The Cahokia mounds state historic site
Today, the historic
site
of Cahokia Mounds operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency is the
place to visit when you want to see what is left of historical Cahokia and learn more
about its culture. “Within the 2,200-acre tract, located a few miles west of
Collinsville,
Illinois,
lie the archaeological remnants of the central section of the ancient
settlement that is today known as Cahokia." (http://medicine.wustl.edu/~mckinney/cahokia/welcome.html 19.07.2001)
Undoubtedly,
this is where you can learn most about this “most sophisticated prehistoric
native civilization north of Mexico” as the official web-site
of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site puts it effusively.
At
the so-called Interpretive Center, films, models of a village showing
the daily life of the people, and lots of artifacts shall
help visitors to understand the culture of the Cahokians
and the circumstances under which they lived and died (the latter is not
discussed in a lot of details).
Of
course, they will provide you with a relatively biased American point of view.
If you want to know how Austrian students experienced the museums, then turn to
http://angam.ang.univie.ac.at/LiveMiss/journbody.htm
in order to get a probably more distanced perspective on the topic.
Want
to know the Cahokia site’s
internet address? Go to
http://medicine.wustl.edu/~mckinney/cahokia/cahokia.html
where you can get information about the museum, its location and how to get
there, fa
res as well as
facts and figures about Cahokia
itself, several excavations and upcoming events.
This
so-called “official web site for Cahokia mounds
state historic site” is a
pretty useful link to get some inside-knowledge about Cahokia. However, in some ways it
looks indeed very official. What is rather annoying, for instance, is that it
is not allowed to copy pictures from this sites unless according
to the photo usage policies. Hence, I preferred to take other sites’ pictures
for my site.