Diaspora and Reinventing Cahokia in the Vincennes Region

Diaspora involves population dispersal, maintaining connections to a homeland, and group identity preservation, though some argue that it is also a process of negotiation between the various groups involved. In this paper, I discuss this process of reinvention for Vincennes phase peoples, or populations who lived in the Wabash Valley and its tributaries between 1100 and 1500 A.D., in the wake of Cahokian diaspora. Despite early influence from Cahokia, pottery, settlement, and household data indicate that Wabash Valley groups reinvented themselves by adopting a mix of cultural traits from surrounding populations, forming what archaeologists now recognize as the Vincennes phase.