Cahokians were in the Yazoo Basin during the second half of the 11th century. What were they doing here? What were the historical implications of their being here, in northwest Mississippi at the very beginning of the Mississippian era? And what was the historical relationship between them and Carson’s 89 mounds, including its enigmatic biconical mounds and its unusual pentagonal platform, all oriented or aligned relative to a “Carson grid.” ...Carson was anything but a village! Its momentous and highly contingent history bespeaks one of the great Indigenous places of the precolonial Midsouth. That history began with the construction of two or three biconical mounds during the Middle Woodland period, if not also numerous other now-destroyed (mono) conical mounds. It continued with the arrival of Cahokians around A.D. 1070 ± 20 (based on pottery and one C14 date) and, after a 12th century hiatus, with a late Mississippian town on the Montgomery portion of the site. That town ended for reasons unknown, leaving behind the many houses and domestic remains that would be rediscovered by John Connaway and his crew ...Because of his tireless 11-year effort, the Native people who built Carson, as well as the place itself, can today be recognized as having played a truly pivotal role in the precolonial history of the American Southeast. And for that, archaeology in the Midsouth owes John Connaway its enduring admiration.
 
– From the Foreword by Timothy R. Pauketat