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Bugs may have been an added incentive for house upkeep. We can only imagine what a twitching, writhing mass roofs and walls became over time. Thatch recovered from the sub-mound 51 pit at Cahokia, for example, was thick with insect parts. Thus, the roofs of Mississippian houses required periodic replacement of old, leaky, and infested grass with clean, new thatch. New sections of thatch (wrapped bundles of grass) were woven together after being secured to the roof frame with plant cordage and pliable twigs.


Mud-dauber wasp nests, Range site.

Pieces of mud-daubers nest also give us insights into Mississippian house maintenance activities. Insect holes and the impressions of nests bare testament to infestations of the Mississippian home. Mud-daub pieces that exhibit burning suggest that the preferred method of ridding a house of pests was fire and smoke. Smudge pits in some houses may be evidence of this fumigation technique. Other animals that may have occupied Mississippian thatched roofs and walls include various birds, rodents, and bats.

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