Monks Mound, 2000
by Bill Iseminger

SIU Edwardsville continued its program of trying to understand more about Monks Mound, following up on work they began with the repairs to the west slump and the installation of the new stairs up the front over the past few years.

Dr. William Woods led the project, which involved field school students from SIUE, SIU Carbondale under Dr. John Sexton, and also students from the University of Goettingen, Germany. Most of their project at Cahokia focused on the First Terrace of Monks Mound to test the hypothesis of its being a late addition to the front of the mound. They also are trying to identify other possible features, such as structures or pits, that lie below the surface. Excavations during the 1960s-70s had identified historic period (mid 1700s) occupation, burials and a French chapel location on the west side of the First Terrace, all relating to an occupation by Illini (Illinois) Indians long after the Mississippians had left. The testing for the new stairway in the late 1990s also identified some large refuse pits near the center of this terrace, full of the remains of deer, bear, turtles, swans, fish, and other animals, as well as French period ceramics, gun parts, glass and knives. Recently, SIUE and SIUC have been using resistivity and other methods on the eastern portion of this terrace to see if they can identify additional features.

They also have been taking vertical cores across the terrace. The preliminary results seem to confirm that the First Terrace was indeed a late addition to the front of the mound, based on detected soil changes and angles of slope. The other resistivity test results are still being analyzed, but it will be interesting to see what they determine. No additional testing was done in the area of the stone mass under the Second Terrace, due to time and equipment restraints, but some work may be done this fall.

For further reading:

We are grateful to the publishers of ARCHAEOLOGY for allowing us to link to their article "Sampling Monks Mound" from their ARCHAEOLOGY Newsbrief section, Volume 52 Number 1 January/February 1999