Midwest Archaeological Conference

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Excavations will continue on the West Palisade project, coordinated by John Kelly, project director, Mary Beth Trubitt, and field director, Robin Machiran. This will be the seventh season that continues to pursue the route of the palisades around the west side of the Grand Plaza. Previous excavations have identified portions of at least two and maybe three of the four known palisades, including at least two bastions, known to have been built around the central part of Cahokia, starting a little before AD 1200. The project will run from July 5 to August 13, under the auspices of the Central Mississippi Valley Archaeological Research Institute, with some funding provided by the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. The 2004 project will open a large area south of Mound 48 to clarify a palisade and bastion sequence at that location. There is also an opportunity for the public to participate on a voluntary basis. For more information, contact Susanna Bailey, at 618-271-4920, Cahokiavol@aol.com.

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Starting in mid-June, John Kelly will continue work in Mound 34 with a field school from Washington University. This will also be the seventh season for this project that Kelly and James Brown have been pursuing to clarify the relationship of this mound to others at the site and as evidence that some of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex components may have originated at Cahokia and moved south. Test excavations were initially done in Mound 34 in the 1950s by Spaulding and Griffin, and then by Greg Perino, who dug large trenches into part of the mound. Exotic materials were recovered, including some fragments of engraved shell cups with iconography like that of Spiro; sharks teeth; a possible copper workshop; arrowpoints and other materials that show links with the Southeast. Kelly is reopening the old excavations and reexamining profiles and other features to better determine the form, function and time of construction of Mound 34, which sits outside the palisaded central ceremonial precinct of Cahokia.

John Kelly and Bill Iseminger will also conduct an Earthwatch project on the Northeast Palisade, in an attempt to locate where the defensive wall turns west to go behind Monks Mound. They will expand on some of the 1970s palisade excavations in this area where there are some features that may represent where at least one of the walls is turning. This project will run from June 7-July 2.

A new exhibit is being installed at the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center, focusing on the marginal connections Cahokia has with the Lewis and Clark phenomena. While at Camp Dubois near Hartford, IL, Clark visited a mound group that appears to be part of the Grassy Lake site near South Roxana, so information is provided on the archaeology of that site, which is mostly Late Woodland but does have some Mississippian occupation. On the return leg of their journey on the Missouri River, when Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonnea left the group in North Dakota, Clark offered to educate their son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, in St. Louis. They eventually brought Jean Baptiste to St. Louis in 1809 and while there had him baptized. The priest performing the baptism was Dom Urbain Guillet, who was the leader of the colony of Trappist Monks who had recently settled at Cahokia Mounds. The exhibit traces the histories of all these individuals and the factors that led all of them to converge on the St. Louis area.

Questions: cahokiamounds@ezl.com

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