This article lays out the cultural and infrastructural fragilities of two proto-urban complexes, Cahokia and Chaco, which have striking similarities to each other. They both grew quickly, around the same time, and ended sharply; they shared a politico-religious structuring around water and maize; as well as similar understandings of their immanence. Focusing on the two sites in turn, the article sheds light on the complexity of their politico-religious organization. In Cahokia, the mingling of maize, limestone, pottery, and the marshy environment of the Mississippi valley binds together economic, cultural, and spiritual processes, which are all reflected in the infrastructure of the complex. Changes in the ritual behavior of Cahokians around the 1160s gave way to political change, but eventually brought about the place’s gradual abandonment. Elsewhere, in Pueblo Bonito, a ‘great house’ in the Chaco valley, monumentality in the building mirrors the attractive local geology, and burial sites indicate hereditary control of the region. Agricultural features suggest that the area was one of pilgrimage, and dendrochronological evidence points to turning points in its history being tied to celestial events. After 1100, Chaco experienced contraction, and much of its cultural output was discarded and sealed away. Pauketat’s analysis suggests that their similarity is linked to the Medieval Climate Anomaly and its effect on maize farming; but that the fragility of their foundation on spiritual use of water and maize points towards their inherent fragility.
The suggestion of considering climate in the specific context of local fragility is an exciting research avenue. Still, I think the article’s account of the cultures’ spiritual beliefs is generally underdeveloped, for which it deserves scrutiny. The link to a mercurial immanence is tenuous.
Cahokia (1050–1250) and Chaco (850–1130): two proto-urban cities, far apart; both lasted very little; didn’t survive the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Why did they last so little?
Previous descriptions have overgeneralized society. Pauketat asks specific, human questions; focusing on cultural order and infrastructure. Understands their fragility as dependent on their material qualities.
Cahokia was along the Mississippi , and had control throughout it. The river was a prominent feature of the city. The wider city has several ceremonial locations that increased and were expanded over time. Maize, their main agricultural product, depended on “rainfall, and the wetter, warmer conditions of the early 1000s” (93).
Maize likely arrived to them through the Plum Bayou culture in Arkansas. Maize benefitted from the rich soil of the Mississippi valley. Nixtamalization in Cahokia “reconfigured the social relationships between people and landscape” (94), due to the need of limestone from the American Bottom. This involved “complex supra-village networks of people-maize-limestone” (94) during the 10th and 11th century. Construction of buildings in Cahokia reflects the centrality of limestone, pottery, marsh and river to the culture.
The three principal contiguous precincts noted earlier crisscrossed marsh and river. Indeed, the inner pyramid-and-plaza core of the largest precinct may have been quite intentionally sited between marshes in the wide, central portion of the American Bottom such that it might be regularly bathed in mists, a common morning and evening feature of humid low-lying lands in the Midwest during warm summer months. (94)
The watery relations linking people and other-than-human powers were also assembled in the hands of people via the manufacture of the city’s pottery wares. (94)
Cahokia’s unique architecture is tied to its urbanity. This is suggested by (1) the introduction of a elaborate ritual goods around 1100, and (2) a “political-ritual-demographic contraction and reorientation” around ~1200 (96). This latter development ended the construction of elegant Cahokian buildings and replaced them with “simple, overized rectangular houses” (96).
The drop in rainfall over time, after a peak around 1050, is connected to abandonment of settlements in Cahokia. This didn’t affect the population at the start, but after the 1160s the established political and religious leadership was changed and reestablished atop the Monks Mound. This was a revitalization according to Melissa Baltus (2014), but population declined steadily afterwards, until Cahokia’s near-total abandonment (96).
There exist several ‘great houses’ in the region. In one, Pueblo Bonito, a man is interred along with a dozen men of his matriline. This is an interesting window into the power structure of Pueblo Bonito.
Chaco Canyon is an attractive place because of its geologic properties. The construction of the houses reflects ‘monumentality’ (98) and suggests that they were “more than mere domestic or communal facilities” (98).
Chaco scholars are split between thinking of it as a living space and as a pilgrimage and festive location. While there was water to support about 10,000 people, estimates hover around 2,500. It is unclear if agricultural features suggest a substantial residential population or if the emphasis was on gatherings with pilgrims. Much maize and ceramic was imported to the region.
Around 1040, Chacoan production intensified, expanded, and standardized. This might have been for celestial reasons. The dependence on spiritual practice is fragile, and Chaco experienced contraction around 1100. The practical vessels and other objects were sealed away and non-Chacoan inhabitants cut ties with Chaco’s practices. Chacoans seem to have been particularly targeted.
It seems clear that leaders were always simultaneously religious, hereditary, and powerful.
The synchronicity of the two states is remarkable. The quick growth and downsizing is too.
Order seems to have been achieved by reference to cosmic powers, but kept relatively open. The process of establishing was a drawn-out one; but cultural order manifests physically, through stacked buildings and infrastructure, is also shared. The infrastructure seems important for production, but also hints at being unrealized to its potential in Chaco. The importance of leadership and burial is clear, but it is also evidently and sharply terminanted, in both cases.
If Cahokia’s and Chaco’s foundations and agricultural economies rested on rain, on the experience of water vapour inside water shrines, on the routine lived relationships between earth and water and life and death, and on the rising and setting of the moon, then how fragile might be the bodies-politic that effloresced around them? At what point might people feel at liberty to walk away?
Synchronizing both cultures with the Medieval Climate Anomaly seems to successfully explain the mysteries described above. For both cultures, “The immanence of water and maize… did afford a restricted set of possible outcomes” (104). Fragility is implicit there.