The Mound Builders were some of the most advanced Native peoples to be encountered by European explorers. They made their homes in the part of North America along what is now known as the Mississippi River. Their complex, ancient culture is very impressive: the Mound Builders are credited with being the first group of people to rely on farming as a major source of food. This book features photographs of cool artifacts and critical thinking questions to engage readers as they draw their own conclusions while learning about the Mound Builders.

From approximately AD 900 to 1600, ancient Mississippian culture dominated today’s southeastern United States. These Native American societies, known more popularly as moundbuilders, had populations that numbered in the thousands, produced vast surpluses of food, engaged in longdistance trading, and were ruled by powerful leaders who raised large armies. Mississippian chiefdoms built fortified towns with massive earthen structures used as astrological monuments and burial grounds. The remnants of these cities—scattered throughout the Southeast from Florida north to Wisconsin and as far west as Texas—are still visible and awe-inspiring today. This heavily illustrated guide brings these settlements to life with maps, artists’ reconstructions, photos of artifacts, and historic and modern photos of sites, connecting our archaeological knowledge with what is visible when visiting the sites today. Anthropologist Eric E. Bowne discusses specific structures at each location and highlights noteworthy museums, artifacts, and cultural features. He also provides an introduction to Mississippian culture, offering background on subsistence and settlement practices, political and social organization, warfare, and belief systems that will help readers better understand these complex and remarkable places. Sites include Cahokia, Moundville, Etowah, and many more.

The Mound Builders were some of the most advanced Native peoples to be encountered by European explorers. They made their homes in the part of North America along what is now known as the Mississippi River. Their complex, ancient culture is very impressive: the Mound Builders are credited with being the first group of people to rely on farming as a major source of food. This book features photographs of cool artifacts and critical thinking questions to engage readers as they draw their own conclusions while learning about the Mound Builders.

Using a wealth of archaeological evidence, this book outlines the development of Mississippian civilization.

Winner of the 2020 Society for Economic Botany's Mary W. Klinger Book Award An authoritative and thoroughly accessible overview of farming and food practices at Cahokia Agriculture is rightly emphasized as the center of the economy in most studies of Cahokian society, but the focus is often predominantly on corn. This farming economy is typically framed in terms of ruling elites living in mound centers who demanded tribute and a mass surplus to be hoarded or distributed as they saw fit. Farmers are cast as commoners who grew enough surplus corn to provide for the elites. Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland presents evidence to demonstrate that the emphasis on corn has created a distorted picture of Cahokia’s agricultural practices. Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture. Gayle J. Fritz shows that the division between the so-called elites and commoners simplifies and misrepresents the statuses of farmers—a workforce consisting of adult women and their daughters who belonged to kin groups crosscutting all levels of the Cahokian social order. Many farmers had considerable influence and decision-making authority, and they were valued for their economic contributions, their skills, and their expertise in all matters relating to soils and crops. Fritz examines the possible roles played by farmers in the processes of producing and preparing food and in maintaining cosmological balance. This highly accessible narrative by an internationally known paleoethnobotanist highlights the biologically diverse agricultural system by focusing on plants, such as erect knotweed, chenopod, and maygrass, which were domesticated in the midcontinent and grown by generations of farmers before Cahokia Mounds grew to be the largest Native American population center north of Mexico. Fritz also looks at traditional farming systems to apply strategies that would be helpful to modern agriculture, including reviving wild and weedy descendants of these lost crops for redomestication. With a wealth of detail on specific sites, traditional foods, artifacts such as famous figurines, and color photos of significant plants, Feeding Cahokia will satisfy both scholars and interested readers.

Since 1997, a series of astounding developments have shattered American archaeology's most cherished beliefs. Excavations have uncovered solid evidence that acient America was settled at least 50,000 years ago. Genetic evidence shows that several waves of migrations came into America from not only Siberia, but also from Polynesia, China, and Japan. A mysterious genetic type has been identified in ancient American skeletal remains as well as in some modern Native Americans. This enigmatic type is linked to the Middle East and may well have originated in a location between America and Europe.Edgar Cayce, America's famous "Sleeping Prophet," gave 68 readings between 1925 to 1944 that provided information on America's Mound Builders and ancient American history. These readings have never been thoroughly analyzed and have been largely forgotten.For the first time, Cayce's statements about ancient America are compared to current archaeological evidence. Incredibly, nearly everything Cayce related about the Mound Builders is true. Well-documented and highly illustrated. This is a reissue of the book first released in 2001.

The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. Louis While Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Built around a sprawling central plaza and known as Cahokia, the site has drawn the attention of generations of archaeologists, whose work produced evidence of complex celestial timepieces, feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of human sacrifice. Drawing on these fascinating finds, Cahokia presents a lively and astonishing narrative of prehistoric America.

Provides a comprehensive collection of Moorehead's investigations of the nation's largest prehistoric mound center

An inclusive as possible collection of citations and characteristics of the Native American mounds in the continental United States.

Originally published in 1848 as the first major work in the nascent discipline as well as the first publication of the newly established Smithsonian Institution, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley remains today not only a key document in the history of American archaeology but also the primary source of information on hundreds of mounds and earthworks in the eastern United States, most of which have now vanished. Despite adhering to the popular assumption that the moundbuilders could not have been the ancestors of the supposedly savage Native American groups still living in the region, the authors set high standards for their time. Their work provides insight into some of the conceptual, methodological, and substantive issues that archaeologists still confront. Long out of print, this 150th anniversary edition includes David J. Meltzer's lively introduction, which describes the controversies surrounding the book’s original publication, from a bitter, decades-long feud between Squier and Davis to widespread debates about the links between race, religion, and human origins. Complete with a new index and bibliography, and illustrated with the original maps, plates, and engravings, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley provides a new generation with a first-hand view of this pioneer era in American archaeology.