Mound 72

Archaeologists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, led by Dr. Melvin Fowler, excavated about two-thirds of Mound 72 from 1967-1971 because it lay along a hypothetical centerline of Cahokia, had a different orientation than other mounds, was one of the few ridgetop mounds unique to Cahokia, and was small. The excavation revealed three smaller mounds beneath the ridgetop mound, each covering complex mortuary activity that included mass sacrificial graves, artifact caches, and other features. At the western end had once stood a building, perhaps a charnel structure where bodies were prepared or stored for burial; after it was dismantled, bundle burials were placed there along with at least two high-status extended burials with shell bead necklaces. The primary mound known as 72Sub2 covered this group, and later three mass burial pits containing 19, 22, and 24 young women were placed on its east, south, and southeast sides before the mound was expanded to cover them. The south pit was later partially redug and received grave goods including 36,600 marine shell beads, about 400 arrowheads, numerous bone and antler arrowheads, and some broken pots. Along the south side of the primary mounds, other burial pits included one about six feet deep with two layers: an upper layer of 10 litter burials containing 14 people carried on stretchers, with several red cedar litter poles still intact, and below them 39 individuals tossed in randomly rather than carefully placed. Under the primary mound in the center of Mound 72, called 72Sub3, four men lay together with their arms interlocked but with their heads and hands cut off, and nearby a deep pit held 53 young women laid out in two rows and piled two deep. Near a large postpit, a man in his early 40s lay on a bird-shaped blanket or platform of 20,000 marine shell beads, with another man beneath him, six other people buried around him, and nearby seven men and women with grave goods that included nearly two bushels of unprocessed mica from the southern Appalachians, more marine shell beads from the Gulf of Mexico, 15 chunkey game stones, a copper staff from around Lake Superior, and nearly 800 perfect arrowheads in two piles made from chert from Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. One of the small primary mounds, 72Sub1, was built over this complex, and all of these burial groups and primary mounds were later encased in a final capping of soil that formed the ridgetop mound. The differing burial treatment suggests that these people may also have been treated differently in life, perhaps as members of different social classes or communities, while the arrangements and burial types may reflect belief system and cosmology. The northwest-southeast orientation of Mound 72 and most of the burial pits aligns with the winter solstice sunrise and summer solstice sunset, which may indicate the importance of these events to the Cahokia Mississippians, and Dr. Fowler believed another Woodhenge may have been associated with Mound 72, though clear evidence remains unconfirmed.

Collinsville, Illinois · United States