Monks Mound Update
By Bill Iseminger
December, 1998

If you had not heard, Monks Mound is finally reopened, after more than a year of work on the steps and other projects. The original contractors were finally pulled from the job after failing to complete certain repairs or doing them improperly. New Contractors have remedied most of these problems as well as making improvements to the handrails and landscaping. The only remaining project is to install grates in the lower landings of each flight of stairs so that rainwater cascading down them enters already installed drains, rather than eroding the paths at the base of the stairs. The installation may require closing the stairs for a day or two.

Of prime interest to many people, is an update on the stone mass under the west side of Monks Mound. This past summer, a joint effort between archaeologists from the Edwardsville and Carbondale campuses of Southern Illinois University resulted in remote sensing tests using resistivity and magnetometry to try to define the limits and shape of the deeply buried stone feature that was encountered while drilling to install horizontal drains in the mound. The resistivity tests were nonproductive, but the magnetometry yielded some intriguing results.

These tests revealed two "anomalies" 20 - 25 meters apart, running east and west beneath the Second Terrace, one of them directly above where the stone was encountered in the drilling last year. Each anomaly is about 2 meters wide and 3 - 6 meters deep. They are above the stone itself, which is 6 - 9 meters deep. Whether these anomalies are associated with the stone feature or the result of some natural formation has yet to be determined. Hand-augering tests went down over 30 feet, still about one meter above the stone, and encountered lots of organic root matter, perhaps from a compacted surface of an earthen structure covering the stone.

There are many possible interpretations of the evidence, but further field school tests are planned for the spring, under John Sexton of SIUC, and summer, under Bill Woods of SIUE, including and extension of the magnetometry tests, and seismic testing. Hopefully these will better define the size and shape of the stone feature and vertical coring will reveal the type of stone and soil stratigraphy above and below the feature.

For further reading we are grateful to the publishers of ARCHAEOLOGY for allowing us to link to their article "Sampling Monks Mound" from their ARCHAEOLOGY Newsbrief section,Volume 52 Number 1 January/February 1999

If you have comments on this article or need more information, contact: cahokiamounds@ezl.com

* Visit MLM Index, the pages of Archeocryptographer Michael Lawrence Morton. Read how many, if not all, of these ancient sites are component parts of the planetary math matrix - "geodetic markers," relating to measurements of the Earth and its surface.