[sphinx]

I've only been to Cahokia once. Fascinating site. What stuck me was the reconstructed wall. A simple palisade would not have been a surprise, but the park shows (based, I presume, on posthole traces) a bastioned wall with towers and a simple but still obvious gate complex -- in short, a developed piece of military architecture. Do you know if there is any evidence of large scale warfare at the site?

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Do you know if there is any evidence of large scale warfare at the site?

I think the possibility of warfare is a given, and is often considered as one possible reason for Cahokia's collapse. I remember reading some time ago that recent excavations indicated that a considerable part of the settlement was burned around 1200. Whether that was from war or some other cause, I guess, is still up in the air. One of the things that contributes to the mystery of Cahokia is that Indians encountered by the first Europeans in the area evidently had no knowledge of the moundbuilders or their history.

[Antoninus]

A simple palisade would not have been a surprise, but the park shows (based, I presume, on posthole traces) a bastioned wall with towers and a simple but still obvious gate complex -- in short, a developed piece of military architecture. Do you know if there is any evidence of large scale warfare at the site?

Even the Iroquoian and Alquonquian tribes of the Eastern Woodlands had double and triple palisade walls, complete with sluice gates for extinguishing fires and rudimentary towers. Champlain ran into one of these while on a military excursion with the Hurons against the Onondaga in 1615:



Clearly, this image has some fanciful elements to it, but it gives some idea as to Iroquois military architecture.