MAS Annual Meeting and Dinner

Come meet and socialize with your fellow MAS members, eat delicious food, and hear a fascinating lecture on September 27, 2024 by Dr. Amanda Butler.

Lecture Title: Mississippian Missionaries: Bundling a Cahokian Religious Movement

Summary: There is an established history of archaeologists grappling with the how of Cahokia’s rise and expansion. Archaeologists exploring the peripheries of the Mississippian world often see terms like outpost, influence, and Mississippianization used as descriptors for entanglements with Late Woodland cultures and places. Recent research points to a religious founding of Cahokia where a citation of the cosmos was built directly into the Cahokian landscape and then bundled as part of a larger religious movement that expanded out from Cahokia in a ripple effect of change. Drawing from Indigenous philosophies, I explore the concept of the bundle and bundling to hypothesize that the establishment and dissemination of a Cahokia-Mississippian religion is best understood as a bundled mission comprised of missionaries (human and other-than-human), places, things, and substances generating said religious movement. This talk examines a case study of a small Mississippian mission that actively missionized local communities, differentially impacted local experiences, and entangled them within a larger Cahokian-Mississippian religious landscape.

Event Location:
Oliver Kelley Farm
15788 Kelley Farm Road
Elk River, MN 55330

Dinner Service begins at 6:30pm

Food Catered by Wanna Wota
Menu Includes: Buffalo Sandwich, Wild Rice Salad, Corn Soup, Fresh Fruit, Pumpkin Bars, Water/Coffee

Meeting begins at 7:00pm

Lecture begins at 7:15pm

Event ends at 8:30pm