From the historian's notes

Cahokia, 1050

USA · North America · June 1050 · summer

What it was medium

a city being raised at speed: villages moved in from the floodplain, perhaps 10,000 people or more within a generationa village for centuries; around 1050 it is suddenly rebuilt as a planned city

That year

• The 'Big Bang': in a few years the settlement becomes a city, with the Grand Plaza levelled and filled by hand and the great mound raised around 1050 highone of the fastest city-buildings anywhere
• The great mound grows by baskets of earth carried up and tipped, layer after layer ongoing highmillions of basket-loads
• High-status burials at the mound known today as Mound 72, one laid on a cape of some 20,000 shell beads in the shape of a bird around 1050 mediuma ruling class taking shape

Who held it medium

the Mississippian polity centred on Cahokiaunknowna sudden refounding around 1050: the Grand Plaza levelled and filled, neighbourhoods laid out on a new grid, earthworks begun on a new scale

Its name low

unknown: the city's own name is not recorded. 'Cahokia' comes from a people who lived nearby six centuries laterWritten in none: the city has no writing

The date, there medium

unknownthe sun's turning points, marked by circles of tall cedar postsThe sun's rising points along the horizon, watched from the post circles; the seasons of planting and river flood.

Money low

no moneyunknownunknown: exchange in goods; shell beads as valuables

Weather medium

June: hot and humid, afternoon thunderstorms, river high

Things

Objectspolished stone discs for the rolling-stone game; flint hoes from the Mill Creek quarries; shell beads; incised potteryFoodmaize; squash; sunflower and goosefoot seed; fish; deerClothwoven plant fibre; deerskinGetting abouton foot; dugout canoes on the riverIn the airwood smoke; wet earth; river mud in summer heat

What she'd hear

Unknown: the city's language is not identified, and its newcomers came from many villages.

Where she could stand

• the Grand Plaza — a vast levelled square, freshly filled, used for gatherings and the rolling-stone game
• the great mound under construction — earth carried up in baskets, the terraces still raw
• a neighbourhood of new houses — rectangular houses with walls set in trenches, laid out on the new grid
• the borrow pits — the hollows where the mound's earth is dug, filling with rain

Researched for this card · confidence medium