Monks Mound is the largest earthwork structure of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in North America, standing at the center of the Cahokia Mounds site near present day Collinsville, Illinois. Built in stages between roughly 900 and 1200 AD entirely from basket loads of earth carried and packed by hand, without draft animals or wheeled transport, the mound covers about 5 hectares at its base and rises in four terraces to a height of around 30 meters, the largest man-made earthen mound north of Mexico. Excavations suggest a large timber structure, likely the residence or ceremonial building of Cahokia's paramount ruler, once stood atop its highest terrace, overlooking a city that at its peak around 1100 AD may have held as many as 20,000 people. The mound takes its modern name from a small group of Trappist monks who briefly farmed one of its lower terraces in the early nineteenth century, and the wider Cahokia Mounds site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.
Facts
Building TypePlatform mound (earthwork) 2 LocationCahokia Mounds, near Collinsville, Illinois, United States 2 Completed YearCirca; construction began around 900 CE and the mound reached its final size around 1100 CE. Classification
Standing StatusSourced to the subject's own account Building Type
Building Type (category)Sourced to the subject's own account Connections
Has Building Type
Entity-backed identity for the building-type enum value this building already carries, resolved to an architecture concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The building-type fact itself stays on the building unchanged.
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Monks Mound (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation- Wikipedia "Monks Mound" intro (read live, w-fk-arch-rel2-0927c, R-K)
Monks Mound, Description section
As a platform mound, the earthwork supported a wooden structure on the summit.
Monks Mound, lead section
Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, the mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet (30 m) high
Monks Mound, Construction section
as finally completed around 1100 CE
Monks Mound, lead section, mound size sentence
the mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet (30 m) high
Entity description and the lead of the Wikipedia article
Monks Mound is the largest earthwork structure of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in North America, standing at the center of the Cahokia Mounds site near present day Collinsville, Illinois. Built in stages between roughly 900 and 1200 AD entirely from basket loads of earth carried and packed by hand, without draft animals or wheeled transport, the mound covers about 5 hectares at its base and rises in four terraces to a height of around 30 meters, the largest man-made earthen mound north of Mexico. Excavations suggest a large timber structure, likely the residence or ceremonial building of Cahokia's paramount ruler, once stood atop its highest terrace, overlooking a city that at its peak around 1100 AD may have held as many as 20,000 people. The mound takes its modern name from a small group of Trappist monks who briefly farmed one of its lower terraces in the early nineteenth century, and the wider Cahokia Mounds site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.
View the Source 2. Wikipedia
Wikimedia Foundation
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