Insights From the Analysis of Angel Mounds Pottery Trowels

The Role of Plants and Animals in the Termination of Three Buildings at the Spring Lake Tract Neighborhood, Cahokia

“…Artifacts recovered from upper burned zones in the basin of Feature 4 include objects that are relatively rare in the American Bottom, such as a clay pottery trowel, a clay human-head-effigy adorno, and a fragment of mica (Figure 4). Although no artifacts clearly diagnostic of the thirtheenth-century Moorehead phase were recovered from this building, a similar human head effigy has been recovered from Late Stirling/Moorehead phase contexts elsewhere at Cahokia (east Palisade and Tract 15B [Pauketat 1998]); likewise, pottery trowels tend to be found more commonly after AD 1200 (Betzenhauser et al 2019; Collins 1990; McGill 2014). Finally, the reorientation of buildings to cardinal directions is a pattern noted around the beginning of the thirteenth century at and around Cahokia, which suggests that this building was potentially built on the cusp of or early in the Moorehead phase.…”