The Emerald Acropolis: elevating the moon and water in the rise of Cahokia

Paüketat, Timothy R.; Alt, Susan M.; Kruchten, Jeffery D.

doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.253

Cited by 33 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Roughly coeval civic-ceremonial centers to the north and south of Shell Mound provide evidence for winter events of extradomestic scope, such as mounding (Lulewicz et al 2018; Neill J. Wallis, personal communication 2019). Rather than seeing these as incomparable data points, we think it is worth considering that all such centers were parts of a constellation of ritual involving the synchronized movement of persons and things (e.g., Bernardini 2004; Howey and O'Shea 2006; Pauketat 2013; Pauketat et al 2017). A circuit of movement separating rituals of the winter and summer solstices in place comports with a distinction between mortuary (winter) and world-renewal (summer) ceremonialism (e.g., Hall 1997; Knight 2001).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Sassaman

Blessing

Goodwin³

et al. 2019

Am. Antiq.

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Places such as Poverty Point, Mound City, and Chaco Canyon remind us that the siting of ritual infrastructure in ancient North America was a matter of cosmological precedent. The cosmic gravity of these places gathered persons periodically in numbers that challenged routine production. Ritual economies intensified, but beyond the material demands of hosting people, the siting of these places and the timing of gatherings were cosmic work that preconfigured these outcomes. A first millennium AD civic-ceremonial center on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida illustrates the rationale for holding feasts on the end of a parabolic dune that it shared with an existing mortuary facility. Archaeofauna from large pits at Shell Mound support the inference that feasts were timed to summer solstices. Gatherings were large, judging from the infrastructure in support of feasts and efforts to intensify production through oyster mariculture and the construction of a large tidal fish trap. The 250-year history of summer solstice feasts at Shell Mound reinforces the premise that ritual economies were not simply the amplification of routine production. It also suggests that the ecological potential for intensification was secondary to the cosmic significance of solstice-oriented dunes and their connection to mortuary and world-renewal ceremonialism.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Sassaman

Blessing

Goodwin³

et al. 2019

Am. Antiq.

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“…The public and religious architecture mentioned above also often seems to have embodied spiritual energies or to have been facilities within which people engaged other‐than‐human beings. Such inferences, as with those related to the marker posts, are based on both ethnographic analogies and contextual associations—from plastered‐clay floors to architectural alignments and offerings of material objects (Alt ; Alt and Pauketat ; Emerson ; Pauketat ; Pauketat, Alt, and Kruchten ). As described historically, Mississippian charnel houses and temples were very definitely homes to such ancestral spirits and otherworldly deities, some of which were contained within bone bundles held inside coffin‐like baskets or boxes (Emerson ).…”

Section: Composition Of Cahokian Cores and Neighborhoodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…; Pauketat ). Interspersed among these were shrines and what Alt and Pauketat () refer to as “shrine complexes”—hilltop acropolises surrounded by Cahokian public and religious architecture (see also Pauketat and Pauketat, Alt, and Kruchten ).…”

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confidence: 99%

9 Elements of Cahokian Neighborhoods

Betzenhauser

Paüketat

2019

Archaeological Papers of the American

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American Indian neighborhoods were very much under construction during the late-eleventh century at Cahokia in the American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois. A social order that transcended pre-Mississippian village life may now be defined based on large-scale excavations at East St. Louis and Cahokia proper. Architectural patterns and craft production debris within the greater central complex indicate possible religious, if not political or ethnic, divisions that did not form organically. At least some of this architecture was built specifically for sheltering and engaging other animate beings. The central problems in this analysis are distinguishing residential neighborhoods from other kinds of occupational zones and human neighbors from other-than-human residents. To this end, we generate new measures of architectural diversity, density, and positioning to identify the elements of Cahokian neighborhoods and examine how they were created and reconfigured. [Mississippian, Urbanism, Animism, Architecture]

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“…Pilgrimage to special places was a vital part of this new religion and thus critical to Cahokia’s formation. The Emerald Acropolis, situated on a 12 -m high ridge 24 km east of Cahokia, was one of these places (Alt, 2017; Pauketat, 2013; Pauketat et al., 2017; Skousen, 2015, 2016) (Figure 3). The site was built in a unique natural setting.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Emerald was first occupied around 1000 C.E., when small groups of pre-Cahokian religious practitioners constructed small pole-and-thatch shrine buildings aligned to lunar standstill events (Alt, 2017; Pauketat, 2013). Fifty years later, Cahokians coopted and reconstructed the entire site, using the natural orientation of the ridge as the organizing principle (Pauketat, 2013; Pauketat et al., 2017; Skousen, 2016). Thereafter, the Acropolis consisted of 12 mounds, a central plaza, over 100 structures of various kinds and shapes, and a processional avenue connecting Emerald to Cahokia (Finney, 2000; Pauketat, 2013; Pauketat and Alt, 2017; Pauketat et al., 2017; Skousen, 2016).…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking archaeologies of pilgrimage

Skousen

2018

Journal of Social Archaeology

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Pilgrimage instigates relationships between phenomena that produce hierophanies, or sacred, enchanting experiences. In this paper I argue that pilgrimage scholars should focus on the relational qualities of pilgrimage in order to rethink and produce more detailed, sensuous descriptions and analyses of this practice. This can be done by employing “relational approaches,” seen here as perspectives that recognize and prioritize the interconnections among persons, places, things, and substances. I further suggest that focusing on movement, the vitality of places and materials, and the senses is useful in thinking about the relational aspects of pilgrimage. Moreover, archaeologists are well-situated to investigate these phenomena and thus can and should push pilgrimage studies in new directions. I provide a case study of the Emerald Acropolis, an 11th-century Cahokian pilgrimage center. Cahokians traveled to Emerald on certain occasions and, while there, manipulated particular substances—earth and water—in ways that gathered otherworldly powers in affective ways.

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The Emerald Acropolis: elevating the moon and water in the rise of Cahokia

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 33 publications

References 17 publications

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

9 Elements of Cahokian Neighborhoods

Rethinking archaeologies of pilgrimage

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