This very impressive volume presents the results of the large-scale archaeological investigations conducted in the East St. Louis area of the American Bottom of Illinois between 2008 and 2012 as part of the New Mississippi River Bridge Project (NMRBP) linking Illinois and Missouri. The results of this project are little short of amazing. As the authors note, investigation of the 28.5 ha project area resulted in the recovery of over one million artifacts as well as the identification of over 7,000 pit features and houses spanning the late precontact to historic periods. The results of investigations of precontact period contexts are presented in 14 separate chapters authored by 23 specialists on such diverse topics as bioarchaeology, changes in ceramic and lithic assemblages spanning the period from roughly AD 900 through 1250, craft production, and botanical remains that inform on the subsistence practices and structure construction of the site inhabitants.
This volume is clearly intended to appeal to both the general public and the professional archaeological community, and it succeeds admirably on both fronts. The many full-color photographs, maps, and artifact drawings as well as the use of nontechnical language and sidebars help render the book accessible to the general public, which, it should be remembered, paid for these highway-related investigations. As someone who has spent most of their career working on cultural resource management projects similar to the NMRBP, I feel strongly that archaeologists who work on these types of taxpayer-supported investigations have an obligation to convey the results of their work to the general public via public talks or publications, and I commend the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) for doing so in this case.
Chapters 3–7 and 9–12 of the volume—which discuss the archaeological investigations, ancient landscape, ceramic and lithic analyses, community plan, craft production, and other topics—should appeal to both the professional community and members of the public who have interests in the archaeology and material culture of the American Bottom.
Chapters 1–2, 8, and 13–14, which consider the rise, organization, and decline of the various late precontact Mississippian mound centers of the American Bottom (referred to as “Greater Cahokia” by the coeditors and contributing authors), will find a home with advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as professional archaeologists. Sites such as the East St. Louis Mound Group, located on the east side of the Mississippi River but formerly thought to have been a community that was distinct from Cahokia itself, are now seen as “precincts” within Greater Cahokia. The NMRB and earlier investigations also found evidence of a large-scale fire that destroyed the structures of the East St. Louis Precinct in the late twelfth century AD that may have been associated with a ritual reorganization of Greater Cahokia as a whole (Timothy Pauketat, Chapter 5).
Specialists and students will find of particular interest the concluding essay of the volume (Chapter 14, “Greater Cahokia—Chiefdom, State or City? Urbanism in the North American Mid-Continent, AD 1050–1250”), in which Thomas Emerson succinctly presents the evidence for Cahokia being an urban center (city) rather than a major town within a chiefdom analogous to those of the late prehistoric Southeast. This broader debate has bedeviled Mississippian archaeologists in Illinois since at least the early 1980s, when some Illinois archaeologists adamantly argued that rather than a city, Cahokia represented a vacant ceremonial center with only a very small year-round resident population. In contrast, Emerson, Pauketat, and their coauthors clearly consider this argument to have now been settled in favor of identifying Greater Cahokia as an urban landscape.
Other notable chapters that further develop concepts of urbanism, neighborhoods, and archaeological precincts include Emerson's “Creating Greater Cahokia” (Chapter 2) and Pauketat's “Thinking through the Ashes, Architecture, and Artifacts of East St. Louis” (Chapter 13). Additional important chapters focusing on these and other concepts that expand on our knowledge of Greater Cahokia include Pauketat's “In and around the Northside and Southside Excavations at East St. Louis Precinct” (Chapter 5); “Community Organization of the East St. Louis Precinct” (Chapter 6) by Tamira Brennan et alia; “The People of East St. Louis” (Chapter 8) by Kristin Hedman; and “Crafting and Exotica at the East St. Louis Precinct” (Chapter 11) by Steven Boles et alia, which deals with the craft production of copper, crystal, galena, pipestone, and other artifacts.
In sum, IDOT and the Illinois State Archaeological Survey should be commended for the publication of this outstanding volume, which will represent a benchmark study in American Bottom archaeology for decades to come. Not often does a summary volume of this type and this caliber about a major archaeological investigation, if completed at all, reach this level of theoretical and substantive importance.
