Cahokia in the context of "Mississippian culture"

Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE (the construction of Watson Brake) to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period (Horr's Island), Woodland period (Caloosahatchee, Adena and Hopewell cultures), and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters. Outlying mounds exist in South Carolina at Santee and in North Carolina at Town Creek.

The first mound building was an early marker of political and social complexity among the cultures in the eastern part of what is now the United States. Watson Brake in Louisiana, constructed about 3500 BCE during the Middle Archaic period, is the oldest known and dated mound complex in North America. It is one of 11 mound complexes from this period found in the Lower Mississippi Valley.These cultures generally had developed hierarchical societies that had an elite. These commanded hundreds or even thousands of workers to dig up tons of earth with the hand tools available, move the soil long distances, and finally, workers to create the shape with layers of soil as directed by the builders. However early mounds found in Louisiana preceded such cultures and were products of hunter-gatherer cultures.

The Metro East is an urban area in Southern Illinois, United States that contains the eastern and northern urban, suburban, and exurban areas on the Mississippi River in Greater St. Louis. It encompasses eight Illinois counties and constitutes the second-most populous metropolitan area in Illinois.

A historically significant region, the area included the mound building native culture of Cahokia, and the later French settlements of the Illinois Country. It also includes the fertile lands of the riparian American Bottom. The region has almost 700,000 residents and its most populated city is Belleville, with 42,404 residents. The area hosts several colleges and universities, with Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as the largest. Also located in Metro East is the Scott Air Force Base.

SN 1054, the Crab Supernova, is a supernova that was first observed on c. 10 July [O.S. c. 4 July] 1054, and remained visible until c. 12 April [O.S. c. 6 April] 1056.

The event was recorded in contemporary Chinese astronomy, and references to it are also found in a later (13th-century) Japanese document and in a document from the Islamic world. Furthermore, there are a number of proposed references from European sources recorded in the 15th century, as well as a pictograph associated with the Ancestral Puebloan culture found near the Peñasco Blanco site in New Mexico, United States. The pyramids at Cahokia in the midwestern United States may have been built in response to the supernova's appearance in the sky.

The Upper Mississippian cultures were located in the Upper Mississippi basin and Great Lakes region of the American Midwest. They were in existence from approximately A.D. 1000 until the Protohistoric and early Historic periods (approximately A.D. 1700).

Archaeologists generally consider "Upper Mississippian" to be an attenuated version of "Middle Mississippian" cultures represented at Cahokia and other sites exhibiting more complex social and political structures, perhaps at a chiefdom level of development. The Middle Mississippians were capable of forming large cities and were thus heavily dependent on agriculture to support large populations. This civilization had its origins about A.D. 1000 or slightly earlier, and was at its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D. when the population at Cahokia was estimated to be 40,000 and the city itself covered an area of 3,480 acres (in contrast, Upper Mississippian sites are usually well under 10 acres). Although the Middle Mississippian declined after its peak, there were still advanced chiefdom-level societies present at the time of the DeSoto expedition in the 1530s and 1540s.

The Cahokia (Miami-Illinois: Kahokiaki) were an Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe and member of the Illinois Confederation; their territory was in what is now the Midwestern United States in North America.

At the time of European contact with the Illini or Illinois Confederation, the peoples were located in what would later be organized as the states of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas. In the 17th century, the Cahokia lived near the massive precontact earthwork complex that Americans named the Cahokia Mounds. By then, the Cahokia Mounds had been abandoned for centuries. The Cahokia people were not related to the residents of the Cahokia Mounds, who were most likely Dhegiha Siouan-speaking peoples.

The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site (11MX2-11; 11PO2-10) c. 1050–1400 CE, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its significant role in native North American prehistory and for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at least 11 substructure platform mounds (it ranks fifth among known sites of this period for the number of such structures), and 8 other monuments.

Artifacts from the settlement link its major habitation and the construction of the mounds to the Mississippian culture period. It is 140 miles from Cahokia, the major center of Mississippian culture in North America. The Kincaid site was also occupied earlier by indigenous peoples of the Late Woodland period. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964 for its significance as a major Native American mound center and prehistoric trading center along the Ohio River.