Cahokia Mounds Site

卡霍基亚土墩遗址

• 批准号: 9601082
• 负责人: Melvin Fowler
• 金额: $ 6.56万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-09-01 至 1998-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9601082&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cahokia; Mounds; Site

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Melvin Fowler will conduct one field season of archaeological field research at the site of Cahokia. In recent decades Cahokia has been recognized as the premier archaeological manifestation of pre-Columbian American Indian culture north of Mexico. No other archaeological zone within the present United States was as geographically large, the seat of as large a population, or has as many manmade features as does the Cahokia site. While total agreement has not been achieved, a consensus is growing that Cahokia can best be described as a complex chiefdom. Recent studies have shown that its origin can be dated to approximately 1,000 A.D. or slightly earlier. Cahokia is known for its large impressive earthern mounds which include elaborate burials as well as many smaller mound features. Due in good part to Dr. Fowler's work archaeologists have come to realize that many of the smaller features contained very large wooden posts and they have found both the now empty postholes and remains of earthern ramps used to raise the posts into the ground. It also appears that these posts were arranged in large circles to form `woodhenges`, analogous in some ways to stonehenges in Europe. Through plots of post positions, it is very likely they served astronomical functions. The goal of Dr. Fowler's work is to further test this hypothesis. He has located small unexcavated features and predicted, on the basis of the astronomic hypothesis where postholes and ramps should be located. Through careful stratigraphic excavation he will search for them. The underlying issue which Dr. Fowler and many other archaeologists wish to address concerns how preliterate societies with simple levels of technology were able to organize and maintain large scale social units such as the one represented at Cahokia. Many believe that stonehenges and similar structures served to establish and a cosmological order, the purpose of which was to reflect and reinforce a set of social and status organizations. For example one wishes to know where elite structures were located in relation to significant astronomical points on the woodhenge. This research is important because it will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will shed new light on one of the premier archaeological sites in the United States and will increase our understanding of underlying principles of social organization.

在国家科学基金会的支持下，梅尔文·福勒博士将在卡霍基亚遗址进行一次实地考古田野研究。近几十年来，卡霍基亚被认为是前哥伦布时代墨西哥北部美洲印第安人文化的主要考古表现形式。在目前的美国境内，没有其他考古区的地理面积像卡霍基亚遗址那样大，人口如此之多，也没有像卡霍基亚遗址那样具有如此多的人造特征。虽然尚未达成完全一致，但人们越来越一致认为，卡霍基亚最好被描述为一个复杂的酋长王国。最近的研究表明，它的起源可以追溯到大约公元1000年或更早一些。卡霍基亚以其令人印象深刻的大型土丘而闻名，其中包括精心制作的墓葬以及许多较小的土丘特征。在很大程度上归功于福勒博士的工作，考古学家们开始意识到，许多较小的特征包含非常大的木柱，他们发现了现在空荡荡的后坑和用于将柱子抬入地下的土质坡道的遗迹。这些帖子似乎也被排成了大圈，形成了类似于欧洲巨石阵的“木材横梁”。通过柱位图，它们很可能起到了天文作用。福勒博士的工作目标是进一步验证这一假说。他定位了未挖掘的小地物，并根据天文学假说预测了后洞穴和坡道应该位于哪里。通过仔细的地层挖掘，他将寻找它们。福勒博士和许多其他考古学家希望解决的根本问题是，文字出现之前的社会如何能够用简单的技术来组织和维持大规模的社会单位，比如卡霍基亚所代表的社会单位。许多人认为，巨石和类似的结构有助于建立和建立一种宇宙秩序，其目的是反映和加强一系列社会和地位组织。例如，人们想知道与伍德亨奇上的重要天文点相关的精英结构位于哪里。这项研究很重要，因为它将提供许多考古学家感兴趣的数据。它将为美国最重要的考古遗址之一带来新的曙光，并将增加我们对社会组织基本原则的理解。