OAKWOOD, Ill. (AP) - Several suspected Native American burial mounds in eastern Illinois may be connected with an ancient historical site in southwestern Illinois, according to archaeologists. And a University of Illinois graduate student believes there’s good reason to suspect a connection.
Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville was the administrative center for the mound-building Mississippians, who flourished from about 700 AD to about 1400 AD.
Amanda Butler, a graduate student in the University of Illinois anthropology department, is among researchers trying to figure out if the series of mounds in rural Oakwood Township were possible missionary outposts for the tribe, according to The (Champaign) News-Gazette (https://bit.ly/1hgDby0).
Butler has been studying the Oakwood site and another spot near Danville in Vermilion County that’s thought to have ties to the Cahokia Mounds.
Her excavations there last summer led her to theorize that perhaps Cahokia was an urban center that was spreading its religious practices to places like the sites in eastern Illinois. Archeologists in the 1970s found eight mounds at one of the two sites. The tallest is about 7 feet in height and was built over a funeral structure that contained five bodies.
Other evidence that might prove to be a link to Cahokia includes red cedar found in another mound, Butler said. Cahokians often used red cedar they obtained from the Ozarks.
Butler has applied for a National Science Foundation grant that she hopes will allow her to do more work.
Don Richter is a Vermilion County historian who grew up in the area. He remembers going to see the mounds as a child and said arrowheads, pottery and other artifacts have turned up the area for years.
“It’s a place that needs to be looked into,” he said.
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Information from: The News-Gazette, https://www.news-gazette.com
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