~io~d~-.____________~P~h~as~e~____________-, Sand Prairie 1300 Moorehead 1200 Stirling 1100 1050 f-____-I_-_-_-_-_L-_o~_~_:n_-n_-_-_-_i-n---=i~~;O~~----F-~ 1000 Edelhardt :; .... - - - - - - - - - - - - - ('t) 950 Merrell ~ ------------- =!: -I OJ Loyd ~ ci' :l 850 Lindemann " c ------------- n George Reeves ~ ------------- -I OJ c. ;:;. o· Range ::J Collinsville Dohack 800~________~__________~~__________~_ Figure [2.2. Late prehistoric chronology for the I\merican Bottom. 336 RITUAL FEASTING AT THE CAHOKIA SITE tlement pattern between A.D. 800 and [100. During the Emergent Mississippian (A.D. 800-r050), regional population aggregated into large nucleated villages (J Kelly 1992). Beginnings of social ranking appear at this time, and form the roots of Cahokia's future complexity (J. Kelly 1990, 1992: Pauketat 1994). The initial Mississippian episode (the Lohmann phase, A.D. 1050-1I00) is designated by major and rather rapid changes in the regional landscape. Emergent Mississippian populations that were aggregated in large nucleated villages either disperse to small farmsteads and civicI ceremonial nodes, or coalesce into mound centers (Emerson 1995: J. Kelly 1992: Mehrer 1995: Pauketat 1991). At Cahokia itself . there is a five- to tenfold population increase (Pauketat and Lopinot 1997). and status differentiation is evident (Fowler 1989: Pauketat 1994). The creation of the site's plan (flowler 1973. 1989: J. Kelly 1996, 1997) is centered upon Monks Mound, the Grand Plaza (Holley. Dalan, and Smith 1993: Pauketat and Rees 1996). and several flanking plazas (Fig. [2.3). 'j"he Grand Plaza was demarcated as an important area of the site by major earthmoving public-works projects. Recent archaeological investigations in this area have revealed that a meter of clayey deposits overlying a ridge and swale topography were stripped and used for borrow . possibly for the initial construction of Monks Mound (the site's largest mound) to the north. This area was then reclaimed by filling in the swales and raising the plaza to about its premodified level to form a clean and level surface (Dalan 1997: Dalan et al. 1994). This provided a large centralized space to accommodate ritual activities attended by the Cahokia population (Dalan 1997), There is now fundamental agreement that the Mississippian settlement pat tern in the northern American Bottom was hierarchical...