Woodhenge 72 Cahokia Mounds Historic Site

巨木阵 72 卡霍基亚土墩历史遗址

• 批准号: 9809511
• 负责人: Melvin Fowler
• 金额: $ 8.07万
• 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: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-06-15 至 2000-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9809511&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Woodhenge; 72; Cahokia; Mounds; Historic

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. To accomplish this, he hypothesizes where additional features should be situated and then excavates to test his hypothesis. To date he has been quite successful and this award allows him to study additional related features. 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 a cosmological order, the purpose of which was to reflect and reinforce a set of social and status organizations. 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个考古实地研究季节。近几十年来，卡霍基亚被认为是墨西哥北部前哥伦布美洲印第安文化的主要考古表现。在现今的美国，没有其他考古区像卡霍基亚遗址一样在地理上如此之大，人口如此之多，或者拥有如此多的人造特征。虽然尚未达成完全一致，但越来越多的人一致认为，卡霍基亚最好被描述为一个复杂的酋长领地。最近的研究表明，它的起源可以追溯到大约公元1,000年或更早。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墩特征。由于福勒博士的工作，考古学家们逐渐意识到许多较小的特征包含非常大的木桩，他们发现了现在空着的柱洞和用于将柱子提升到地面的泥土坡道的遗迹。此外，这些柱子似乎被排成一个大圆圈，形成了“木石阵”，在某些方面类似于欧洲的巨石阵。通过位置图，很有可能它们起到了天文学的作用。福勒博士的工作目标是进一步验证这一假设。为了实现这一点，他假设额外的特征应该位于何处，然后挖掘以验证他的假设。到目前为止，他已经相当成功，这个奖项使他能够研究其他相关的功能。 福勒博士和许多其他考古学家希望解决的根本问题是，具有简单技术水平的史前社会如何能够组织和维持大规模的社会单位，例如卡霍基亚所代表的社会单位。许多人认为，巨石阵和类似的结构有助于建立一个宇宙秩序，其目的是反映和加强一套社会和地位组织。这项研究很重要，因为它将为许多考古学家提供感兴趣的数据。它将为美国最重要的考古遗址之一提供新的线索，并将增加我们对社会组织基本原则的理解。