In class we've discussed the role that migrations and other mass movements of people have on culture and evolution. People seem to have always been on the move. The people who lived in the Mississippi River Valley in the 1100s were no different.
Cahokia Mounds, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest earthwork site in North America. With estimates placing its population in the tens of thousands, Cahokia was arguably the first urban center in what is now the United States. But the questions of where did all of these people come from, and did they stay and actually live at Cahokia, have fueled archaeological research for the past several decades.
New research using chemical methods has shown that people buried at Cahokia came from a variety of places that were quite a distance away from the city. Check out this article from ScienceDaily about a new research article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science about how Cahokia was America's first experimentation with urbanism and what that may have meant for regional population movements and individual identities.
On another note, one of the US's premier archaeologists, and an expert on the Cahokia site will be giving a talk here at UGA on Thursday evening, March 27th. See the flyer below for more information!
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