In the great expanses of America in the first century CE, we wander among our crops, sending

prayers to the gods for water on our dry soils. Today those prayers seem to be answered. Clouds

gather rolling across the sky. We hear thunder like lightning cracking in the trees,

frightening yet hopeful. Great gusts of wind blow across the maze,

bending the stalks, dusty ground and then the rain

washing away our fears bringing renewed strength and the promise of survival.

The weather changes and we adapt, we move, we migrate.

Our worship is rewarded with better growing conditions. The wind that brings rain

gods have hurt us. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. I've been looking for

something we could do on medieval North America since Gone Medieval was born

and now Timothy Porketat's new book, Gods of Thunder, how climate change, travel and

spirituality reshaped pre-colonial America has given me the perfect chance to explore this

fascinating topic. Tim is professor of anthropology and

medieval studies at the University of Illinois and I'm delighted he's joining us

now to talk more about this great topic. Thank you for joining us Tim.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. So I confess that this is a period of North American history that I just know nothing about.

What kind of sources were you able to leverage to bring the book together? What is the available material when studying this period?

99% of what we have is archaeological. There are many regions in North America that are very well studied, especially during the

medieval warm period.

And so we actually know quite a lot about a lot of places.

For the other 1% I draw a little bit on actual indigenous writing the Maya for instance

They have political records of who ascended to the throne on what day and who conquered whom and then also maybe more than 1%, I bring in some historic sources, especially

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