Mound 34
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Mound 34 is a small
platform mound A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. It typically refers to a flat-topped mound, whose sides may be pyramidal. In Eastern North America The indigenous peoples of North America built substru ...
located roughly to the east of
Monks Mound Monks Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas and the largest pyramid north of Mesoamerica. The beginning of its construction dates from 900 to 955 CE. Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collins ...
at
Cahokia Mounds Cahokia Mounds ( 11 MS 2) is the site of a Native American city (which existed 1050–1350 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis. The state archaeology park lies in south-western Illinois between East St. L ...
near
Collinsville, Illinois Collinsville is a city located mainly in Madison County and partially in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 24,366. Collinsville is approximately east of St. Louis, Missouri, and is ...
. Excavations near Mound 34 from 2002 to 2010 revealed the remains of a copper workshop, although the one of a kind discovery had been previously found in the late 1950s by archaeologist Gregory Perino, but lost for 60 years. It is so far the only remains of a copper workshop found at a
Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a collection of Native American societies that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building la ...
archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...
.


Construction sequence

From the Emergent Mississippian period (beginning approximately 800 CE) to the Stirling Phase (1000 to 1200 CE) the location was a village site with multiple houses, pit features, extensive
midden A midden is an old dump for domestic waste. It may consist of animal bones, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human oc ...
deposits, a copper worskop, and a large structure (possibly as large as by ) with a centrally located hearth. Early in the Moorehead Phase (1200 - 1275 CE) the entire area east of Cahokia saw an intensive construction episode. The village area and all of its structures was razed and the "Ramey Plaza" and its associated mounds was built over it. This plaza and its twenty associated mounds are the second largest such grouping at the Cahokia site, after the Grand Plaza area which includes Monks Mound and is encircled by the palisade. Mound 34 lies at the northern end of a string of mounds that define the western edge of the Ramey plaza. This construction required the leveling of the area and the removal of much of the village midden that had accumulated over the previous two centuries of occupation, up to in some areas. This removed midden material, along with nearby earth from
borrow pit Digging, also referred to as excavation, is the process of using some implement such as claws, hands, manual tools or heavy equipment, to remove material from a solid surface, usually soil, sand or rock on the surface of Earth. Digging is actual ...
s, was used to build the mounds. Mound 34 was constructed as a low rectilinear platform mound oriented along a north–south axis maintained by the majority of the Cahokia site, and with a terrace or apron along its west, north, and east sides. The mound had a building constructed on its summit, inside of which was a large circular hearth. The mound displayed signs of at least one further building episode during the Sand Prairie Phase (1275 - 1350 CE), when an additional cap of earth was added over the mound.


S.E.C.C. connections and avian ceremonialism

Artifacts found during excavations of the site included
Mississippian culture pottery Mississippian culture pottery is the ceramic tradition of the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE) found as artifacts in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. It is often characterized by the adoption and use of riverine ( ...
, beads made from shell, worked copper fragments and raw nuggets, close to 100 distinctive Cahokian style serrated flint arrowheads, and at least one perforated sharks tooth used as a necklace. Several caches of whelk shell cups along with numerous engraved shell fragments were found in excavations of the mound. One cache of six whelk cups and a local mussel shell is considered to be a dedicatory offering deposited upon the beginning of mound construction. Motifs found on the engraved shell and pottery sherds have been connected to the '' Braden style'' of the
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (formerly Southern Cult, Southern Death Cult or Buzzard Cult), abbreviated S.E.C.C., is the name given by modern scholars to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of ...
, and are considered the earliest known examples of some of the hallmarks of this style. Faunal remains show that the location had been used for feasting activities through much of its history, even before the construction of the mound. Large amounts of avian remains, many the only examples of particular species found in all of Cahokia, show that the site was connected to avian imagery. Many examples of bird wing bones and other body parts found at the site are considered to have been used for decorative purposes instead of food. Raptor imagery in the form of falcon dancers, the Forked Eye Surround Motif and the "Birdman" is integrally associated with warrior imagery, a major theme of the S.E.C.C. Engraved
shell gorget Shell gorgets are a Native American art form of polished, carved shell pendants worn around the neck. The gorgets are frequently engraved, and are sometimes highlighted with pigments, or fenestrated (pierced with openings). Shell gorgets were mo ...
s and cups with similar imagery were discovered in the "Great Mortuary" at Spiro in the early 1930s.
Radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...
of Mound 34 has shown that the S.E.C.C. material from the mound was deposited earlier than materials from Spiro and places the origin of the ''Braden style'' at the Cahokia site. Other examples of avian related ceremonialism at the overall Cahokia site include two engraved stone tables with birdmen on them and the elite burial found under Mound 72. This burial was of a tall man in his early 40s laid out on an elevated platform covered with a bed of over 20,000 shell beads in the shape of a falcon.


Copper workshop

The general area of the copper workshop was first discovered by Perino in the late 1950s and definitively located by modern excavations in the 2000s. Located just to the north of the mound, it consisted of a typical Mississippian wall trench structure measuring along its north–south axis and along its east–west axis. The structure had an internal surface area measuring roughly and sunk into the ground. The walls of the building had unusual gaps, now thought by archaeologists to be vents for air flow into the building or to let toxic gases from the heating of copper escape. A variety of raw copper nuggets, small pieces of worked copper, and stone tools for the working of copper were found in the structure, and it is now believed by researchers that the building was used for the processing of raw copper into finished products. The remains of three tree stumps were also found and are thought to have been used to hold anvil stones. Analysis of copper found during excavations showed that it had been annealed, a technique involving repeatedly heating and cooling the metal as it is worked, such as blacksmiths do with iron. Items produced at this workshop may have been similar to copper objects found at other Mississippian sites, such as
long-nosed god maskette Long-nosed god maskettes are Artifact (archaeology), artifacts made from bone, copper and marine shells (Lightning whelk) associated with the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE) and found in archaeological sites in the Midwestern United States a ...
s, ceremonial earrings with a symbolic shape, thought to have been used in
fictive kinship Fictive kinship (less often, fictional kinship) is a term used by anthropologists and ethnographers to describe forms of kinship or social ties that are based on neither consanguineal (blood ties) nor affinal ("by marriage") ties. It contrasts ...
rituals. Many of the stylistically related
Mississippian copper plates Mississippian copper plates, or plaques, are plain and repousséd plates of beaten copper crafted by peoples of the various regional expressions of the Mississippian culture between 800 and 1600 CE. They have been found as artifacts in archa ...
such as the
Wulfing cache The Wulfing cache, or Malden plates, are eight Mississippian copper plates crafted by peoples of the Mississippian culture. They were discovered in Dunklin County, Missouri in 1906 by Ray Grooms, a farmer, while plowing a field south of Malden, Mis ...
from southeastern Missouri, some of the
Etowah plates The Etowah plates, including the Rogan Plates, are a collection of Mississippian copper plates discovered in Mound C at the Etowah Indian Mounds near Cartersville, Georgia. Many of the plates display iconography that archaeologists have classif ...
from Georgia, and many of the
Spiro plates Spiro(s) may refer to: * Spiro, Oklahoma, a town in the U.S. ** Spiro Mounds, an archaeological site * Spiro (band), a British music group * Spiro (name), including a list of people with the name * Špiro, South Slavic masculine given name * ARA ...
from Oklahoma are associated with the Greater Braden Style and are thought to have been made in Cahokia in the 13th century.


Excavations

Although noted on early maps of the Cahokia site and tested by Warren K. Moorehead in 1921 and 1922, the mound was not excavated until 1950 by James B. Griffin and
Albert Spaulding Albert Clanton Spaulding (August 13, 1914 – May 29, 1990) was an American anthropologist and processual archaeology, processual archaeologist who encouraged the application of statistics, quantitative statistics in archaeological research and ...
. Their small excavations produced large amounts of pottery shards, the remains of the first engraved shell cup found at Cahokia, and fragments of repousséd copper plates. In 1956 the mound underwent further excavations by Gregory Perino, funded by the
Gilcrease Museum Gilcrease Museum, also known as the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, is a museum northwest of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma housing the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art of the American West, as well as a gr ...
. He uncovered numerous shell fragments and a bed of charcoal he thought was for "ceremonial fires". He also found an area littered with copper fragments, several copper stained posts and described the area as turning green upon exposure to the air. He described the feature as a possible copper workshop. In the late 1990s archaeologists began examining Perinos field notes and artifacts collected from Mound 34 in order to further refine the Mississippian Art and Ceremonial Complex, define its connection to Cahokia, and find the theorized copper workshop. The site of the mound was relocated (poor mapping by past archaeologists and agricultural flattening had made the exact location tenuous), and an extensive series of excavations were begun at the site from 1998 to 2012. Excavations in 1999 discovered several raw copper nuggets and more pieces of worked copper, confirming the location as a copper workshop, the first confirmed find of this sort at any Mississippian site.


See also

*
List of Mississippian sites This is a list of Mississippian sites. The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, inland- Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 ...
* Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America *
Old Copper Complex The Old Copper complex or Old Copper culture is an archaeological culture from the Archaic period of North America's Great Lakes region. Artifacts from some of these sites have been dated from 6500 to 1580 BCE. It is characterized by widespre ...
*
Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which in ...


References


External links

*
Cahokia - City of the Sun, video documentary

Illinois Adventure #1308 "Cahokia Mounds", video documentary
{{Pre-Columbian North America Middle Mississippian culture Archaeological sites in Illinois Mounds in Illinois Cahokia Copper industry