The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in south-western Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres (890 ha), or about 3.5 square miles (9 km2), and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. At its apex around 1100 CE, the city covered about 6 square miles (16 km2) and included about 120 manmade earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions. At the apex of its population, Cahokia may have briefly exceeded contemporaneous London, which at that time was approximately 14,000–18,000.
In archaeology, timber circles are circular arrangements of wooden posts interpreted as being either complexes of freestanding poles or as the supports for large circular buildings.
The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, earthen platform mounds, and often other shaped mounds as well. It was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages (suburbs) linked together by loose trading networks. The largest city was Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center located in what is present-day southern Illinois.
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 900–955 CE. Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, the mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet high, 955 feet long including the access ramp at the southern end, and 775 feet wide. This makes Monks Mound roughly the same size at its base as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The perimeter of its base is larger than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. As a platform mound, the earthwork supported a wooden structure on the summit.
Chunkey is a game of Native American origin. It was played by rolling disc-shaped stones across the ground and throwing spears at them in an attempt to land the spear as close to the stopped stone as possible. It originated around 600 CE in the Cahokia region of what is now the United States. Chunkey was played in huge arenas as large as 47 acres that housed great audiences designed to bring people of the region together. It continued to be played after the fall of the Mississippian culture around 1500 CE. Variations were played throughout North America. Early ethnographer James Adair translated the name to mean "running hard labor". Gambling was frequently connected with the game, with some players wagering everything they owned on the outcome of the game. Losers were even known to commit suicide.
Shiloh Indian Mounds Site (40HR7) is an archaeological site of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. It is located beside the Tennessee River on the grounds of the Shiloh National Military Park, in Hardin County of southwestern Tennessee. A National Historic Landmark, it is one of the largest Woodland era sites in the southeastern United States.
This is a list of properties and districts in Illinois that are on the National Register of Historic Places. There are over 1,900 in total. Of these, 85 are National Historic Landmarks. There are listings in all of the state's 102 counties.
Spiro Mounds is an archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma that remains from an indigenous Indian culture that was part of the major northern Caddoan Mississippian culture. The 80-acre site is located within a floodplain on the southern side of the Arkansas River. The modern town of Spiro developed approximately seven miles to the south.
The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site c. 1050–1400 CE, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its significant role in native North American prehistory and for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at least 11 substructure platform mounds, and 8 other monuments.
Albany Mounds State Historic Site, also known as Albany Mounds Site, is a historic site operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. It spans over 205 acres of land near the Mississippi river at the northwest edge of the state of Illinois in the United States. In 1974, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places list. The historical site is under the provision of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, a governmental agency founded in 1985 for the maintaining of historical sites within the state. In the 1990s, the site underwent a restoration project that aimed to return its appearance to its original condition.
The Emerald Mound Site, also known as the Selsertown site, is a Plaquemine culture Mississippian period archaeological site located on the Natchez Trace Parkway near Stanton, Mississippi, United States. The site dates from the period between 1200 and 1730 CE. It is the type site for the Emerald Phase of the Natchez Bluffs Plaquemine culture chronology and was still in use by the later historic Natchez people for their main ceremonial center. The platform mound is the second-largest Mississippian period earthwork in the country, after Monk's Mound at Cahokia, Illinois.
Timothy R. Pauketat is an American archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is best known for his investigations at Cahokia, the major center of ancient Mississippian culture in the American Bottom area of Illinois near St. Louis, Missouri.
The Kuhn Station Site is the site of an archaeological dig on Silver Creek, near Edwardsville, Illinois. The site is roughly .3 hectares in area, and was home to a small village. The site is believed to be from the Mississippian period, but archaeologists also found artifacts dating from the Moorehead/Sand Prairie period, such as ceramics. As well, the village had an earthen embankment surrounding its perimeter, and a low platform mound.
The Cahokia Woodhenge was a series of large timber circles located roughly 850 metres (2,790 ft) to the west of Monks Mound at the Mississippian culture Cahokia archaeological site near Collinsville, Illinois. They are thought to have been constructed between 900 and 1100 CE; with each one being larger and having more posts than its predecessor. The site was discovered as part of salvage archaeology in the early 1960s interstate highway construction boom, and one of the circles was reconstructed in the 1980s. The circle has been used to investigate archaeoastronomy at Cahokia. Annual equinox and solstice sunrise observation events are held at the site.
Selsertown is an extinct town in Adams County, Mississippi, United States.
The Ware Mounds and Village Site (11U31), also known as the Running Lake Site, located west of Ware, Illinois, is an archaeological site comprising three platform mounds and a 160-acre (65 ha) village site. The site was inhabited by the Late Woodland and Mississippian cultures from c. 800 to c. 1300. The village is one of the only Mississippian villages known to have existed in the Mississippi River valley in Southern Illinois. As the village was located near two major sources of chert, which Mississippian cultures used to make agricultural tools, it was likely a trading center for the mineral.
The Horseshoe Lake Mound and Village Site is a pre-Columbian archaeological site located on the northeast shore of Horseshoe Lake in Madison County, Illinois. The site includes a platform temple mound and a village site with the remains of multiple houses. The site was inhabited by Mississippian peoples during the Late Woodland period from roughly 600-1050 A.D. The village at the site was part of the settlement system connected to Cahokia; it was a third line community, a class of community distinguished by a single temple mound, in the system. Of the five known third line communities in the Cahokia system, the Horseshoe Lake Site is the only one which is relatively intact. The site also includes substantial plant and animal remains, which indicate that its settlers produced maize.
The Mitchell Archaeological Site is a pre-Columbian archaeological site located at the western end of University Drive in Mitchell, Illinois. The site includes a platform mound and the remains of a village; while it once included several other mounds, they have been destroyed by modern activity. Mississippian peoples inhabited the site c. 1150–1200. The site is affiliated with the Cahokia settlement system and was the largest site in the system except for Cahokia itself. However, the majority of the site was destroyed by the construction of Interstate 270; known information about the site mainly comes from salvage excavations conducted before the highway was built.
The Carson Mounds,, also known as the Carson Site and Carson-Montgomery- is a large Mississippian culture archaeological site located near Clarksdale in Coahoma County, Mississippi in the Yazoo Basin. Only a few large earthen mounds are still present at Carson to this day. Archaeologists have suggested that Carson is one of the more important archaeological sites in the state of Mississippi.
The John Chapman Village Site is a prehistoric archaeological site located in the Apple River Valley south of Hanover, Illinois. The site includes a village area and a platform mound; the latter is the only known platform mound in the Apple River Valley. The village was occupied from roughly 1100 to 1250 A.D., toward the end of the Late Woodland period and the beginning of the Mississippian period; it is associated with a transitional phase between the two periods known as the Bennett Phase. Archaeologists have hypothesized that the site formed part of a trade network between Cahokia and settlements further north, such as Aztalan, as evidenced by the artifacts found at the site.
