From the historian's notes

Cahokia, 1100

United States · North America · c. August 1100 — year approximate by design; no documentary record exists · summer

What it was high for scale class; medium for the specific decade's population

the largest settlement north of Mexico — earthen monumental core, great plaza, thousands of thatched houses across the bottomland; population estimates run 10,000-20,000 with wide error barsurban explosion around 1050 (the archaeological 'big bang' of the site); at 1100 the city is at or near full scale

That year

• no datable events exist for 1100 at Cahokia — the year is chosen inside the city's plateau of full function, before the palisade-building and hinterland stresses of the later 1100s n/a high that no event can honestly be assertedn/a

Who held it medium — inference from excavation only

unknown in structure — archaeology reads a paramount center: mound-top elite, plaza ceremonialism, satellite towns; whether to call it chiefdom, proto-state, or theater-state is a live scholarly argumentunknown — no name from this civilization survives anywherewithin living memory of 1100: the city's explosive reorganization (c. 1050) — grand plaza leveled, mounds rising in coordinated campaigns; a person of sixty could remember the world before the city

Its name high that the endonym is unknown

unknown — and unrecoverable. The city's people left no writing; their own name for it is lost. 'Cahokia' is the name of an unrelated Illiniwek people living nearby six centuries LATER, applied to the ruins by the FrenchWritten in none — no writing system existed here

The date, there medium for solar observation; everything finer is unknown

unknown — no era, no count survivesunknown; the posts of the timber circles ('Woodhenge') align to solstice and equinox sunrises, implying a kept solar calendar — inference from post-hole geometryThe sun against posts and horizon; the agricultural and ceremonial round. Days are not numbered anywhere she can see. For a woman whose craft is dates, this is the ring's vertigo stop: the pack's honest answer to 'what time is it' is a shrug and a sunrise.

Money high that no currency existed

none — no money; exchange runs on gift, obligation, tribute and bartern/a; shell beads and exotic goods carry value without being currency in the coin sensenot applicable — the concept itself is the anachronism

Weather medium

August: hot (low-mid 30s C), thick humidity, afternoon thunderheads off the river; green corn season on ethnographic analogyMississippi flood regime shapes everything — settlement sits on higher bottomland lobes; specific flood years unknown

Things

Objectschunkey stones; marine-shell beads (Gulf shell moved a thousand miles to be here); Cahokia-style chipped arrowpoints; red 'flint clay' figurines (the famous ones skew slightly later and ritual — tag if used); pottery: shell-tempered jars and beakers, including forms tied to the 'black drink' caffeine tea (residue-attested, tag medium)Foodmaize as the engine; squash, sunflower, native seed crops (goosefoot, maygrass); fish and waterfowl from the oxbows in quantity; deer; hickory nuts and persimmons in season; the ceremonial 'black drink' (caffeinated holly tea) — residue evidence, medium confidenceClothwoven plant-fiber garments, deerskin; feather and fur mantles inferred for elites; no loom-cotton, no wool — fiber craft is twining and netting; shell and copper ornament (Great Lakes copper, cold-hammered)Getting aboutdugout canoes — the river network is the road network; human porters; no draft animals, no wheels on the continent; the plaza-and-causeway walking city itselfIn the airwoodsmoke and maize cooking; river mud and fish racks; cut prairie grass thatch drying; sweat and tallow in an August crowd

What she'd hear

Unknown language, unknown family (Siouan is a common guess, not a fact). She cannot pass, cannot prepare, and for once cannot even buy an interpreter. Gesture, exchange and demonstrated skill are the entire channel.

Where she could stand

• the great mound (Monks Mound) — the earthen platform rising ~30 m in terraces, big buildings on its summit; the largest earthwork north of Mexico
• the grand plaza — the leveled ceremonial ground of about 20 hectares south of the great mound
• a timber circle (Woodhenge) — a great post circle west of the core, aligned to solstice sunrises
• a chunkey game in progress — the rolling-disc-and-spear game whose carved stone rollers the site yields in quantity
• the borrow pits and house rows — the scooped ponds where mound-earth came from, ringed by thatched pole houses and ramadas

Researched for this card · confidence medium — high archaeological floor, zero documentary ceiling