Cahokia versus Chaco: Indigenous Urbanism as Viewed from the Mississippi Valley – Dr. Timothy Pauketat (School for Advanced Research)

Understanding Cahokia—an indigenous city opposite modern-day St.
Louis—is assisted by comparing it to Chaco. Both developed at about the
same time, with major cultural and political shifts at both dated to ~1040 CE.
Cahokia, however, appears more similar in layout to civic-ceremonial centers
to the south in the Mississippi valley and Mexico, with great mounds,
spacious plazas, and palatial pole-and-thatch buildings. Both appear to have
begun with prominent lineages or clans already in place, and the human
populations of both migrated out during the 12th century’s droughts.

Biography

Dr. Pauketat is an archaeologist interested in the broad relationships between history and humanity, materiality and agency, affect and ontology, and religion and urbanism. His focus is on North America, and his concerns range from local historical ones, particularly in the central Mississippi valley, to Pan-American and big-historical ones, especially as they involve Mesoamerican-Southwestern-Mississippi valley connections. He has conducted most of his field research at and around the American Indian city of Cahokia or related complexes, having held posts at the University of Oklahoma, the State University of New York (Buffalo) and the University of Illinois.

His general research interests are materiality, affect and agency; religion and ontologies; cities and landscapes; global medievalism; climate change; North American archaeology; Woodland and Mississippian cultures; indigenous Prairie-Plains history; pottery.

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