Orientation: Getting Around The Site Whether you're a teacher, student, or visitor, choose your own path in accord with your individual teaching or learning goals. Travel through time, theme, or content categories. By Time Once you enter the site, you'll need to choose from two main time periods for your explorations: Native Americans: The Mississippian Saga -- Mississippian Period (A.D. 800-1400). This is the period when Native American agriculturalists constructed the large mounds in the American Bottom, including Monk's Mound at the Cahokia site, the largest earthen mound north of Mexico. America's Nineteenth Century Crossroads -- Early Settlement to River Metropolis: Development of an American Lifeline (A.D., 1700-1900). This part of site examines aspects of early European settlement and the growing role East St. Louis played as a transportation center to the expanding western frontier.   However, your choice is flexible. You can always return to the site map and choose the other time period. Also, there are numerous links between the materials in one major branch and the other.   By Theme Once you've picked the time period, you can explore the American Bottom through our thematic navigation. While each time period has the same thematic categories, the content is different. Environment -- The character of the landscape, including climate, landforms, and plant and animal communities. Economy -- How people make a living from the environment, and in doing so, change themselves and their surroundings. Technology -- Objects and tools made and used by people to adapt and prosper in their environment. Society -- Organization of individuals, groups, and communities, and their evolving interactions. Art -- A society's cultural and aesthetic expressions: architectural, visual, aural, and textual.   By Content Category Narratives -- Present the insights and perspectives of archaeologists and historians for a particular theme. An easy-to-use navigation aid offers links to sub-themes, through which you can find further links to other information in this site, bibliographic references, and structured links to outside web resources. How Do You Know? -- Outlines how scholars study and interpret the past, as viewed through a chosen theme or combinations of themes. Offers a scholarly perspective for students to engage in and compare their own interpretations. Activities -- Provide paths for instruction and guided inquiry by posing questions that teachers and students can pursue through class projects and research assignments, pointing to selected narratives and archival material. Archives -- Offer a wealth of original texts, illustrations, tables, photographs, images, and maps, as well as movie and sound clips. If you're a teacher, use these rich resources to research and design class activities. If you're a student, you'll find the materials with which to research and complete your assignment.   Sitemap A complete list of the main site's content (not including the Archives) is available for quick reference.   Bookmarks If you came to this site from the main entry page, you'll see a narrow frame at the top with a row of bookmarking links. These links will allow you to keep a running list of bookmarked Riverweb pages, so you can browse the site for information and then quickly reread the documents you found most informative. You can, at any time: add a bookmark for any Riverweb page displayed in the large main frame edit the order or names of your bookmarks browse the bookmarks you've saved, or clear your complete list of bookmarks. This bookmarking feature requires that cookies and JavaScript (version 1.1 or higher) be enabled in your browser. In addition, the cookie which stores your bookmarks will be deleted when you quit your browser -- it will not save bookmarks between browser sessions.   Help Platform, connectivity, and web browser: The site can be viewed on both PC/Windows and Macintosh platforms. Recommended Internet connectivity: 56.6 modem or better JavaScript- and Java-enabled web browsers such as Netscape 3.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher are required for optimal exploration of the site. A QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) plug-in link to quicktime-(www.quicktime.apple.com/) is required for viewing QTVR movies. Questions? Problems? Read more About This Site.