BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) – A husband-and-wife archaeological team from Indiana University and the University of Illinois has been awarded $640,000 to expand their research into one of North America's largest Native American earthworks.

IU associate professor of anthropology Susan Alt and University of Illinois anthropology professor Timothy R. Pauketat will use the grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Templeton Society for excavations and other research at the Cahokia Mounds near St. Louis in Collinsville, Illinois.

That site is the largest Native American earthworks north of Mexico and was part of a city built by the Mississippian culture about 1,000 years ago.

Alt says she and her husband's work is revealing a new narrative showing that religion played a central role in organizing that complex, long-ago society.