Timothy Pauketat, the author of Cahokoa: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi, and Danielle Benden of the University of Wisconsin - Madison will oversee students near Trempealeau, Wis., this summer. They will be studying at a field school to help investigate the relationship and interactions between local Effigy Mound people and the Middle Mississippians, whose influential culture was based in Cahokia, a large city across the Mississippi River from where St. Louis is today.
The mounds and pottery in the Trempealeau area point to a strong relationship with the Mississip-pians. The culture spread as far as Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. It is estimated that the Trempealeau mounds were built in about 1050 A.D., close to the peak of activity in Cahokia.

The school is offered in conjunction with the Mississippian Initiative, a three-year National Science Foundation project.

Pauketat directs the project.

– Big River magazine