AUTHORS: Natalie G. Mueller and Christina Youngpeter
ABSTRACT: The ancient city of Cahokia (900-1350 AD) was the largest Indigenous settlement North of Mexico before European colonization. It was built in the middle of the American Bottom floodplain, south of the confluence of the Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers. Cahokians relied on a diverse array of annual and perennial floodplain-adapted plants, and created anthropogenic wetlands within the urban landscape. Cahokia was gradually abandoned between 1250-1350 AD, and many archaeologists have argued that either droughts or floods destabilized the food system and caused this “collapse.” However, the drought and flood tolerance of most of the plants grown by Cahokian farmers is unknown. We are conducting experiments with these plants to better understand their productivity, in terms of yield, and susceptibility to flooding and drought throughout their lifecycle. In addition to shedding light on the fate of this ancient city, we hope that our results will contribute to a revitalization of some of these ancient crops. With flood frequency and intensity predicted to rise in coming decades, floodplain adapted crops could provide a low input alternative to the flood-intolerant industrial crops that currently dominate agriculture in the Midwest.
