Thule 38-41 v2

Toward an understanding of Native American socio-pol complexity: It. Arch. researches at Cahokia 43
Fig. 4. Location of our excavation area (in colors), at the western edge of Tract 15B (image by
I. Valese)
The excavation of the western section of an Emergent Mississippian house
basin partially excavated by Wittry allowed the precise georeferentiation of
Wittry’s old maps and their integration into Cahokia’s reference grid. The
location of our excavation area was also determined by the need to expand on
the area of the 2008-9 Washington University’s excavations, where evidence of
the southwestern corner of a large building (F358/1001) had been identified in
the form of an approximately 60 cm-deep (below plowzone, that is, 90 cm
below surface) and 40 cm-wide wall-trench.
Given the spatially-related aims of our project, we adopted a research strategy
and methodology strongly focused on horizontally extensive excavations, in
order to have a good general view of the spatial distribution of archaeological
features that could be added to the already extensive area of Tract 15B.
During our five fieldwork seasons we have so far opened an area of 327,75 m 2 ,
removing by shoveling and troweling aprox. 30 cms of disturbed plowzone in
order to expose the underlying undisturbed features. It is quite clear that, in
most of our excavation area, plowing reached the ancient occupational levels,
so that most of the original floor level has been destroyed by modern