The precision required to achieve these alignments — placing posts whose positions correspond to the solar horizon positions on specific dates, repeated across multiple construction phases of the structure — implies deliberate astronomical observation and the ability to translate observations into construction plans.

Someone at Cahokia had watched the horizon for years, noted the positions of sunrise on the significant dates, and then engineered a structure that captured those positions permanently.

The structure Wittry identified was eventually designated Woodhenge, and the name has stuck, though later researchers have been careful to point out that the Cahokia circles predate the final construction phase of Stonehenge in Britain, and that the two structures were built by entirely unrelated peoples using entirely different methods for different specific purposes.

The comparison is useful only as a way of communicating scale and ambition to an audience familiar with the British monument.