Author Timothy Pauketat is an anthropologist at the University of Illinois; his description of the Cahokia site is fascinating but tragic. The tragic part comes in two stages; the inhabitants of Cahokia were capable of magnificent engineering and administrative works – but were also capable of gruesome human sacrifices. (Many of the victims were young women, and a significant number were pregnant women). The modern part of the tragedy comes with the destruction of much of the site by development, until the State of Illinois protected it in the 1980s. The Cahokians left no written records, so what’s known comes from careful archaeological work and inferences from surviving native cultures. Pauketat does an terrific job of explaining how the site was handled over the years and what evidence was used to try and deduce how the Cahokians lived. Recommended.
I have to confess I find the topic of human sacrifices of macabre interest. As far as I can tell, every culture has done this sort of thing at some time in their history – Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Cathaginians, Europeans, Chinese, Africans, Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Polynesians. It’s still done; Google “muti murders”. But don’t ask for images.
A good map of the site, not much in the way of other illustrations. No bibliography but references in the endnotes. ( )

Good basic overview to an unfortunately understudied part of American history. It's a book that brings up more questions than answers, mostly due to the fragmentary nature of the evidence we have. Pauketat is probably the person most qualified to let the reader know just what that evidence is and draw our attention to possible interpretations. ( )

The book is as much about the people doing the science as it is about the science, and seems short on conclusions or any kind of big picture. ( )

For a couple of hundred years between the 10th and 12th centuries a large city, planned city with monumental raised flat-topped mounds, built and inhabited by thousands, flourished along the eastern shore of the Mississippi - ancillary groupings were also scattered about in St. Louis and E. St. Louis (pretty much all destroyed). William Clark, George Catlin and other early visitors wrote of and sketched some of what they saw, but the entrenched belief of the times was that there could never have been such a thing as a 'real' city in North America, with an organized (albeit brutal in the meso-american vein) culture.
Pauketat has organized his information reasonably well, but alas, some editor has, in the new style of 'popular' anthropology, advised him to imagine scenarios, withhold tidbits to make the narrative more exciting etcetera, with the result, that it isn't until the end that he lays out neatly the points he should have made from the start. Here's why I like my information up front in a book like this..... it takes me awhile to sort out and absorb what I'm being told. I want that. I know I'm not reading a detective novel. The real 'story' here is about us and how our attitudes shape what we see and what we decide is the meaning of what we see. That tale - mostly sorry with a few bright spots - overshadowed the fact that Cahokia is astonishing to read about. Something that Pauketat calls 'the big bang' (do I sense another editor whispering in his ear?) happened around 1050 A.D. - no one knows what and we can't ever know - to draw people from all around the vicinity - to help build, to farm, and even to being within range to be chosen as a sacrificial victim for one of the Cahokian spectacles...... What is clear is that there was a craze for a game - 'Chunkey' of which, I somehow had never heard or absorbed. A game a bit like hoop and stick only you throw the hoop (a round stone with notches or a hole in it) and then you throw notched sticks (finely made, of course) after it and the scoring is done according to what matches up with what. As I read (and I'm committing the sin of imagining) it did press on my mind that most likely a truly charismatic person or family combined with the allure of this game plus the novelty of living in this new way, close together, the higher caste being supported by a peasant caste, but the peasants, perhaps, feeling they benefitted by proximity to the game, the person, the glory of it all...... Fascinating, unsettling. Even more interesting to think about is how and why it all went to pieces and where everyone went afterward, and how it changed them. If you like delving into American pre-history, this is a must-read. I can't give it more stars because the writing didn't grab me at all. Don't be put off by the lack of a zillion stars. Another reviewer notes the dearth of maps and photographs. I second that. ( )

This book is, in my view, misclassified as history. It is really more about archeology: what was discovered at the Cahokia site, and some of the challenges in preserving the site. At the end, it tells us what happened to the scientists that worked there. Not, to me, a satisfying conclusion. I found the book lacked context of the broader story of Cahokia and the Plains Indians of that time. Without that context, I found the writing disjointed and sometimes hard to follow. ( )