ABSTRACT
Mississippian religion and polity from the eleventh through the seventeenth centuries were not distinct institutions or organizations but were inseparable dimensions of lived experience. As common to Prairie-Plains American Indian ontologies of the historic era, materials, spaces, and phenomena might be vested with powers and/or personhood. Recent research is demonstrating that the early Mississippian world was tapping into the fundamental animic relationships between the cosmos, people, and other-than-human beings. Among these around Cahokia were earth, water, fire, and celestial objects. These elements, substances, or powers were aligned, positioned, and sensuously engaged in ways that engendered their bundling, notably through their emplacement as shrine complexes. The net effect, not cause, of such emplacements was the likely realization of authority and governance known from later Mississippian-era centuries.
