The agricultural foundation of Cahokia’s food system was corn — specifically, varieties of maize that had been introduced into the region from Mesoamerica and that had been adapted to the shorter growing seasons of the upper Mississippi Valley.

The adoption of corn agriculture was, for the communities of the American Bottom, genuinely transformative.

Corn is a high-calorie, high-yield crop that can be stored for extended periods after harvest.

The ability to produce corn surpluses — to grow more than immediate consumption required and to hold the excess for future use — created the material basis for the kind of population concentration that Cahokia represented.

But corn was not the only food source, and the archaeological evidence makes clear that Cahokia’s residents maintained a diverse diet that included wild game, fish, and other plant foods alongside the staple corn.