Cahokia Woodhenge and Mound 72
Warren Wittry found the post circle in 1961 by reading maps from a highway salvage dig, and noticing that certain pits ran in an arc. South of it, Melvin Fowler dug a low ridge-top mound and counted about 270 people inside, five of them in mass graves. The burial at the center of that mound was read as a warrior king for 40 years, until a 2016 reanalysis reported it was a man and a woman.
Field Guide Entry
The circle
Wittry was working through excavation records from salvage digging ahead of Interstate 55 when he noticed that some of the large post pits west of Monks Mound fell along an arc. Cedar posts had stood in them, set upright in pits with ramps cut so the posts could be slid in and levered up.
Cahokia's builders put up at least five of these circles on the same ground between about 900 and 1100 AD, each a different size. The one reconstructed on the site is the third, with 48 posts around the ring and an observation post set off center.
From that center post, the equinox sunrise comes up over the front of Monks Mound. Other posts mark the sun's northern and southern limits at the solstices.
Mound 72
Fowler excavated Mound 72 between 1967 and 1971. It is a low mound, not much to look at, and it held five mass graves with 20 to more than 50 people in each. One held 53 young women. Another held four men whose heads and hands had been removed.
At the center was the burial that made the site famous: a man laid out on a cape worked with roughly 20,000 marine shell beads cut into the shape of a falcon, a second body beneath him, and caches nearby holding hundreds of arrowheads, sheets of mica, and rolled copper.
What the 2016 reading changed
The standard account had been a warrior king: a male ruler, sacrificed retainers, a hierarchy with a man at the top. In 2016 a team led by Thomas Emerson published a reanalysis in American Antiquity reporting that the beaded burial holds a man and a woman laid head to foot, with other male and female pairs in the group around them.
That removed the founding figure the old story rested on, and it did not replace him with a new one. The mass graves are still unexplained. Cahokia left no writing, and everything above is read out of soil, bone, and post pits.
Visiting Information
The grounds and trails are open daily from dawn to dusk and cost nothing. The interpretive center reopened in June 2026 after four years closed for roof and mechanical work that ran to about $12.8 million, and while the gallery is finished the lobby, shop, and restrooms run Wednesday through Sunday from 9am to 3pm. Admission is free and donations are asked for rather than required.
Sunrise observances are held at the post circle on the Sunday closest to each equinox and solstice. They start before first light and go ahead whether the sky cooperates or not, which locally is considered part of it. Dates move with the calendar, so call 618-346-5160 to confirm.
Mound 72 is a grassed mound with a marker. Nothing of the burials is visible and there is nothing to go inside. A loop trail links the mound groups, with a shorter paved loop near the center for anyone who wants the short version.
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