Lecture by Tim Pauketat and hosted by Santa Fe Archaeological Society

Understanding Cahokia—an indigenous city opposite modern-day St. Louis—is assisted by comparing it to Chaco. Both developed at about the same time, with major cultural and political shifts at both dated to ~1040 CE. Cahokia, however, appears more similar in layout to civic-ceremonial centers to the south in the Mississippi valley and Mexico, with great mounds, spacious plazas, and palatial pole-and-thatch buildings.

Both appear to have begun with prominent lineages or clans already in place, and the human populations of both migrated out during the 12th century's droughts.