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13.4.2014 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever : NPR http://www.npr.org/2012/06/02/153699883/ancient-suburb-near-st-louis-could-be-lost-forever 1/6 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever May 25, 2012 11:16 AM ET by VÉRONIQUE LACAPRA Listen to the Story Weekend Edition Saturday 5 min 37 sec Véronique LaCapra/St. Louis Public Radio

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13.4.2014 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever : NPR

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/02/153699883/ancient-suburb-near-st-louis-could-be-lost-forever 1/6

Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever

May 25, 2012 11:16 AM ET

by VÉRONIQUE LACAPRA

Listen to the Story

Weekend Edition Saturday 5 min 37 sec

Véronique LaCapra/St. Louis Public Radio

13.4.2014 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever : NPR

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/02/153699883/ancient-suburb-near-st-louis-could-be-lost-forever 2/6

Across the Mississippi River from St. Louis' famous Gateway Arch is a part of Illinois that's

a post-industrial wasteland.

Some hope the construction of a new bridge across the Mississippi River will help

revitalize the area. But archaeologists worry future development could destroy what's left of

another neighborhood — one that flourished there almost a thousand years ago.

Courtesy of the Il l inois State Archaeological Survey,

University of Il l inois

i

Working just ahead of the cranes and earth movers that are

building a stretch of the interstate freeway, archaeologists have

unearthed the remains of a sophisticated American Indian

settlement no one knew existed.

There are remnants of more than a thousand prehistoric houses

and the base of an earthen pyramid — one of dozens that would

have towered above the original settlement.

This East St. Louis dig sits halfway between a crumbling meat

packing plant and a now-closed strip club. But Joe Galloy, who is

coordinating research here for the Illinois State Archaeological

Survey, says 900 years ago, visitors paddling here by canoe

from the Mississippi River would have seen the tall wooden

temples that stood on top of many of the pyramids. And at their

bases, rows and rows of thatched-roof huts.

"One of the things that I imagine an ancient visitor to this site

would have experienced was kind of a sense of awe and

wonder," Galloy says. "There would be fires and things like that.

People cooking stuff — all sorts of activity. And you'd see this huge village. And it was

13.4.2014 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever : NPR

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probably a very impressive site, one of the largest settlements that people had seen if they

hadn't been around this area before."

Galloy says archaeologists knew about the pyramids from old maps and excavations, but

they were all outside the bounds of this new dig site. "So for us it was a really big surprise

to come out and discover that we have this big residential area for this ancient city."

Cahokia: A Bustling, Ancient City

Galloy and others believe that what they've found here near East St. Louis is a prehistoric

suburb of an ancient city known as Cahokia, once the largest American Indian city north of

Mexico. Its remains are five miles away.

What's left of Cahokia is now part of an Illinois State Park. It's also a UNESCO World

Heritage Site.

Cahokia is considered the greatest achievement of Mississippian culture, which once

spread throughout the Central and Southern U.S. Here, there were 120 massive pyramids

of earth — more than twice the number of any other site.

Now those pyramids are eroded, grassy mounds.

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Véronique LaCapra/St. Louis Public Radio

I've come to climb the tallest one with site manager Bill Iseminger. Monks Mound, as it's

called, is 10 stories high, with a base that would cover about a dozen football fields. And

Iseminger says it was all built by hand.

"The mounds were built a basket-load at a time," he says. "They didn't have horses or

wagons or carts — all done with human labor."

Most of these mounds, or pyramids, would have supported wood and thatch buildings 900

years ago. From the towering temple on the top of this mound, we would have looked out

over more pyramids, more temples, elite homes, meeting halls and charnel houses, where

the dead were prepared for burial.

13.4.2014 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever : NPR

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Courtesy of the Il l inois State Archaeological Survey,

University of Il l inois

i

And spreading out below us, a vast ceremonial plaza, bustling

neighborhoods, and in the distance, the rich floodplain of the

Mississippi River, where the Cahokians caught deer and fish

and harvested corn, squash and other crops.

Archaeologists estimate that as many as 20,000 American

Indians lived here. And now, with the discovery of the East St.

Louis site, they think there may have been thousands more. But

Iseminger says exactly what attracted so many people here is

still a mystery.

"Was there a powerful leader here, or charismatic leader, that

drew people in, attracted people? Did something happen here

that drew them in? Or something about the location was more significant? Those kinds of

things we just don't have answers for directly," he says.

Much Of Cahokia Still Buried

Some scientists think Cahokia was a powerful spiritual center, like Jerusalem or Mecca.

University of Illinois anthropologist Tim Pauketat, who has studied Cahokia since the mid-

1980s, says it once attracted thousands of visitors — possibly religious pilgrims.

"We can look around the eastern United States and just see a huge area in which we can

identify Cahokian objects, suggesting that people from Wisconsin, Louisiana, over to

Georgia even, Oklahoma, at least, occasionally came in and then went home with

something from here," he says.

Until the surprise discovery of the new settlement, archaeologists thought this was pretty

13.4.2014 Ancient Suburb Near St. Louis Could Be Lost Forever : NPR

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Véronique LaCapra/St. Louis Public Radio

i

much all that was left of Cahokia — that almost everything else

had been destroyed by development.

And Pauketat is worried: By the time the East St. Louis dig

wraps up later this year, only about a tenth of the ancient

settlement will have been excavated. He says once the new

Mississippi River bridge is finished, the other 90 percent, which

is still buried under private land, could be destroyed.

"Because East St. Louis is right across from St. Louis, it's prime

land for any kind of commercial development," he says.

Pauketat and a number of other archaeologists are trying to get the federal government to

buy the land around the dig site. They want to see the new Cahokian settlement combined

with the larger state-run site and protected as a national park. But Pauketat admits that so

far, that doesn't seem likely.

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