Speaker Series: Urbanism as a State of Mind: What was Cahokia, and How did it Shape History?

Speaker: Timothy R. Pauketat Recent trends in theoretical and collaborative archaeology force a rethinking of the nature of early or alternative urbanisms. North of central Mexico, the largest instance of a so-called “city” was the Mississippian-era entity of Cahokia. To explain what it was, and how it affected its world and the diverse people thereof, we revisit the latest “new materialist” thinking as well as three large-scale archaeological projects—at East St. Louis, Trempealeau, and Emerald—that ran from 2008 to 2017 inside and outside Cahokia’s 20 square kilometer core zone. Unlike later Mississippian places, Cahokia was a great place of origins with links to a primordial world, its stars and its waters, that drew immigrants in yet allowed them to depart when the time was right.