Among the individuals interpreted as high-status burials in Mound 72 are women — individuals identified as female from skeletal analysis who are associated with objects of significant value.

This evidence suggests that high status was not exclusively male at Cahokia, and that women could occupy positions of recognized importance in the city’s social hierarchy.

The evidence from residential contexts — from the houses and refuse deposits of the ordinary city — provides a different kind of information about women’s lives.

The distribution of cooking vessels, food processing equipment, and the residues of food preparation activities across residential sites suggests patterns of domestic labor that, as in most pre-industrial societies, involved women extensively in food preparation and household management.

This is not surprising, but the specific evidence from Cahokia allows archaeologists to begin sketching more detailed pictures of domestic organization and gendered labor than earlier interpretations allowed.