Mesoamerican and Mississippian Civilizations — Quick Review

$7000$ years ago: women central to domestication and production of plant foods.
In Veracruz, Mexico, $3$ crops become foundational: corn, beans, and squash.
Surplus food enables specialization and freed people for other activities.
Women: agriculturalists, pottery makers, and traders; men pursued astronomy in the mountains.
Stargazing spurred the development of mathematics and science; Olmec culture becomes a knowledge-centered society.
Olmecs created a calendar system: calendar year of $18$ months with $20$ to $22$ days per month.
Corn diffused from the Olmec to all parts of the Western Hemisphere.
In the Andes, hundreds of varieties of potatoes form the basis of subsistence; potatoes spread to North America.

Leaders taxed populations and recruited labor to build irrigation canals; more land under cultivation; growing populations.
Monuments were built to study the universe and served as educational centers; knowledge about the world was encoded in codices.
Civilizations span from Mexico to Nicaragua in what archaeologists call Mesoamerica;
the Mayan culture is famous for its calendar, but the Olmec laid the groundwork across Middle America to North and South America.
The Classic Period: cities become centers of trade, develop powerful territorial systems, and engage in long-distance trade.
Monuments (pyramids, temples) built on an unprecedented scale along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the US Southwest deserts, Central Mexico, Yucatan, Nicaragua, and into the Andean highlands of Peru and Bolivia.

Regions and sites to know: Cahokia, Itawa, and Aztalan (three key Mississippian cultures).
Timeframe: $800\,BC$ to $600\,AD$ ; cultures identified as Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian.
They created variations on a shared cultural tradition and borrowed from one another.
Adena (spelled Edina in transcript) constructed vast earthen monuments and circular mounds; gourds included pumpkins and squash; larger funeral mounds; complex ritual system; ornamental regalia; copper use; cloth weaving; elaborate pottery.
They domesticated own plants: goosefoot, sunflower, amaranth; later corn, beans, and squash arrived.
Trade in corn connected the Valley of Mexico, the Gulf Coast, Guatemala, and the Southwest.
Cahokia, Itawa, and Aztalan: site locations and modern grid ties are important: present-day Madison, WI (Aztalan), Atlanta, GA (Itawa), Saint Louis, MO (Cahokia).

Cahokia (near Saint Louis): population grows in the early AD period; maize becomes a major diet component; wide land and water trade networks; multilingual communities; fortified towns; established warfare program.
They developed a ballgame (which evolved into lacrosse) with ceremonies, dances, training, and prizes.
The scale of fortifications and organized warfare indicates high political and social complexity.
The grid-pattern alignment with modern cities (Madison, Atlanta, Saint Louis) highlights the geographic reach of these cultures.

Early agricultural surplus ( $7000$ years ago) and the role of women in Olmec society catalyze broader cultural advances.
Olmec calendar: $18$ months, each month $20-22$ days; corn diffusion across the Americas.
Substantial pyramid/monumental architecture and codified knowledge across Mesoamerica.
Mississippian cultures (Adena/Edina, Hopewell, Cahokia/Itawa/Aztalan) show parallel complexity in North America with trade, warfare, and ceremonial life; Cahokia is a prime example of these dynamics.
Spatial relationships link Cahokia, Itawa, and Aztalan to modern urban grids in the US.