Mound Building and Prestige Goods Exchange: Changing Strategies in the Cahokia Chiefdom

Abstract

I examine the shift, at about A.D. 1200 in the Mississippi River Valley Cahokia polity, from emphasizing the status and prestige of communal groups through monumental constructions to displaying and maintaining the status and prestige of individual elites using prestige goods. I interpret this transformation as a change from a “corporate” to a “network” leadership strategy. Archaeologically, these alternative strategies show up as differences in monumental construction, wealth differentiation, craft production, and exchange networks. The Moorehead phase (A.D. 1200-1275) is typically characterized as the time of Cahokia’s decline because of decreased mound building and population levels. My examination of archaeological indicators of household status and craft production reveals maximal differences between household units in status and marine shell working after A.D. 1200, with increased centralization of shell working and more intensive production by higher-status households. I argue that elite control of craft production, if present, was a late phenomenon. Rather than a decline at A.D. 1200, changes in the archaeological indicators of complexity reflect changes in the ways that power was expressed and maintained by elites in Cahokian society.