What the Soil Remembers

The archaeology of Cahokia has been ongoing for more than a century, and the methods used to investigate the site have changed dramatically over that time.

The earliest investigations — some dating to the nineteenth century — involved the kind of excavation that would be unacceptable by modern standards: rapid digging without systematic recording, with objects removed and records not kept in ways that would allow the excavation to be reconstructed.

The mid-twentieth century brought more systematic methods, and the major excavations of the 1960s and 1970s — particularly the work associated with Warren Wittry, Melvin Fowler, and their colleagues — established the basic framework for understanding Cahokia’s layout, chronology, and major features.