Posted on 09/02/2002 4:23:13 PM PDT by blam
Contact: Andrea Lynn
a-lynn@uiuc.edu
217-333 -2177
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ancient Illinois village unearths lode of questions
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Digging under a blazing sun in an Illinois cornfield, archaeologists this summer unearthed a fascinating anomaly: a 900-year-old square hilltop village. The discovery near Shiloh -- about 15 miles southeast of St. Louis -- challenges previous notions of the area's first people and adds a piece to the puzzle that was Cahokia, a huge "mother culture" that suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly vanished, leaving only traces of its majesty and meaning in the 11th century.
Until now, archaeologists believed that large Cahokian populations settled only on the floodplains and that their villages sprawled in free-form fashion. This "new" ridge-sitting village with four linear sides and a rigid orientation of buildings "was mind-blowing," said lead archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "I can't think of another village in this area that's like this." The great mystery: What was the purpose of this unique hinterlands village 12 miles from the major population center in Cahokia, and why did it have a large central residence and religious structures -- a plaza and four temples, all atypical of Cahokian villages?
Pauketat's hunch is that it was a farming village, a "feeder" for Cahokia, and an administrative outpost where a top official and, perhaps, functionaries, oversaw farming and "controlled that piece of the economy." The "evidence of authority" in the hinterlands "makes Cahokia look more like a centralized civilization and less like an elusive free gathering of Native Americans," Pauketat said.
University archaeologists have been digging near or at the so-called "Grossmann Site" for several years, but it was only this summer that Illinois graduate student and chief supervisor Susan Alt, Pauketat and a group of Illinois students found the third and fourth sides -- now only stains in the ground – of the village, the 75 small rectangular houses that lined the sides, and the four giant temples. In the center of each temple, they found the holes that once held the telephone-pole-sized roof supports. The temples had huge vaulted ceilings and thatched roofs, "something you usually see on a mound top. We were completely shocked." They also found some temple "ritual debris," including a figurine -- fire-splintered into perhaps 2,000 pieces, plus crystals and burned tools. These probably are "the remains of annual ritual burnings, ceremonies called 'renewing the temple.' "
Cahokia was "drawing great numbers of people into it," Pauketat said. "It goes from 1,000 to 10,000 people in a matter of 50 years. Most went to Cahokia, but some ended up in places like this, sent to help administer the farmers." Why so many people relocated so rapidly is still a mystery, he said.
Some archaeologists, including Pauketat, think of Cahokia as a mother culture. "They do something that is entirely unique and they do it much earlier. Within a century or two, people up and down the Mississippi and across the coastal plain of the Southeast are copying them, so you get Mississippian mounds and large settlements, but you never get anything that rivals this. So, Cahokia is just a moment, an experiment in civilization, that falters and goes away and never really comes back."
### The National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society also supported the dig.
From one of my favorite articles in The Atlantic Monthly, The Diffusionists Have Landed:
The Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad's famous identification, in 1961, of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, from just after A.D. 1000 is, of course, a notable exception, no longer in dispute. But that discovery has so far gone nowhere. The Norse settlers, who may have numbered as many as 160 and stayed for three years or longer, seem to have made no lasting impression on the aboriginal skraellings that, according to Norse sagas, they encountered, and to have avoided being influenced in turn. The traditions of the Micmac people, modern-day inhabitants of the area, have not been seriously investigated; another people historically associated with this area, the reputedly fair-skinned Beothuks, have been extinct since 1829. The Vikings came, kept to themselves, and left -- that appears to be as much revision of the long-standing history of New World settlement as the hard-core academic establishment will entertain.I love is when random data from totally unrelated sources play hell with any conventional whizdumb.Snip
To many, the inventionists have clearly gained the upper hand, having marshaled shards, spearpoints, and other relics that indicate the independent cultural development of a native people whose Ice Age ancestors came overland from Northeast Asia. Still, the diffusionists have a habit of raising awkward questions -- questions that even some mainstream scholars find hard to ignore, much less to explain away. Who carved Phoenician-era Iberian script into a stone found at Grave Creek, West Virginia? How did a large stone block incised with medieval Norse runes make its way to Kensington, Minnesota? Why would a rough version of the Ten Commandments appear in Old Hebrew script on a boulder-sized tablet near Los Lunas, New Mexico? Conversely, how could the sweet potato, known to be indigenous to the Americas, have become a food staple throughout Polynesia and the Pacific basin as early as A.D. 400? And why would dozens of eleventh- to thirteenth-century temple sculptures in Karnataka, India, include depictions of what appears to be American maize?
Why are these large buildings always considered as temples? Especially when we know zero about their daily life.
Ain't no way...I remember the locals telling me that if a dog shat, and then it snowed, everyone broke out their cross country skies.
Hey fella, don't rock the boat or your grant money will be pulled.
I am a fan of Gloria Farley.
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And wouldn't you know it, but it was looted in the past 20 years or so, AND someone DYNAMITED the entrance to keep
such adventurers as himself from finding that the treasure trove has been looted and melted down.
I think I've seen this story on one of the documentary channels.
(Also, posthole interpretations are in the eye of the beholder :-).
It came back as St. Louis. :^)
I live in this latitude of Illinois, there is a huge hill within about 15 miles of me that is said to be of the Indians. Plus Burrows Cave is within about 20 miles in the other direction, although the artifacts from that cave seem to be from thousands of years ago instead of from Cahokia's accepted era. Maybe there was a major Indian thouroughfare along the approximate route of Route 40 and Interstate 70. I'll have to keep my eyes open for anomalies when I'm out mushroom hunting. :^)
If it's Burrow's Cave, it hasn't been dynamited. The artifacts from it are from ancient India, like 4000 - 5000 years ago, I think. There were 20,000 artifacts, too many to be carved by pranksters.
And he "knows" that it must have been the looters...
I've heard that academia used their ties to Clinton to have the Federal Government destroy evidence. Was Kennewick Man's finding place destroyed, I heard it was? Also, a place in the Southwest was destroyed when it was found to be thousands of years old and had a type of ceramic engineering skill as yet unknown to us. Academia accuses Christians of denying science, but I believe lately they're denying much more science than the short-sighted Christians they like to ridicule. Academia certainly has their sacred cows. They are hypocrits.
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