In this cosmically ordered city, the very large core of mounds stands at the center, with plazas radiating from the center that are, in at least the southern Grand Plaza, sunken beneath the site surface. Framing the plazas are earthen mounds on broad, low platforms, the vertical dimensions of which were accentuated with the construction of wooden architecture. This arrangement, while conceptually in the builders' cosmic vision, did not come about all at once. Although the central (Monks) mound was raised within a brief span of time, the mounds around and within each plaza were added over a longer span of time, some more actively than others. Like the cosmos, a distinct verticality is evident with multiple layers of monumental construction.
Following Knight's (1998) application of the Chickasaw camp circle to the diagrammatic plan of Moundville, each mound or paired
Mounds along the plaza margins at Cahokia hypothetically represented a particular corporate entity. Four clans would have been represented in the NorTh Plaza; three would be present around the West Plaza; four would have been present around the Grand Plaza; and it is unclear, given the lack of pairing, how many were associated with the EasT Plaza, perhaps three. In effect, at least four separate "multicorporate communities" would have had cosmically ordained positions within the ritual epicenter. The mounds, we believe, represent the placement of specific buildings that served to personify the religious component of each respective corporate group. This is evidenT later at Mound 34 where an underlying complex of structures, including a copper-working house, may have been capped by an extensive 0.70 m high earthen platform that supported other structures, including what became Mounds 34, 33, and 32 along the west side of the Ramey Plaza (Figure 9.12). Harriet Smith (1973) identified a suite of unique buildings beneath the Murdock mound, along the Grand Plaza's east side, that were eventually capped by a series of thin earthen blankets. In light of ethnographic cases, each of the mound layers reflects the repetitious death of the initial pre-mound building(s) and their subsequent rebirth. The final cap, in effect a memorial, personIfies an ancestral corporate group.
In some respects, we have presented an oversimplification of a complex socio-religious landscape that shows abundant evidence of shifting land use over time. We are only beginning to understand how Cahokia's citizenry were arranged within its cosmologically defined layout. The plazas laid out in cosmologically important directions createD the format within which shrines were situated. Each had its designated place around the edge of each plaza. Not all construction obeyed the implicit format; several mounds invaded the central place. Judging by the size and span oF time involved in mound construction and mound use, some of the clans and/or sodalities appear wealthier than others - perhaps embracing more members. With these caveats in mind, we have found it very useful to think within the framework of Dhegihan social order as represented by the Omaha and Osage systems (Bailey 1995; Brown 2011; Duncan 2011; Hall 2004, 2005; Ridington and Hastings 1997). In these systems, each individual component social group, usually a clan, was responsible for a unique component of sacred knowledge. Performance of the entirety of this knowledge in the annual ritual cycle unified these tribes by creating ritual obligations for each social segment, no
Matter how minor, toward the maintenance of harmonious balance in the universe.
CAHOKIA
Tapping into the persuasive politics thesis of Rob Beck (2006), we could propose that as outside social groups were attracted to Cahokia, they were allotted space according to some cosmically ordained calculus. One of the unintended effects may have been to promote alternate urban agglomerations, such as the East St. Louis town that may have attempted to undercut the political designs of the Cahokian elite (Kelly 2008b). Located some 10 km to the southwest of Cahokia, this urban complex was undoubtedly second in size to Cahokia wIthin the larger Mississippian world. It appears that this urban complex consists of a ritual core of mounds and a central plaza with the residential area separated by a wide, low-lying slough 1 km to the north. It may be significant that East St. Louis may have had a cruciform plaza of its own. At Cahokia, one plaza - the predominant Grand Plaza wIth the largest number of mounds - may even have prospered at the expense of the other plazas, especially when it continued along with Monks Mound as the surviving ritualized core late into the city's existence (Figure 9.6a).
World History
