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Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos
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Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos Click here for illustrations of Cahokia. Click here to read about the Cahokians and their architecture. People around the world have sought high places for major religious and political sites. Living on the vast prairies of the American Midwest, the Cahokians overcame their flat topography by building enormous earth mounds. The Cahokians (800–1400 AD), who lived in what is now southern Illinois, used these architectural heights to create a complex city layout based on cosmic order. In an excerpt from Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos, published by the University of Chicago Press, author Sally A. Kitt Chappell discusses how this cosmographic layout played a vital role in expressing and preserving the spiritual, social, and political order of the city.

Excerpted from pages 51–65 of Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos by Sally A. Kitt Chappell, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright 2002 The University of Chicago
 




I M A G E  G A L L E R Y
teaser image
An ordinary day in a sacred city (Michael Hampshire).
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B I O G R A P H Y
Sally A. Kitt Chappell is professor emerita in the Department of Art at DePaul University. She is also the author of Barry Byrne: Architecture and Writings and Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, 1912–1936, the latter book also published by the University of Chicago Press. She is a frequent contributor to the Travel section of the New York Times.

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